Dear Mr Wragg,
Thank you for your letter of 12th January. Your letter is a timely reminder of the continued importance of ensuring statistics continue to be presented clearly and impartially in the public domain.
I agree with the recommendations raised in your letter to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and my team will be closely monitoring all of the concerns you have raised regarding vaccination data.
We have this week written to each of the devolved nations to welcome the publication of daily vaccine statistics on the COVID-19 dashboard. We also identified a number of areas where we would like to see improvements, including calling on producers to outline plans for increasing the granularity of the data and providing accessible metadata.
With regards to other areas of focus, we recently published a statement regarding data on hospital capacity and occupancy, this is an important issue which we hope to see further progress on. It is important that all data continue to be presented in a way that supports public understanding. This means data which can be easily found and understood. Published data need to be supported by clear and coherent narratives which offer insights for users. Where multiple sources cover similar information, it is important the purposes of the different sources and any differences between them are clearly explained.
Thank you again for your correspondence, and I look forward to continuing to engage with the Committee going forward into 2021.
Yours sincerely
Ed Humpherson
Director General for Regulation