Guidance

Pre-release Access to Official Statistics Order 2008: statement of compliance

Updated 7 February 2024

1. Introduction

This statement sets out the Department for Business and Trade (DBT)’s operational arrangements for giving ministers and officials pre-release access to official and National Statistics once they have attained their final form prior to publication.

These arrangements are designed to ensure that such access is justified, limited, controlled, and publicised and complies with statutory requirements. Their purpose is to maintain public confidence in the integrity of official statistics while allowing ministers to account immediately for the implications of statistics covering policy areas for which they are democratically responsible.

2. Authority

These arrangements have been drawn up by DBT’s Chief Statistician and Head of Profession for Statistics, who are responsible for ensuring the day-to-day implementation of these arrangements, on behalf of the ministers and Permanent Secretary.

3. General principle

DBT operates under the general principle that pre-release access to official statistics must be:

• limited to the minimum number of persons deemed necessary to allow the minister to either:
  • provide responses to questions, or make statements about those statistics at, or shortly after, their time of publication; or
  • take action just before, at, or shortly after the time of publication
• allowed in circumstances where the public benefit likely to result from such access outweighs the detriment to public trust in official statistics likely to result from so doing

4. Grant of advance access

The arrangements set out in this statement are confined to those persons who meet the eligibility criteria. Their advance access is limited to statistics which meet the eligibility criteria and which are in their final form prior to being published for the first time.

Where pre-release access is provided to official and National Statistics produced by DBT, the job titles of everyone to whom pre-release access was granted will be made available alongside the release.

5. Period of access

In line with the practices recommended in the Code of Practice for Statistics, and the legislative rules detailed in the the Pre-release Access to Official Statistics Order 2008, pre-release access to the organisation’s statistics is restricted to a maximum of 24 hours before their public release on the following day – usually at 9:30am.

6. Conditions of access

Those who are given access to DBT’s statistics ahead of their release must keep the statistics secure and under embargo, and they must abide by certain conditions of access.

They must avoid:

• disclosing the statistics or any part of a publication containing those statistics to any person not listed as a pre-release recipient
• providing any indication of the size or direction of any trend revealed by the statistics
• using such access for personal gain, or taking any action for political advantage
• exploiting such access to change or compromise the content, presentation, or timing of publication of official statistics

7. Special circumstances

Aside from the circumstances described above, the Chief Statistician may also allow access to statistics ahead of their release to a limited number of people in a limited number of special circumstances, sometimes for more than 24 hours. In each case, such access will be documented in the relevant release.

For example:

• access may be given to the compilers of complementary reports due to be published at the same time as, or shortly after, the statistics so that they can incorporate the latest available figures
• international organisations may gain access in order to compile supra-national statistics

8. Breach of conditions of release

In the event of a breach of the principles and rules set out in the legislation and described in this statement, the Chief Statistician will notify the National Statistician and the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR), while taking action to prevent a recurrence. The OSR may subsequently investigate in conjunction with the Chief Statistician and/or Head of Profession, depending on the severity and risk the breach posed to the public trust of statistics.

9. Sanctions against non-compliance

DBT’s Chief Statistician may, for a period, withdraw pre-release access from any person judged to have breached the conditions of their access.

In addition, a heavier sanction can be imposed by the UK Statistics Authority which has a statutory duty to assess the extent to which any organisation’s National Statistics comply with the Pre-release Access to Official Statistics Order 2008 and with the associated obligations set out in this statement.

The authority can, for instance, challenge an organisation where it considers that pre-release access is not justified or where an organisation is failing to conform with these arrangements. It can also withdraw, or consider withdrawing, National Statistics designation from the statistics in question.

10. Notes

10.1 Pre-release access

In the context described above, the phrase ‘pre-release access’ covers privileged access to statistical releases in their final form prior to being placed in the public domain.

It does not cover pre-release access available to:

• those staff intimately engaged in the process of producing and disseminating the statistics in question (including those responsible for overseeing this process)
• people requested by the producers to quality assure the statistics before their public release

10.2 Chief Statistician

The accountable officer in the official statistics producer organisation that is given executive responsibility for decision making on statistical matters. In some organisations this officer will also be the Head of Profession for Statistics; in others the Chief Statistician will delegate responsibility for professional matters to the Head of Profession for Statistics.

10.3 Heads of Profession for Statistics

Where an official body produces National Statistics; produces an appreciable number of official statistics; produces particularly high-profile official statistics; or employs an appreciable number of statisticians, that organisation should appoint a Head of Profession for Statistics.

Heads of Profession for Statistics have 3 main responsibilities:

• to comply with the Code of Practice for Statistics
• to lead the Government Statistical Service (GSS)
• to build statistical capability and capacity

See the full list of responsibilities.

11. Criteria for granting pre-release access

(i) - Categories of people within government to whom DBT would normally grant pre-release access to its statistical releases:

• those ministers who have policy or operational responsibility for a particular subject-matter covered by a statistical release; who are accountable to Parliament and the electorate for their stewardship of that policy; and who may need to respond to questions about the statistics, or take appropriate action, at the time of release of those statistics
• those chief executives who have operational responsibility for a particular activity covered by a release, and who are accountable for their stewardship of that activity to ministers, and through them to Parliament; and who are in a similar position to those ministers described above
• the top departmental or agency officials with ultimate responsibility for formulating, developing, maintaining, monitoring or implementing that policy
• other departmental or agency officials who have been assigned the specific responsibility to brief ministers or chief executives about the statistics in question (such as special advisers, policy advisers, analysts)
• departmental press officers responsible for managing ministers’ interface with the media with respect to the policy or statistics in question

(Plus any immediate ancillary staff who support the above).

(ii) - Categories of statistical release to which DBT would normally grant pre-release access:

• releases categorised as ‘market-sensitive’ (meaning releases which embody statistics which, when disclosed, would be reasonably likely to have a significant effect on the value or traded volume of any investment)
• releases which incorporate statistics which are used to monitor or measure the government’s performance (either generally, or against formal targets)
• releases which have the potential to impinge substantially on the formulation, implementation, or monitoring of government policy
• releases which have the potential to inform, or impact on, decisions about the allocation of public funds
• releases which have, demonstrably and historically, had a high public profile (meaning regularly generate column inches in the print media or regularly attract the attention of the broadcast media) and on which ministers or chief executives with responsibility for the subject-matter might reasonably be expected to comment at the time of release
• releases which incorporate statistics derived from other departments’ or agencies’ administrative or management systems, and for which ministers or chief executives in those other departments have ownership and operational responsibility
• compendia publications (which often include data which has already been released) or complex publications which have been made available to the media in advance of their public release, and under embargo, in order to give journalists time to absorb and understand their contents
• releases which cover matters of wide public interest