Guidance

HMRC statement of compliance with the Pre-Release Access to Official Statistics Order 2008

Published 5 July 2021

1. Introduction

The statement below is published in conformance with the Pre-Release Access to Official Statistics Order 2008, which was approved by Parliament under Section 11 of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007.

The statement sets out HMRC’s operational arrangements for giving the Chief Executive (CEO), the Permanent Secretary for Tax, HM Treasury ministers with departmental responsibility for HMRC and their key officials pre-release access to the organisation’s own official statistics once they are in 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 also allowing the CEO, the Permanent Secretary for Tax and HM Treasury ministers to account immediately for the implications of statistics covering policy or operational areas for which they are responsible.

1.1 Exclusion

Different arrangements apply to the CEO, the Permanent Secretary for Tax, HM Treasury ministers’ and officials’ access to the organisation’s own administrative or management data where those data subsequently form the basis for published official statistics.

1.2 Authority

These arrangements have been drawn up by HMRC’s Head of Profession for Statistics. The Head of Profession for Statistics is responsible for ensuring the day-to-day implementation of these arrangements.

2. General principle

HMRC 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 CEO, the Permanent Secretary for Tax and HM Treasury ministers to either provide responses to questions, or make statements about those statistics at, or shortly after, their time of publication; or to 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

3. Details

3.1 Grant of advance access

The arrangements set out in this statement are confined to those persons who meet the eligibility criteria set out in Annex A(i) below. Recipients can, in addition, share their access with their immediate administrative support staff even though those staff may not directly engage with the statistics in question. Their advance access is limited to statistics which meet the eligibility criteria set out in Annex A(ii) attached, and which are in their final form prior to being published for the first time.

3.2 Documentation and publication

In the interests of openness and transparency, HMRC maintains a public record on its website listing the titles of all the statistical releases to which these arrangements apply and the organisations to which they belong.

The list contains the named officials who have pre-release access, together with the titles of statistics they have access to. (The justification for giving advance access to each listed recipient is available on request).

3.3 Period of access

In line with the legislative rules, pre-release access to the organisation’s official statistics is restricted to a maximum of 24 hours before their public release on the following day, usually at 9:30am.

In exceptional circumstances only, and in accordance with Principle 5 of the Pre-release Access to Official Statistics Order 2008, the Head of Profession for Statistics may grant pre-release access in excess of 24 hours. They will only do this if, in their opinion, the public benefit outweighs the detriment to public trust which is likely to result from such extended access. When this happens, the Head of Profession will publish on the website their reasons for granting extended access, and will also inform the UK Statistics Authority’s Chief Executive, the National Statistician.

3.4 Conditions of access

Those persons who are given access to HMRC’s official 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

Where the statistics in question are market sensitive, each recipient must sign a declaration to the above effect.

3.5 Special circumstances

Aside from the circumstances described above, the Head of Profession may also allow access to statistics ahead of their release to a limited number of persons 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. Such access may also be longer than 24 hours
• international organisations may gain access in order to compile supra-national statistics
• journalists may be given access to complex or compendia releases in order to give them time to absorb and understand the significance of a given release. Such access, however, will never exceed 24 hours

3.6 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 Head of Profession for Statistics will notify the UK Statistics Authority’s Chief Executive (the National Statistician) as well as the Authority’s Head of Assessment; take action to prevent a recurrence; and provide the Authority with a written explanation. The National Statistician may decide to conduct an inquiry on behalf of the Authority, the results of which will be posted on the Authority’s website.

3.7 Sanctions against non-compliance

HMRC’s Head of Profession for Statistics 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, the National Statistics designation from the statistics in question.

In the event of any such challenge or any such withdrawal the Head of Profession will publish HMRC’s response on HMRC’s website along with HMRC’s plans for achieving conformance.

4. Definitions and Annexes

4.1 Definition of 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)
• those persons requested by the producers to quality assure the statistics before their public release

4.2 Definition of Head of Profession for Statistics

Organisations which employ a large number of official statisticians, or produce a large number of official statistics will normally appoint a Head of Profession for Statistics in consultation with the National Statistician. As well as being accountable to their own CEO and departmental line managers, Heads of Profession are responsible to the National Statistician for the professional integrity of the statisticians whom they manage, and for the quality of the statistics which those statisticians produce. In particular they are responsible for observing the UK Statistics Authority’s Code of Practice for Statistics as well as any professional standards set by the National Statistician.

4.3 Annex A: Criteria for granting pre-release access

Annex A(i): Categories of persons within government to whom HMRC would normally grant pre-release access to its statistics releases

HMRC would normally grant pre-release access to the following persons within government:

• 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 (e.g. 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
• any immediate ancillary staff who support the above

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

HMRC would normally grant pre-release access to the following categories of statistical release:

• releases categorised as market sensitive (i.e. 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)
• eleases 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 (i.e. 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 (e.g. social trends, regional trends, 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