Dear Jo, 

Thank you for engaging with us about our recent casework regarding a tweet by the Deputy Prime Minister which made use of a figure, on the change in earnings for criminal barristers, produced by your department. 

In line with the Code of Practice for Statistics and our expectations around intelligent transparency, figures used publicly by ministers or government departments should be made available to the public in a timely manner. This supports public confidence in statistics and the organisations that produce them and minimises the risk of misinterpretation of statistics and data. While we are glad that your team has now put the data behind this figure in the public domain, as part of the recent impact assessment, it is unfortunate that this occurred several weeks after it was so prominently used. 

In future, we expect that such figures are released in a timely fashion with any relevant discussion of strength and limitations included to support public understanding and enhance transparency. Our guidance on the transparent release and use of statistics and data sets out more detail on our expectations around intelligent transparency. 

Yours sincerely  

Ed Humpherson
Director General for Regulation