Watchdog rebukes Minister over ‘limited detail’ on tests
THE HEALTH Secretary has faced rebuke from the UK’s statistics watchdog over “limited detail” in the Government’s testing figures.
Targets must be “clearly defined”, UK Statistics Authority chairman Sir David Norgrove told Matt Hancock, warning the “trustworthiness” of figures would be helped if they were more straightforward to find and better explained.
Boris Johnson’s goal is to have capacity to carry out 200,000 tests a day by the end of May, a figure which is double April’s target of tests carried out.
Sir David told Mr Hancock: “I know you are a strong supporter of the proper use of statistics and data and that you will understand that for the sake of clarity and confidence it is important that the target and its context should be set out.
“It should be clear whether the target is intended to reflect: testing capacity; tests that have been administered; test results received; or the number of people tested.
“Each of these is of interest of course, whether or not they are targets. In reporting against this target, sole focus on the total national number of tests could mask helpful operational detail.”
He called for more information on testing in different parts of the country, the overall capacity, the number of people tested, how many tests had been administered and the results that had been received.
He said that data on the gov. uk website and presented at the daily Downing Street briefings gave “limited detail about the nature and types of testing” and was hard to navigate.
“It would support trustworthiness for the testing data to be more straightforward to find, with detailed breakdowns and richer commentary,” he added.
He called on Ministers to update the national testing strategy “to show more clearly how targets are being defined, measured and reported”.
Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, chairman of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at the University of Cambridge, said the watchdog’s letter was a “diplomaticallyworded but strong public rebuke” for the Health Secretary.
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesman said: “We successfully hit our target to deliver 100,000 tests a day by the end of April and are committed to increasing our capacity to 200,000 a day across our whole testing programme so we can give tests to even more people that need one. The Government has been open and transparent in the way we are presenting data about coronavirus, including testing statistics.”