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The chair of the UK Statistics Authority is to step down while facing fierce criticism for allowing “systemic” failures of management that undermined crucial economic data to go unchecked on his watch.
Sir Robert Chote told the Cabinet Office last month that he wanted to stand down in the autumn because of his move to a new role, according to a letter published on Tuesday by the parliamentary Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC).
His departure follows mounting problems with the quality of economic data that have exposed deep institutional problems with the running of the Office for National Statistics, which is overseen by UKSA’s board.
Appearing before the committee on Tuesday, Chote and other senior UKSA officials were grilled on why the governing board had not been aware of the extent of the ONS’s problems earlier, or been able to address them.
Interim national statistician Emma Rourke acknowledged that the ONS had failed to address problems with project management, budget planning and staff morale, while also making deep cuts to the funding of its human resources function.
She said delays to important programmes were not due to any one individual or choice, but to “a systemic failure across a range of different factors” that the ONS’s own internal review had “brought into sharp relief”.
Chote’s departure leaves three positions at the head of the UK’s statistics system unfilled. These include the role of national statistician previously held by Sir Ian Diamond and a newly created post of ONS permanent secretary, who will lead a turnaround effort at the statistics agency.
“It is my hope that all of these new leaders will be in place by the end of the year,” the Cabinet Office permanent secretary Cat Little wrote to the committee.
She added that the “new cohort” would be “in a more credible position” to tackle the systemic issues raised in a recent review of the agency’s failures, as well as to act on PACAC’s own recommendations.
Problems with the UK’s labour force survey that have left Britain without a reliable gauge of unemployment went undetected at first because ONS officials were reluctant to raise concerns with senior managers, in case they were seen as overly obstructive or negative.
“At what point did the board literally go nuclear?” Simon Hoare, committee chair, asked at a hearing on Tuesday.
“It strikes me that either the board was supine or those who had the responsibility of sending things to the board . . . decided to effectively ignore the board when it suited them to do so.”
Chote, who will take up a position as president of Trinity College, Oxford, said the board had raised concerns with the ONS’s leadership over its failure to disclose concerns over staff morale at an earlier stage.
He added that he had fed back ongoing concerns among staff to the Cabinet Office, in a process that eventually led to the department commissioning its review.
