Lies, Damned Lies and Figures

We are told that the reason for three civil servants being suspended at the Department for Transport in relation to the rail franchising scandal is 'an unacceptable error' in preparing the figures. 

Now I don't know about you, but I've always had a tendency to treat figures with a pinch of salt, working on the premise that if it doesn't sound or feel right, it probably isn't. Actually I tend to apply this philosophy to virtually all aspects of life and it seems to serve me well. If the first couple of gulps of beer don't seem right, it's probably off. If the deal seems too good to be true, you can bet it is. If the guy's story sounds unconvincing, it probably is. Of course this scepticism is particularly valid if you are being sold a particular line, or figures are being used to try and support a particular policy or political stance.

I decided not to watch the BBC1 Panorama programme a few weeks ago about older people drinking too much, probably because it was too close to home and would depress me. Apparently 1.4 million older people are drinking too much, but it was said that the introduction of a minimum price for alcohol would result in 50,000 less deaths over a ten year period amongst this group. 

Now we are bombarded with facts and figures on a daily basis, normally with some kind of political motivation behind them. Mostly they go in one ear and out the other, seemingly correct because, well we heard them via the media of various sorts and if published, surely they must be correct or at least not easily open to challenge? After all very intelligent people in government or universities have compiled them, that's what we pay these people for. 

So it comes as a bit of a surprise to have discovered the following disclaimer on the BBC website:-

"Correction 28 September 2012: The main figure in this story has been amended from 50,000 to 11,500 after it emerged that there had been an error in the calculations carried out for Panorama by the School of Health and Related Research at the University of Sheffield."

Now that is one hell of an admission to have to make and completely alters the thrust of the argument. Apparently the 'error' only came to light when challenged by a knowledgeable member of the public. One really has to wonder just how many other dodgy figures we are being fed on a daily basis.  

Many years ago I well remember having very heated arguments with my father-in-law about the supposed benefits of nuclear energy. Working as an engineer for the then nationalised Central Electricity Generating Board, he used to produce loads of facts and figures to prove how much 'cheaper' nuclear generated electricity was. So cheap in fact that when The Queen opened the first station at Calder Hall, it was seriously suggested that there would be little point in metering.

Of course we now know how ludicrous those assertions were, not least because nobody ever had the foresight or insight to raise the thorny issue of the future enormous decommissioning costs that would vastly exceed the costs of construction. There was a political imperative to build nuclear in order to obtain fissile material for nuclear weapons, but it was sold to us on the basis of a dodgy economic argument. 

And so it remains to this day, figures seemingly 'proving' how much cheaper things can be done by the private sector. You see where this post is going. Cheer-leader for the business community the CBI recently published a report entitled Open Access claiming that "opening up public service delivery to independent providers ....could achieve savings of £22.6 billion, or more." 

Not surprisingly there is widespread scepticism of such a claim and particularly the lack of transparency of the process that provided such a startlingly large figure. The GuerillaPolicy website have taken issue with this and explain:-

"For such a big claim, the research has a fairly simple methodology. The researchers (Oxford Economics) looked at 20 different service areas to determine the average cost savings from greater efficiency and productivity from outsourcing (a figure of at least 11 per cent, within a range of 10-20 per cent); applying the same calculations across the estimated £278 billion of public services which the CBI believes could be fully ‘opened up’ produces potential savings from outsourcing of £22.6 billion."

"As the CBI’s report notes, we are in the middle of the biggest wave of government outsourcing since the 1980s, with more than £4 billion in tenders being negotiated in 2012 alone in services ranging from prisons and police to defence and health. Given this, we need much more robust and reliable research about the benefits and the problems that outsourcing more public services would produce – before we outsource these services (perhaps irreversibly). The research commissioned by the CBI may or may not be a useful contribution to this analysis; the problem is that because of the report’s own lack of transparency, it’s very difficult for us to know."