Legislative Background

The UK's official statistics system has been underpinned by a patchwork of legislation giving statistical producers a mandate to collect data but, until recently, the constitutional and governance arrangements for the UK statistical system were organised on a non-statutory basis. Until the coming into force of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007, the UK therefore did not meet one of the main principles of the United Nations' Fundamental Principles of Statistics. Before the 2007 Act, the constitutional and governance arrangements for UK official statistics were set out in a series of non-statutory frameworks. These included the ONS Framework (1996), the Framework for National Statistics (2000), and the Statistics Concordat agreed between the UK Government and the devolved administrations in 2001.

In November 2006, the Government introduced the Statistics and Registration Service Bill which embedded the earlier non-statutory reforms by creating a new Statistics Authority, independent of government reporting directly to Parliament and the devolved legislatures, with overall responsibility to promote and safeguard the production and publication of UK official statistics, wherever produced, and with oversight of the Office for National Statistics. The Statistics and Registration Bill received Royal Assent on 26 July 2007 and all of its provisions came into effect on 1 April 2008 when the new Statistics Authority itself was launched.

A copy of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 and other documents which informed the drafting of the Statistics Act can be found under 'Key legislative documents'.