31 March 2004

Review of Statistics for Economic Policymaking – Final Report, by Christopher Allsopp

The Final Report of the Allsopp Review, addressed to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Governor of the Bank of England and the National Statistician, was published on 31 March 2004. The Report focuses primarily on the question of whether the changing economic structure of the UK is being properly reflected in the nature, frequency and timeliness of official economic statistics. But it also revisits the recommendations on regional statistics from the First Report, in the light of consultation responses received.

The principal outcomes from the recommendations in the Report would provide policymakers with:

good quality baseline Gross Value Added estimates for NUTS 1 regions, and improved detail at lower levels, as part of an integrated system producing both National and Regional Accounts;
a statistical system that is not skewed towards particular sectors of the economy, that reflects the contribution and nature of different economic sectors, and that evolves alongside future change in the economy;
a coherent and efficient suite of surveys, sample frames and estimation procedures, based on sound statistical principles, that reflects the balance of the economy and delivers reliable results at acceptable compliance cost;
a range of information held by government that can be used to increase the quality and the compliance efficiency of economic statistics, while safeguarding its confidentiality; and
good links between the centre, Office of National Statistics (ONS) and Government Statistical Services (GSS) statisticians located in the regions and devolved administrations and regional bodies, with greater comparability of those micro-regional data that are not collected centrally.

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 final report of Review of Statistics for Economic Policymaking: Summary, Recommendations and Chapters 1-3 (384KB)
PDF file final report of Review of Statistics for Economic Policymaking: Chapters 4-8 (408KB)
PDF file final report of Review of Statistics for Economic Policymaking: Chapters 9-13, Annex A, Abbreviations, Glossary and References (448KB)
Allsopp Review Press notice, 31/03/04
Treasury Press notice, 31/03/04

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.

The Review Team was helped in its consideration of growth accounting by a paper prepared by Nick Oulton: ‘A statistical framework for the analysis of productivity and sustainable development’.

PDF file of a statistical framework for the analysis of productivity and sustainable development (140KB)