Oral Answers to Questions Debate

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Department: Cabinet Office

Oral Answers to Questions

Duncan Hames Excerpts
Wednesday 25th June 2014

(9 years, 10 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Nick Hurd Portrait Mr Hurd
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I would like to think that this Government, unlike the previous one, are not in the business of massaging statistics. The central point is that we now have, as a result of the lack of credibility of statistics under the previous Government, the official UK Statistics Authority, which does an excellent job in safeguarding the integrity of public statistics.

Duncan Hames Portrait Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
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The Nomis website publishes estimates of unemployment by constituency using the annual population survey, which itself uses a sample of under 300 people of working age per constituency. Does the Minister agree that it is incumbent on the publishers of local statistics based on national surveys to assist the users of those statistics in understanding the confidence intervals, which can swamp tiny sample sizes?

Nick Hurd Portrait Mr Hurd
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Absolutely, yes.