OSR’s role during the 2024 UK General Election
A UK General Election took place on 4 July 2024. While not part of the 2023/24 casework year, we have included a summary of OSR’s role during the election in this report.
In the weeks leading up to an election, known as the pre-election period, the Cabinet Office and Devolved Administrations set rules which limit public statements or the publishing of new policies and outputs. Official statistics are unique in this respect as routine and preannounced statistics can continue to be published during this time, in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics.
Shortly after the election was called, OSR launched an Election 2024 hub, which brought together guidance and support on election campaigns. This included new guidance on the use of statistics in a pre-election period for government departments, which set out our expectations for how departments should handle cases where unpublished information is referred to unexpectedly. We also wanted to do more up front to help people navigate through the various claims and figures surrounding the election by creating election explainers. These explainers:
- clarified the topics dominating debate and public interest at the time
- allowed us to respond to concerns at pace while election campaigns were taking place online and social media
- helped us review our judgements on previous cases by using them as examples
An election brings claims of a more urgent and complex nature that OSR has to handle rapidly and diligently to ensure that we continue to serve the public good. To remain responsive to the needs of the public during this time, we set up an election response team, who considered 70 cases related to the election and over 100 campaign claims.
Compared with previous elections, we found that the debates in the 2024 election campaign tended to make less use of statistics on the past performance of public services and the economy. Instead, the claims largely concerned the transparency of party spending commitments. We published our judgements on five occasions, across topic areas including party spending claims, disability, child poverty and polling statistics.
Case study – Statements on party spending commitments
We received several concerns regarding a claim made in the ITV election debate on 4 June 2024 by the Conservative Party that a Labour government would mean £2,000 of tax rises per working household. The claim was also used numerous times in party political broadcasts, campaign speeches, social media and the televised debate.
The figure originated from a Conservative Party document and had been claimed in the debate to be based on analysis conducted by HM Treasury. We found that while the Labour Tax Rises analysis document did contain some costing by Treasury officials (as is normal under long-standing practices that enable officials to be asked to prepare and publish costings of opposition policies based on the assumptions of ministers and their special advisors), not all of the claims were costed.
Following wide media coverage of the Conservatives’ assessment of Labour’s tax plans, James Bowler, the Permanent Secretary for the Treasury, made clear that policy costings ‘derived from other sources or produced by other organisations should not be presented as having been produced by the Civil Service’. Additionally, we concluded that the claim, when taken in isolation, was missing important context, for example that £2,000 is an estimation summed together over four years.
To ensure our judgement reached a wide audience, the Chair of the Authority, Sir Robert Chote, appeared on the Radio 4 Today programme to discuss the appropriate use of statistics during the election campaign. He used this interview as an opportunity to highlight the benefits of intelligent transparency in political communications.
We published a statement to accompany this interview which received wide media coverage and also enabled journalists to call out the use of the statement during later interviews with candidates.
Intelligent transparency demands that statistical claims and statements are based on data to which everyone has equal access, that are clearly and transparently defined, and for which there is appropriate acknowledgement of any uncertainties and context that people need to be aware of if they are realistically to interpret what the statistical claims mean. During an election, adhering to the principles of intelligent transparency is in the interests of not just the public but campaigners themselves. It avoids the need for subsequent clarifications and possible loss of trust in future claims, either later in the campaign or in government.
Case study – Manifesto spending claims
We commented on claims made by the Labour Party that the Conservative manifesto plans would amount to net extra spending of roughly £71 billion over the next five fiscal years put together and ‘raise people’s mortgages by £4,800’ cumulatively over that period.
These claims fell short of our expectations around transparency. Our intervention recognised that future costings are always subject to uncertainty and dependent on choice of methodology. We were clear that in order to help people understand assumptions that have gone into costing models, it is essential that the underlying calculations, data sources and context be provided alongside the figures. We said that when distilling a claim into a single number, there should be enough context to allow the average person to understand what it means and how significant it is. Omitting this information can damage trust in the data and the claims that these data inform.
During summer 2024, OSR carried out an internal election lessons learned exercise which reflected on OSR’s preparation, activity undertaken and resulting impact during the General Election campaign. The exercise made three recommendations to inform OSR’s approach to future elections and casework more broadly:
- Create and maintain central resources to support preparation activities, including a repository of key data sources and previously checked statements.
- Adapt and maintain the explainer statements to support public understanding on key topics beyond election campaigns.
- Enhance tailored communication through greater use of different channels, such as LinkedIn, and continue to strengthen relationships with the media and other partnerships.