The House of Lords has published its final report as part of its Inquiry on Statutory Inquiries, incorporating a number of suggestions made by the Society.
In March, the
RSS submitted evidence to the Inquiry on Statutory Inquiries. We recommended that the role of statistics and data should be considered at the Terms of Reference (ToRs) stage of all inquiries and that the core team of any inquiry should include an individual or group with sufficient statistical and data expertise to determine areas that require statistical thinking and recognise when additional expertise is necessary.
The
inquiry’s report has now been published, and we are very pleased to see that, in their examples of good practice, they highlight the importance of including statistical expertise and emphasise that an inquiry’s ToRs should include information about how statistical evidence will be investigated and handled (p.60). We also welcome the recognition of the Infected Blood Inquiry as a good example of how statistical analysis can be used.
We have been engaging with a couple of inquiries in 2024 – the ongoing Covid-19 Inquiry and the Thirlwall Inquiry. We have been pleased with a high level of engagement from the Module 7 Covid Inquiry team (focusing on test, trace and isolate) and will be submitting evidence to that inquiry later this year.
We also
wrote to the Thirlwall Inquiry making the case for the inclusion of a point on the appropriate use of statistical evidence in the inquiry’s ToRs. Though not included in the formal ToRs, we were pleased to see that the inquiry intended to consider whether data could have been used to raise concerns earlier, and
we wrote to them to suggest additional questions that would help answer this.
RSS President Andy Garrett said: ‘Statistical evidence has a vital role to play in the effective running of public inquiries – we are very pleased that the inquiry’s report recognises the importance of including statistical expertise in inquiry teams and considering, at an early stage, how statistical evidence will be used.’