‘The ONS apologises for any inconvenience caused’ is becoming an all-too-familiar refrain from Britain’s statisticians. The latest mea culpa came after a blunder involving vehicle tax data led the Office for National Statistics to overstate April’s inflation figure. Initially reported as 3.5 per cent, the true figure was 3.4 per cent – only revealed once the Department for Transport corrected its own error on the number of cars subject to increased vehicle taxes.
The latest mea culpa came after a blunder led the Office for National Statistics to overstate April’s inflation figure
While civil servants at the DfT are to blame, it raises serious questions about the ONS’s quality assurance process. Robert Wood, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said it was obvious there had been an error as soon as the figures were published last month.
When asked by The Spectator this morning at an event to relaunch the Conservatives’ economic policy, shadow chancellor Mel Stride called the mistake ‘thoroughly reprehensible’.
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