I should declare an interest. I spent the best part of 15 years as a member of the Government Statistical Service. Indeed my initial training was as a statistician. I went into the statistical service because I felt strongly that any public policy debate should be informed by the impartial analysis of the relevant unbiased data. The data should be employed to illuminate and inform and not as the old adage states “as a drunk uses a lamppost – for support rather than illumination”. Moreover, the relevant data should be freely available for any issue, however “controversial”. Of course, figures may be abused and misinterpreted but they should be available for all to see. Let us see the figures and then we can make our own minds up. Anything less is the crude manipulation and suppression of information.
Sadly we have all become familiar with the corrupting spin and dark arts employed by New Labour since 1997. Of all New Labour’s ghastly litany of errors I believe that it is this dishonest spin and suppression of the “truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” that has been the most damaging. And I say that as we sit among the smouldering ruins of the banking system, the public finances and other swathes of the economy. When public debate loses its openness and honesty, integrity is lost. When any attempts to discuss openly the economic and social effects of large-scale immigration or question the current religion of man-made global warming are howled down by slanderous and tendentious insult, it is time to recognise that honest debate is under severe threat.
When I read that immigration minister Phil Woolas had tried to block a recent ONS statistical release on population data, including non-UK born British residents, I was not surprised. “The idea that there are figures that won’t be used and abused by people is naïve” he said. But are we meant to conclude that all data that may be “abused” should be suppressed? Or do we conclude that the damage caused by releasing data that may be “abused” is significantly more destructive than the damage caused by rumours based on no facts at all? Or is he implying that we should not be given these facts because they are related to the issue of immigration, which is “sensitive”, and we don’t have the maturity to handle them with fairness and decency? None of these possible interpretations are very wholesome.
The ONS was quite right to publish the data. And let us pray that the Home Office Ministers, recently criticised for their “premature” and “selective” use of knife crime statistics, is vigorously instructed to respect the ONS’s independence. My experience of the Government Statistical Service is that it is run by people of the highest integrity and professionalism. They come in for a great deal of criticism. But they do a necessary and vital job.
A final thought. Phil Woolas was also quoted as saying the population release contained data that were “neither new nor informative” – so why the fuss?
