Next year's census, costing almost £500m, may be the last, but many fear the consequences, writes MARK HENNESSY
SINCE THE United Kingdom’s last census was carried out in 2001, supermarket giant Sainsbury has opened 450 new stores, drawing heavily on the information gleaned from it.
Now, however, cabinet office minister Francis Maude has warned that the 200-year-old model is too expensive and too slow and that it can be replaced by cheaper methods.
The British were first counted in 1801, when a headcount was taken to discover the numbers available to fight Napoleon. They have been counted every decade since, except during the second World War.
Today there are concerns that the census data of 2001 is obsolete, given how often people now move, either abroad, or because of work, divorce or other upheavals. More up-to-date information could be collected from the records of the Royal Mail, local authorities, government departments such as work and pensions and education and credit-check agencies, Maude argues.
The next census is to take place on March 27th next year, but there are already worries that the government will try to make last-minute savings on it – despite the fact that £300m has already been spent on preparations.
“Just 3 per cent of the budget was spent on outputs last time,” said demographic expert Keith Dugmore, who advises many of the UK’s biggest companies on population trends.
“The danger is that they will try to make savings next year – and not just in the one afterwards. The danger there is that we will spend a lot of money collecting information and then not process it properly,” he told The Irish Times.
Meanwhile, Irish emigrant bodies are equally concerned that the axe will be first felt next year and will disappoint their hopes of getting an accurate figure for the first time of the number of Irish in the UK and those born in the UK who regard themselves as Irish.
Under EU rules, all member states must carry out a census some time next year. Most do it in the same way as Ireland and the UK: forms are sent out, then collected by post or by enumerators and processed over time. Four countries – Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Austria – do it differently, drawing numbers from a trawl through all of the other information held about citizens on government, local authority and hospital files.
The belief expressed by Maude that the UK can do the same is questioned by Dugmore and other demographers, particularly since the UK does not demand the kind of record-keeping from its citizens that some other European countries regard as the norm.
“The Royal Mail records would not get you very far: that is just a name and a postcode. Local authorities’ record-keeping tends to be a mixed bunch, so it would take a long time to get all of that to work together,” he said.
This time around there are already objections over the questions to be posed. The complaint is that they are too intrusive, particularly those seeking to know the number of people sleeping under the roof on census night.
Railing against “bedroom snoopers”, Conservative MP Nick Hurd said: “Just because the government has the legal powers to ask these questions does not give the state the licence to ask anything they want.”
The refusal rate is likely to be higher this time, since enumerators will only call to a home if a form has not been sent in by mail, or online. Breaches of the rules in the past though have rarely been met with fines.
The gaps caused by the absence of forms, or inaccurate form-filling will be filled in afterwards using statistical models drawn up by the Office of National Statistics from a post-census survey of 500,000 people.
In the last count, some 1.5 million households failed to fill in their forms. Also, figures produced for Manchester and Westminster, among other areas, were regarded as being grossly inaccurate from the off.
However incomplete the census might be, though, demographers worry that Maude’s plans will leave the UK worse off:
“To announce a decision to scrap future censuses before proving that alternatives are adequate is reckless,” said Dugmore.