FOI reference: FOI-2024-1854
You asked
My FOI requests that you divulge the names of the independent experts and politicians and their specific roles and contributions toward this new method of calculating excess deaths and any minutes in meetings to that effect.
I would like to know who requested the ONS changed the methodology and what the reasoning was for it.
I would like to know if you sought out any critical appraisal of the new methodology from experts, many of who have publicly expressed concern at this pseudoscientific revisionism.
I would like to know the exact changes from the old method and a copy of the old method you used and the new one.
Finally your link to complaints is broken: https://www.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Complaints-Policy-June-2016.pdf
We said
Thank you for your request.
The Office for National Statistics is an independent, non-ministerial body operating at arm's length from government, as laid out in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007. All our statistics are produced to high professional standards, as required by the UK Statistics Authority's Code of Practice for Statistics.
The decision to change our approach was based solely on statistical and methodological considerations, led by ONS in its capacity as the UK's independent national statistical institute. The approach was developed by a cross-organisation working group with representatives from different areas of the Office for National Statistics, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, the UK Health Security Agency, Public Health Wales, the Welsh Government, National Records of Scotland, the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, and members of the actuarial profession. The formation of this working group was announced in February 2023. During its development, the work was reviewed by the UK Statistics Authority's Methodological Assurance Review Panel and the UK Statistics Authority Board.
Full details of the new and previous methodologies can be found in our article published on 20 February 2024. We have also published all the underlying data and code needed to reproduce the new estimates reported in the article. Key features of the new methodology include:
- Population growth is taken into account (all else being equal, we should expect more deaths among larger populations)
- Population ageing is taken into account (all else being equal, we should expect more deaths among populations where a bigger share of the population is elderly)
- Trends in population mortality rates are taken into account (all else being equal, we would expect fewer deaths in populations that are generally experiencing long-term improvements and more deaths in populations experiencing deteriorations in underlying health)
- Individual weeks and months that were substantially affected by the immediate mortality impact of the pandemic are removed from the data when estimating expected deaths in subsequent periods, whereas the previous approach excluded data for the whole of 2020 (but not other pandemic-affected years)
The names of independent experts who contributed to the development of our new methodology for estimating the number of excess deaths in the UK is personal data, and therefore exempt under Section 40(2) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA).
The Office for National Statistics' complaints policy can be found via the following link: https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/contactus/complaintspolicy