This is one of a series of reports prepared under the provisions of the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007. The Act allows an appropriate authority to request an assessment of official statistics against the Code of Practice for Official Statistics in order for them to gain National Statistics status. This report is in response to such a request. The report covers the set of statistics reported in Legal Aid Statistics in England and Wales (Legal Aid Statistics) published by the Ministry of Justice (MOJ).
This report was prepared by the Authority’s Assessment team, and approved by the Regulation Committee on behalf of the Board of the Statistics Authority, based on the advice of the Director General for Regulation.
The UK Statistics Authority judges that the statistics published in Legal Aid Statistics do not fully comply with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics in the ways summarised in paragraph 1.9. The Authority judges that the statistics published in Legal Aid Statistics cannot be designated as National Statistics until the Authority has confirmed that appropriate actions have been taken by MOJ to meet the Requirements listed in paragraph 1.9. MOJ is expected to report its completed actions to the Authority by November 2016.
MOJ has informed the Assessment team that it has started to implement the Requirements listed in paragraph 1.9. The Statistics Authority welcomes this.