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Simplifying and generalising and speaking without evidence, I presume the concern is that, when statistics are released and there is a simultaneous Ministerial (political) press release, people get confused between the statistics and the (Ministerial) spin, and start to think that the statistics themselves are contaminated with spin. However, as Ray suggests, giving Ministers and their aides/advisers 24 hours rather than 5 days to write this press release won't make any difference to that. The only solution would be to have no pre-release period, then Ministers get to react to statistics on an equal basis with everyone else. In addition to Paul's point, one advantage of shortening the pre-release window is that, the shorter the pre-release window, the less time there is for politicians and their aides/advisers to leak material/try to manage expectations. Mike ray thomas wrote: >> "Some have suggested, however, that the >> existing arrangements for giving Ministers advance sight of National >> Statistics are overly generous and contribute to a perception of >> Ministerial interference in statistics, which in turn has an impact on >> trust in statistics. " > > The Royal Statistical Society has made this suggestion repeatedly. But is > there any evidence to support the suggestion? Pre-release does not affact > the statistics themselves. There has been no suggestion that pre-release > is associated in any way with altering or fiddling the figures. Pre-release > gives > the opportunity to the Government of the day to put their own slant in > interpreting > the statistics - just as they can do with the publication of any other kind > of information. > Why should the public expect otherwise? > Why should statistical publications be viewed or treated > differently from other kinds of reports? ****************************************************** Please note that if you press the 'Reply' button your message will go only to the sender of this message. If you want to reply to the whole list, use your mailer's 'Reply-to-All' button to send your message automatically to [log in to unmask] Disclaimer: The messages sent to this list are the views of the sender and cannot be assumed to be representative of the range of views held by subscribers to the Radical Statistics Group. To find out more about Radical Statistics and its aims and activities and read current and past issues of our newsletter you are invited to visit our web site www.radstats.org.uk. *******************************************************