Don’t abuse stats during election campaign, UK Statistics Authority chair tells party leaders
David Norgrove writes to ask parties to make sure their campaign materials don’t mislead the public
David Norgrove asked party leaders to respect statistics in the run-up to the election - Photo credit: ParliamentTV
The chairman of the UK Statistics Authority has written to the leaders of the main political parties to urge them not to misrepresent statistics in the run-up to the general election on 8 JUne.
In his letter, dated 24 April, David Norgrove urged party leaders to show their “support and leadership” in ensuring that official statistics are used properly.
Norgrove, who took up the role of chairman earlier this month, noted that his predecessors Michael Scholar and Andrew Dilnot “have in the past been obliged to write publicly about the misuse of official statistics in other pre-election periods and during the EU referendum campaign”.
Related content
General election 2017: Register to Vote site pulls in 150,000 applications in a single day
Theresa May announces plan to hold early general election
Government ‘clearly failed’ to properly test Register to Vote site ahead of EU referendum
In his efforts to urge the parties to make sure they stuck to the rules, Norgrove stressed that the misuse of statistics “at any time damages the integrity of statistics, causes confusion and undermines trust”.
He said that it was in the public interest that all information is used in accordance with the principles of the Code of Practice for Official Statistics.
This includes making sure that campaigns don’t “pick out single numbers that differ from the picture painted by the statistics as a whole”.
Parties should also ensure that the statistical sources are clear and accessible to all, and that any caveats or limitations are respected.
During the EU referendum campaign, Dilnot said that Vote Leave’s assertions that the UK “sends £350m every week to Brussels” were “potentially misleading”, as well as flagging up some minor errors in the information used in the government’s leaflet about the benefits of remaining in the union.
Share this page
Tags
CONTRIBUTIONS FROM READERS
Please login to post a comment or register for a free account.
Related Articles
Report from MPs says that, a year on from the cyberattack, government and the NHS must now take action
Culture secretary talks to executives from embattled internet firm in London in 'robust but constructive' meeting
As an ever-greater volume of increasingly sophisticated devices watch us all, PublicTechnology talks to regulator Tony Porter about his office’s role in ensuring surveillance is always...
Cybersecurity agency issues report looking forward to coming dangers and back at year in which DDoS and ransomware hogged the headlines
Related Sponsored Articles
BT brought together CIOs from well known organisations to identify the key threats and opportunities that new technologies are presenting
Hartley was a senior officer in the RAF and now works in cyber security for BT. Ahead of the BT Cyber Security Careers Insight, the Officers' Association asked him to...
BT's Andy Rowland on technological risk, and how the systems fundamental to modern life are under attack
BT's Mike Pannell on the different ways of anonymising information and their application to IoT data