Mark Best, Socialist Party National Committee
Behind its attacks on working-class people, the Labour government always has a stat to ‘justify’ it. Whether that’s a rise in economically inactive figures after the Covid-19 pandemic, meaning the NHS ‘must’ be opened up even more to private health businesses. Or that the number of young people not in work means it ‘needs’ to bring in a tougher benefits sanction regime.
But for a number of years, official government statisticians aren’t even sure if these stats reflect reality. The Office for National Statistics (ONS), responsible for collecting a range of important economic data – from wages and productivity figures to food prices and the cost of living – is in crisis. Reports of the Labour Force Survey, are now being published with the warning: “Official statistics under development”. Because of a fall in the responses to the survey, the ONS cannot be fully sure the results actually reflect real trends in the economy. And they’re likely to stay this way until 2027!
It’s damaging to the prestige of British capitalism and its ability to attract investment. Either productivity is even more dire than they already thought, or it is incapable of accurately measuring important economic metrics.
Biases they have already identified include greater responses from homeowners than renters and younger people being less likely to answer unknown phone calls or be in to answer door-to-door surveys. So, while Labour is demonising young people, their experiences are less likely to be accurately included in the analysis.
Please please please believe me
ONS chief, Ian Diamond, practically begged MPs on the Treasury Select Committee to “please, please, please don’t think I’m being complacent” about the issues with data. He told them he is very confident that there has been a fall in economic activity since the pandemic.
After the pandemic, it became harder to collect responses over the phone and in person. But the ONS is also a victim of cuts which previous and current governments have used their stats to justify. It has been forced to look for £40 million of cuts by 2025. 30% of staff responsible for field interviews left in 2023. The experience of civil servants across the board – low pay and fewer resources for the same tasks – has resulted in shoddy, unreliable data.
But the idea that a capitalist government could read masses of data and pull certain policy levers to shift the economy any way they want is also unrealistic. Policies attempt to shift dials certain ways but underlying it all is the chaotic morass of the market. Companies prioritise short-term profits over investing in the infrastructure needed to take society forward. The impacts of government policy can have massive unintended consequences – firms taking advantage of youth unemployment schemes to get cheap, disposable labour with no chance of a job at the end, for example.
The capitalist system is unplanned, chaotic and contradictory. And the new Labour government is going into the next period with at least a partial blindfold on. But the cuts that are demanded by the bosses aren’t a result of dodgy data, but attempting to make the working class pay for the bosses crisis. To make our living standards worse while their profits go up.
Unlocking the potential from collecting and analysing data is possible, but it requires society to be organised in a different way. Democratic planning of society: producing what is needed instead of what makes a profit, beholden to the whims of the market. The working class, with the wealth and resources of society in our hands and democratic socialist planning of all levels in society, would be able to collect and use data we can rely on, because it would be used to enrich all our lives.
