Leading academics and statisticians fear the government is preparing to scrap the census.
An open letter expressing their concerns has been signed by 60 quantitative social scientists, in response to a consultation by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
They claim the consultation on the future of statistics is laying the groundwork for “abolishing” the census, which has been produced every ten years since 1801.
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The group believes the ONS will scrap the 2031 census and replace it with an “untested patchwork” of administrative data and surveys.
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The ONS said no final decision on the census had been made. But Professor Alice Sullivan, head of research at UCL’s Social Research Institute and one of the letter’s signatories, warned that the ONS was “sleepwalking into disaster”.
“Although this is a consultation, it’s very much putting forward a fait accompli that there’s not going to be another census,” Sullivan told The Times. “That’s the tone of what they are saying. They are saying, ‘We don’t need the census any more because we can just use administrative data and surveys instead’.”
Administrative data is usually collected during the administration of a service, like the NHS, as opposed to the census, where its purpose is a data collection exercise.
Information from the census — published every decade, apart from during the Second World War — underpins everything from the calculation of economic growth to helping plan schools.
The 2021 census, the 22nd in England and Wales, is estimated to have cost more than £1 billion. Experts believe it will be abolished to save money. Leaders at the ONS, a non-ministerial government department, appeared to question its future earlier this year. The next census is scheduled for 2031.
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Launching the public consultation on the “future of population and migration statistics in England and Wales”, in June, Sir Ian Diamond, the UK’s national statistician, talked of the ONS’s “vision”. He wrote in The Times: “We cannot rely on administrative data alone, and surveys may play an important role in our future. But we have reached a point where a serious question can be asked about the role the census plays in our statistical system.”
However, academics and statistical experts are concerned about the quality of a new system and its potential lack of reach. Sullivan said: “Some administrative data sources will tend to miss out a lot of people who aren’t using services. They’ll tend to be the harder-to-reach and more disadvantaged populations — and that’s a problem in terms of representativeness. But we’ve also seen in recent years a dramatic illustration of the fact that admin data isn’t collected as a data collection exercise, as such.”
‘No decisions made’
Sullivan, who campaigned to ensure people in the 2021 census were asked about their sex, warned there was “no requirement” for data-collecting organisations to be in line with national statistics. With no oversight, it could, for example, lead to data on gender being mixed with that on sex.
She said: “You would need that administrative data to be really accurate before you started thinking of getting rid of the census.”
Tony Dent, a statistician who campaigns for more reliable statistics, said it was a “politically astute” decision for the ONS to save money and use administrative data. But, he added: “I don’t think they are qualified to deal with it. They simply will not be getting at lots of the population.”
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Emma Rourke, the deputy national statistician, said the ONS had so far received almost 700 responses to its consultation. She said: “With greater access to a range of data collected across government and more widely, and based on our research to date, we believe we have reached a point where a serious question can be asked about the role the census plays in our statistical system.
“However, no decisions have yet been made. The national statistician will make a recommendation to the UK Statistics Authority and the final decision rests with the UK government.”
