In late February, the Office for National Statistics decided to classify the Treasury’s raid on the Bank of England’s accumulated interest payments from quantitative easing as a receipt for the public sector.

You can have a long and reasonable argument on whether the raid, euphemistically called a “cash management operation”, is a good idea. But I argued a few days later that the treatment of an internal public sector transfer of money as government revenue in the headline figures was a poor decision by the Office for National Statistics. There was no world in which the underlying public finances had been improved by the move, I argued.

As a journalist I was appalled that Britain’s independent statistical authority was setting out a legalistic argument for an economic question and for a set of statistics that were not governed by international conventions. I felt the statistics for borrowing and debt could not be trusted any more.

As a member of the public, I wrote to the chairman of the UK Statistical Authority, the statistics watchdog, to ask for a review of the ONS decision (email reproduced below). Today, I received a reply from Andrew Dilnot, the UKSA chairman (also reproduced). I am delighted to say the UKSA thinks I raised important points and has set up a short review. Read more