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10 December 2003

The Allsopp Review

Review of the statistical requirement for monetary and wider economic policy making

Terms of reference
First Report and associated Press Notice
Responses to first report
Final Report
Christopher Allsopp

As announced on 27th February 2003, the Chancellor has asked Christopher Allsopp, Fellow in Economics at New College, Oxford, to undertake a wide-ranging review of the informational and statistical requirements for monetary and wider economic policymaking, following the end of his term as a member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England.

Terms of reference

to advise on changes in the statistics and information necessary if the UK were to join the European single currency;

to deliver an assessment to the Chancellor, the Governor of the Bank of England and the National Statistician, with a first report by the 2003 Pre-Budget Report on the following:

  • the regional information and statistical framework needed to support the Government’s key objective of promoting economic growth in all regions and reducing the persistent gap in growth rates between the regions;
  • whether the changing economic structure of the UK is being properly reflected in the nature, frequency and timeliness of official economic statistics.

The review began at the start of June, 2003.

First Report

The First Report of the Review was published on 10 December 2003. It addresses mainly the statistical requirements for regional economic policy. The Report makes a number of recommendations to improve the quality and availability of regional data to satisfy the growing demand for regional data over the medium-term.

The Report argues that developments due to devolution and a number of economic policy agendas are leading to a demand for regional data that goes beyond the existing provision. It makes a number of institutional and technical recommendations to meet the requirements of policymakers and the wider user community at both the national and local levels, including:

  • bringing Regional Accounts more into the National Accounts framework, including a better quality, and more timely, measure of real regional Gross Value Added, but not reproducing the full range of National Accounts measures;
  • the wide range of micro-economic and sub-regional data already available could be expanded through the infrastructure used by the ONS’s Neighbourhood Statistics Service to become the primary platform for area-based National Statistics;
  • an ONS or Government Statistical Service presence in the English regions to complement that which already exists in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland; and
  • greater access for the ONS to administrative data, which could improve both regional and national data, while offering important savings in the compliance burden on business.

The Review notes that the realisation of such a statistical agenda will require increases in not only cash, but also human and business-compliance resources. At the same time the Report highlights a number of areas, many already underway, where consolidation and review of existing arrangements might offer some degree of saving and efficiencies.

The full report is available below to download in Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format (PDF). If you do not have Adobe Acrobat installed on your computer you can download the software free of charge from the Adobe website. For alternative ways to read PDF documents and further information on website accessibility visit the HM Treasury accessibility page.

PDF file of foreword, summary and recommendations (100 kb)
PDF file of chapters 1, 2, 3 and 4 (212 kb)
PDF file of chapters 5, 6 and 7 (264 kb)
PDF file of chapters 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 (180 kb)
PDF file of annexes A1, A2 and A3 (428 kb)
PDF file of list of abbreviations, glossary and references (84 kb)

A press notice issued on the day of release is available here
All the contributions to the first report of the Allsopp Review are now available on this website in PDF format

Responses to the first report

The responses to the First Report are listed here, with the permission of their authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of either the Government, the Bank of England or the Office for National Statistics or of Christopher Allsopp.

Christopher Allsopp

Christopher Allsopp leads the Review. He is a Fellow in Economics at New College, Oxford and Reader in Economic Policy at the University of Oxford. He is the Editor of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy. Christopher Allsopp was appointed a part-time member of the Monetary Policy Committee on 1 June 2000. From 1997 until joining the MPC he was a member of the Court of Directors of the Bank of England. Previous activities include working at H M Treasury, the OECD and the Bank of England (where he was Adviser from 1980-83) as well as extensive involvement with domestic and international policy issues as consultant to international institutions and private sector organisation. He has published extensively on monetary, fiscal and exchange rate issues as well as on the problems of economic reform and transition.

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Allsopp Review: Statistical Requirements for Monetary and Wider Economic Policymaking Press Notice
Allsopp Review: Index of all contributions
Allsopp Review index
Independent Reviews index