 Good morning, and a warm welcome to the 19th meeting of the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee in 2022. Our first agenda item is a decision on taking business and private. Our members are content to take agenda item 3 in private. Our second agenda item is our continued work on Scotland's census. This morning, we have two members of the National Records of Scotland international steering group who are joining us remotely. A warm welcome to Professor Ian Diamond, National Statistician, UK Statistics Authority, and Professor David Martin, Professor of Geography at the University of Southampton and Deputy Director of the UK Data Service. Good morning to you both. I begin with a couple of questions, perhaps. When the Office of Statistics Regulation wrote to the National Records of Scotland on 17 August, it stated that, quote, the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the change in both timing and mode of data collection to digital first means that the context of this census is notably different from previous ones. This wasn't covered in your letter to the committee, which we thank you for, but clearly you are very close to this topic. I wonder if you could elaborate on the context and the differences with this census and previous ones, and perhaps I could invite Professor Ian Diamond to go first. You have effectively asked two questions there, if I may, so I will take the second one first and the first one second. Following the decision taken by the UK Parliament to undertake a 2021 census in 2014, it was agreed that, given the improvements in technology and the accessibility of technology, this would be the first digital first census. The Office of National Statistics has put an enormous amount of work into ensuring that it was possible for citizens to fill in their census form entirely digitally and that the forms themselves were digital friendly so that you could very easily, for example, fill them in on your mobile device as well as, if you like, a more traditional computer. That was very successful. I would have to say also that it was entirely recognised throughout that there would be citizens who did not have accessibility to digital means, and so paper questionnaires were also produced. In some areas where it was expected that, for example, broadband use or availability would be low, paper questionnaires were sent out on maps, but elsewhere it was digital first. The paper questionnaires were only used when enumerators went to pick up, when there hadn't been a response digitally and the enumerators were able to say, well, I have a paper questionnaire. That was different, but different only in as much as the questionnaire and the way of filling in was different. Much of the methodology, definition of usual residence and individual level census was, as it has been since 1841, but clearly asking questions which were relevant. You also mentioned the fact that in 2021 the censuses of England and Wales and Northern Ireland were taken place at a time when there had been a pandemic. Again, as I'm sure you're aware, this isn't the first time this has happened. The 1921 census also was, well actually in 1921, there was a short delay because of a big wave of that particular flu. Again, the context was not new. It has happened before, albeit some time ago. We at the Office for National Statistics and indeed my colleagues at the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency looked very carefully at all the preparation, at all the considerations and took a judgment that we would undertake a census in 2021. I have to say, just by way of vision, we make an unbelievably successful census. Clearly, Sir Ian has outlined two major changes for you. If you are talking of the broader context of the census, there are a couple of other factors that you are looking at as if you might not be able to hear me. Are you hear me okay? I'm struggling slightly. Can we have the volume if it's possible? We might be able to fix that in the room. No, please continue. I think it's probably just me. The two lesser factors that I would add in terms of the broader context for the census would be a general societal change towards lower response to surveys, which we see year on year continuous survey response as a gentle steady decline. Also, the circumstances of the pandemic will have meant that people were certainly in the Wales situation, people's lives were disrupted and their working patterns were quite different, many more people working from home. The way in which they might have felt that they should correctly answer questions and those kinds of contextual factors would have been looking quite different by the time we got to the census. The most important trends of the principles Ian's given you, and I completely agree. Thank you. Since I've asked two questions on my first question, I'm going to move to members of the committee and could invite Mr Cameron. Thank you, convener. Good morning to our witnesses. Ian, you spoke about what you saw as a very successful census in the rest of the UK in 2021. The completion rate is about 97 per cent. In terms of the Scotland census, we reached a figure of 87.9 per cent, so just some 9 per cent lower. In Glasgow, our biggest city, we only got as high as 81 per cent or thereabouts. Can I ask your view on why you think this happened? Why is there this disparity? Thank you for the question, and I apologise if I'm simply going to say that I'm not able really to answer that. For the very simple reason that I think it is entirely necessary and it will be appropriate—we did it in England and Wales, and my colleague in Northern Ireland also did it to undertake a lessons learnt and an investigation of what went well and what didn't go so well. I am not aware that that work has been done yet. I have not been asked to review such work, so anything I could say would simply be speculation. I think at the moment it wouldn't be right to speculate. What my view has always been is just at the moment, and given some of the urgency, the important thing was to, if you like, move forward and get to a position where we have really top-class population statistics for Scotland available in the spring of next calendar year. I do think that it is important that an assessment that, as you described, is made. I would be delighted to be part of that if asked, but that is for the Scottish Government. Thank you for that. We are hearing from the Scottish Government next week, so that is something that we could easily take up with it. Professor Martin, for his view, if he is able to comment, I appreciate that you may not want to either. Again, I emphasise that, certainly, the international steering group very much sees Scotland's census as an operation that is still taking place. It is not finished when the count is over. It is not part of our remit to investigate how you have got where you are at this moment. We are endeavouring to advise NRS in best steps to take right now. That investigation needs to take place and has not yet happened. The one thing I would add is that you particularly picked up on, for example, response rates in Glasgow. When you look at census response in recent censuses across the whole of the UK, there is considerable variation between local authorities. Dunlaw's local authorities in England and Wales are also more challenging to enumerate and you see a range of response rates. What you are seeing from Glasgow is disappointing that it was not higher, but it is not in a completely different ballpark to figures that we have seen from other large cities in recent censuses. It is delving into the exact reason how you have got there, something that is yet to be done. Thank you for that. Can I turn to a slightly different question, which I hope you may be able to help with? That is looking forward. What in terms of statistics in particular do you see the impact of there being this difference between the rest of the UK and Scotland? Perhaps Professor Sir Ian Diamond, could you start? If I may, I will describe where I hope we can get to. As Professor Martin has indicated, a census is not simply the initial data collection exercise these days. Certainly that initial data collection exercise is the most important pillar, but it is three pillars that brought together make a population statistics system. First pillar, the census. The second pillar, what we call a coverage survey, where we go back to a sample of post-codes and redo the census and then we link those together to make estimates of the under enumeration. As Professor Martin has pointed out, we expect beforehand that there will be higher under enumeration in those areas which in Scotland would be, if you like, lower on the SIMD. We design for that. After the coverage survey has been linked and we use a system called dual system estimation to make estimates of the missing people and households. We then use administrative data to, as the third pillar, to do both quality assessment and further imputation. The first pillar is a little lower than we would have hoped. We have done the coverage survey and the steering group has been giving close advice on all matters of that. Indeed, when there was some difficulty with response in some areas, I took a judgment that ONS would pause some of our data collection for other purposes in Scotland and some of our professional interviewers went down to help. We have been doing everything that we can to get back to good, but we still now have the administrative data that will be necessary to bring in as well. There are different methods that you use. When we have those three pillars together and there are some proposals around using some quite innovative statistics using administrative data to make estimates, when we have brought those three pillars together, I very much hope that NRS will have, as I said earlier, by the spring of the next calendar year, some really reliable population statistics for Scotland. At the same time, we in England and Wales and indeed my colleagues in Nisra in Northern Ireland are working very hard on moving our 21 estimates through to 22. We have a new method of doing that, which is extremely accurate based largely on administrative data called a dynamic population model. We will then have estimates for 2022, all with confidence intervals and statistically sound, which will be directly comparable with those in Scotland. In summary, I am expecting and hoping at the moment that by the spring of next year we will be able to have directly comparable UK-wide population statistics for 2021. I say that. I am not saying that with complete confidence. Clearly, the work on that third pillar, the administrative data, still needs to be done. One of the further problems that we will now need to be looking at is that some of the work, the initial starting point for some of the statistics that we do, assumes independence between the census and the coverage survey. We are expecting that there will be some dependence and we have to estimate that. There is a lot of quite complex statistical analysis still to do in Scotland. The importance of being able to access very good administrative data is absolutely critical. Given those two things, and I am confident of a statistical analysis, then I believe that it will be possible to have UK-wide population data by spring of 2023. David Martin, if he wants to add anything. I suppose that, just for the committee's assistance, there is a broader international context of shifting the emphasis between the three pillars. You have possibly read the report and Ian has just emphasised the initial enumeration followed by the census coverage survey and then the work with the administrative data. What we are seeing is a journey in which there is an increasing reliance on the administrative data sources in producing the complete national population estimates. You are capturing the situation with Scotland census precisely as that transition is taking place. There would be administrative data, for example, in the Northern Ireland census results, which are just being published from 2021, where administrative data has been used to complete the record. Those are known waters internationally, but slightly different circumstances in each of the UK countries when you come and look at precisely how the census balance is working now. Hence, the emphasis being placed on those administrative data now. Briefly, you both referred to or alluded to large cities being increasingly resistant, if that is the right word, to filling in surveys, or many people in many communities being increasingly resistant to filling in surveys. I just wonder if either of you can explain what you mean by that or suggest any reasons for it. Perhaps, Sariah? I hope that you are keeping well. Doctor, I have just started. It is lovely to see you and I hope that you are keeping well. I have not seen you for a while. Could I just start by saying that there are a host of reasons why response rates have been going down in surveys over the last few years. Some of them, people are just not at home so often or so regularly and so it is difficult to contact. Secondly, people do not always see their civic duty as helping with surveys. Thirdly, there are so many surveys that you are never quite sure. I do think that some of the things we try an enormous amount to do is really to impress that these are important government surveys and what they are used for. When you make that distinction, people tend to be more likely to help, but right across the world we have seen reductions in survey response rates and there is an enormous amount of research across the world into how to improve it. Indeed, the UK Economic and Social Research Council just this week announced a really big programme of research in improving response rates and that the Office for National Statistics is going to provide some support in kind to researchers using some of our surveys to do some experiments on how to improve response rates. However, it is a multifarious group of factors linked to lots of surveys, so why should I answer? I am very busy, people are not there when you knock on the door and perhaps a reduction in civic duty, thank you. Again, Sir Ian has given you the principle dimensions of this. As a geographer, one of the things that I have been involved in over time is the process of address listing and looking at the way in which data works for small areas. There is an additional factor that increasingly people live in properties that are hard to access, where there is an entry system very remote from the front door of the individual and it becomes increasingly difficult to deliver direct to the door for surveyors and assess coverage to survey surveyors to gain access to those individual people to work out who is at home. That, of course, is additionally prevalent in large cities and so there are structural address related factors to the way in which people's housing is arranged, in which addition, and he drives that over and above the social component that Sir Ian has just highlighted for you. Thank you, convener, and thank you for joining us this morning. I am going to ask a similar question as I asked to Mr Loh of the National Records of Scotland. In the international steering group's letter, you noted that the census results provided a strong foundation. I am wondering if you can explain to me as a layperson what that means. Perhaps Professor Martin will come to you first. Certainly, so I would go back to our point of emphasis that you are still conducting your census and it is a free pillar exercise. The ideal would be that you conducted a census and you only needed the first pillar because we lived in a theory land where everything was done perfectly and everybody was compliant and every form returned. That is not the world that we live in. The level of response that you have, slightly short of 90% in the upper 80s overall, is quite sufficient for us to be able to build good estimates if the other pillars provide what is needed and there is always a cross-reliance on those. You will not be surprised that the steering group thought hard about those words and is confident that getting an 89% response is a very good foundation for doing the remainder of the work. That was a decision taken in the full knowledge that there would be a lot of groundwork needed on the administrative data and at that point without knowing what kind of success rate we would see from the coverage survey. Certainly, I do not think anybody would be any of us would want to revisit that. We are quite content that that response rate allows you to make good estimates but it is dependent on the other parts coming in and performing in a way that it can stitch together to get the whole. Thank you very much. Professor Diamond, have you got anything that you would like to add? Not really to add but just to say what I said previously that the quality of your administrative data is going to be critical and you should be assured that the statistical analysis that now needs to be done is hard. We are lucky that the UK has developed some of these techniques and we have across the UK that the experts to be able to help and I will be ensuring that the Office for National Statistics is able to provide any support that is necessary. I think that we are also privileged that Professor Brown, who is an international expert, is chairing the steering group and will also provide advice on some pretty hard statistical analysis. Just following on from a point that you made earlier, Professor Diamond, about in 1921 the flu pandemic delayed the census for a while. I am just interested to hear from you if you have any thoughts on what happened in the rest of the world for census and if there was any delays as a result in other countries? It is mixed. Some countries undertook their census during at the same time or indeed in 2020 sometimes. Others, the Republic of Ireland for example, delayed one year so there is no kind of algorithm that enables me to say this is what happened and I am very conscious that every country did as I did with my colleagues in the Office of National Statistics and looked at all kinds of indicators, all kinds of preparation, talked to many people, for example we took advice from the chief medical officer about some issues and came to a judgment. Again, I did not have an algorithm or a computer that told me what the answer was. We took a judgment and then we made a recommendation to our board and our board accepted that recommendation and I believe that it is to be the right one for England and Wales. I suppose that one of the considerations that you would have had was the availability of the resources that you have as an organisation and the other work that you were carrying out at that time because I believe that the structure is slightly different in Scotland with the national records office being much more involved in recording Covid deaths. Our job is to record Covid deaths as well. The weekly production of mortality deaths, very sadly, during the pandemic was a major source for the National Health Service and the Department for Health in England and for the Government in England to make judgments. I had a big team working on mortality statistics and they did a fabulous job, I just have to say that, in very, very, very difficult circumstances. We also, throughout the pandemic, were producing GDP figures, inflation figures were important just at the moment, and of course some of those things had to be changed at real pace. If you cannot go into a shop to collect price data, how do you calculate inflation data? An enormous amount of extra work was done there and certainly we were looking at all those factors as well as our preparation for a census and I would just add as an aside, you may see the Covid infection survey results weekly because Scotland is part of those, we design that, that was set up from scratch to produce those weekly statistics, 150,000 swabs taken every fortnight but analysed very complexly to give weekly statistics as well. So, yes, it wasn't just an organisation doing a census, it was an awful lot of things going on and we needed to keep all those things going on. The nation couldn't exist without inflation figures, the nation couldn't exist without knowing what the labour force was doing. We needed weekly Covid deaths, we needed the infection survey, we needed all those things, the judgment was, we could also do a very, very, very good census and we could. Okay, thank you for that, Professor Diamond, and yes, I would agree that the work that you do is incredibly important as is the work that the National Records of Scotland office does, so thank you very much for that. A way of suggesting the work that NRS does was anything other than incredibly important. Thank you. Thank you very much, convener, and can I say thank you for the briefing that you sent us, which I think has been very useful. Can I ask some follow-up questions about the post-census work that you referred to in the briefing about how you fill the gaps from the higher non-response rate than we had in 2011, and how you avoid errors in the assumptions that are made in the final stage that the pillar 3 you talk about to add value to the census returns that we've already got, and how you make sure that the additional information that you add to the census will actually give confidence to people who use the census, particularly the areas that you referred to about the lower response rate areas, and how you make a calculation both on the geography of those areas and the different groups of people that haven't filled in the census, how you avoid errors there, what assumptions are made, and then to think about how you make sure that there's not a bias in that assumption. You talk about this, it's really useful in terms of which groups might have been excluded, and Professor Martin talked about difficulty of access to buildings. There's also buildings that are quite easy to access but incredibly low results. So just wondering what your perspective is on how you get that right for the people that will rely on using the data in the census going forward. Maybe Professor Martin, do you want to kick off because you mentioned that issue about access. I live in the city which has got loads of tenement flats, so we've always got access issues but the big place I visited with the enumerators, what struck me wasn't the access, it was the massively low turnout. It was less than 50 per cent and that was in the boost period after the census had officially been finished. So there's a very important issues that you raise and of course they are also well recognised within the statistical agencies because this is inherent to the census process. It might be helpful if we can explain a little more about the way in which the coverage survey works and the admin data are then brought into play. Before the census is conducted, the NRS will have conducted an exercise which effectively classifies areas according to how hard we believe they'll be to count, a hard-to-count index is actually called that. It's based on what we know to be the drivers from the census response in the past, so we know the kinds of factors about the sorts of housing, maybe areas with lots of students, maybe areas where there are a language obstacles, if you like, all of the characteristics that come together to make it difficult to get a response and it's quite strongly aligned with Scottish index multiple deprivation but it's not just deprivation. That information is used to very carefully stratify the areas which are targeted in the census coverage survey in Pella Tw, so that much more emphasis is put on going back to those areas where we know census response will be difficult and so there are five bands in the coverage survey and there's an indication of the emphasis. 40%, the easiest 40% of the country, if you like, goes into band one whereas the hardest 2% goes into band five, the ones which are given that extra emphasis, so there is 20 times more effort in terms of the intensity placed in going and surveying those more difficult areas and that is then spread across in Scotland's case on the council area. So the coverage survey is aiming to go back, it's only quite a small sample, but to find where have we got under response in census, can we find the same people who responded to census when we go back again and it gives a very good picture for the way in which different neighbourhood types in different council areas have actually responded, so it gives us quite a detailed matrix of the under response. Now if the coverage survey had very high coverage that would allow us to do the estimation and indeed the correction, but certainly what we're looking at here is that that will tell us also we need to bring in the administrative data because the administrative data will often tell us about the presence of addresses from which there has been no response even though there's plenty of administrative evidence that there are people as a household to their individuals living there and that then will feed into the estimation of the total numbers before the adjustment is made. So the CCS and the administrative data are very targeted on precisely that question and avoiding bias in designing the system to avoid bias and not just filling the people easy to find because the point that you raised is very central to the way in which that system is designed from the start. Okay thank you and Professor Diamond did you have a comment on those issues about how you avoid bias in those low response areas? Firstly I agree with everything Professor Martin has just said but I might just add a couple of points if I may because your point is really about bias in many ways and one way in which bias can come in the statistical analysis is if people who do not respond to the census are more likely not to respond to the coverage survey as well we call that dependence and that if you have dependence then that can lead to bias in your statistical analysis or in the analysis which leads to your estimates. We recognise that indeed Professor Brown who chairs the committee and myself and Owen Abbott who is also on the steering group wrote a paper about this and an issue in 2006 and one of the ways in which the administrative data can come in in the way that Professor Martin has just described is to help us to estimate that dependence and then to adjust for it and so that I think that is incredibly important. The second thing that is important to do which we haven't talked about yet but which where the administrative data are really important is in communal establishments and that's particularly the case in terms of shall we say student halls of residence or care homes and it is very very important to get good administrative data there so that you don't get biases that come in through underestimating your populations in what we call communal establishments that there are only a relatively small proportion of the population but if you don't get them they're an important part of the population. Okay thank you and do you have a sense you did research you say looking at previous census data do we have a sense of differences between this census in 2022 and previously in 2011? Well I think one of the challenges that we face and this is why you know I've said very clearly I'm pretty sure we can get some really great estimates but one of the challenges that we face is that when you design anything as a statistician you know if you were to ask me to design a survey to estimate the proportion of something my first question would be what kind of proportion do you think it might be because the sample size and the overall design will be based on that estimate so the aim in Scotland was to aim for 94% overall and so the design initially was for a 6% under enumeration. As you get more what that does is potentially increase your confidence interval and as I said the other day to someone you know as you get further out and we're not too far out but as you get further out the confidence intervals as you can see my hands don't go like that they go like that and further out than we are in Scotland they become as wide as an owl trots wingspan and so you have to be aware you're losing you're not you're not getting bias I've talked about bias but you're losing precision but but I think we're in a position in Scotland where yes we're going further out than we want to yes we are having less precision than we would have estimated but we are still in a position if we can control for all the biases to be able to make estimates at a level that has been done elsewhere in the world and indeed there are you I could think potentially of some places which have had had bigger problems than Scotland is facing at the moment so this is this is not impossible it's hard Scotland now has some of the best people in the world advising it and as long as the administrative data are good we can control for bias we can maximise the precision of the estimates and we can get to a place where you have really good useful population estimates which are comparable with those across the UK that's great and will the administrative data be published separately or does it get integrated into the final sense of results so that people can see the transparency of it it's integrated because that clearly there are ethics and privacy issues that are taken into base so the transparency I would expect you know this is the matter for LRS but I would expect the transparency is in a very clear exposition of the methodology but not in the if you like publication of data which would impact on ethics and privacy okay thank you very much thank you convener in the written evidence we've received in terms of international approaches to census taking that the use of administrative data as you've highlighted today is ideally used as a process for quality assurance of the final census outputs however you've said that the use of administrative data in Scotland's 2022 census is central to the final quality of Scotland's census clearly as we've heard this has been necessary due to the low response rate of the census which meets this target and the community coverage survey which also missed its target does relying on the use of administrative data in this way fall short of international best practice and perhaps start with Professor Ian Dimond I don't think it does you know both Professor Martin and myself on a number of occasions this morning have pointed to the fact that we are still doing a census in Scotland and certainly the word quality assurance actually can lead to further adjustment so for example in the census of England and Wales in 1991 administrative data were used to identify that the census itself had missed quite a large number of men aged between about 20 and 34 and so using those administrative data as a basis an adjustment was made to add in more men and the final results were then following the so it wasn't just if you like quality assurance though but yes you started as quality assurance but then identified there was a problem the problem was solved by a further adjustment the overall numbers were then based on administrative data and in that case the census because we didn't have a coverage survey in those days so this would not fall away from international best practice there are some suggestions about bringing some of the administrative data into linking into the coverage survey that would be I think innovative and exciting but not against international best practice but Professor Martin will probably have a view as well. Thanks Professor Martin. I was just pausing waiting to be unmuted there I perhaps I can illustrate this for you I recall a presentation which I gave in 2017 to a group of young social scientists at a summer school or something of that kind and I was invited to talk about international situation looking forward to the 2021-22 round of censuses and actually produced a slide which effectively plotted different countries and demonstrated that all of them are moving on a trajectory which began with reliance on a conventional enumeration and nothing else and was moving towards more and more use of administrative data and indeed there are plenty of countries which we have seen over the last two or three decades who have effectively shifted from a conventional census enumeration at all to producing their population statistics entirely from administrative data augmented bus of surveys and actually we in the UK and the three UK censuses are somewhere in the middle there with a hybrid model here which has been using administrative data perhaps at the aggregate level for example how many school children is a school census show us there should be in the small area how well does that match with what we have from the census record to increasingly using the administrative data in your own terms from this committee to fill gaps I perhaps give you one example which is not been mentioned because obviously surprisingly people often leave young babies off census forms especially the under ones people don't necessarily read the instructions and internationally recognised nominant we don't ignore that fact the birth registration data has routinely been used to take a look to work out where those people were missing a couple of decades ago might have been simply a quality assurance process it would now be seen that if we know that those are missing then those births should be used either directly or indirectly to adjust the estimate and fill in those that are missing and increasingly the same would be the case with students and as Serion has mentioned people in communal establishments so the use of the administrative data in various ways it's a transition from quality assurance which says this has worked well but there's an individual group that needs adjustment to seeing the administrative data as part of the whole design and that would be characteristic of what we see going on in many countries there's lots of axes so it's not a simple linear process but the general trend when it's using the administrative data increasingly is a clear international phenomenon. Thank you that was very helpful Professor Martin and perhaps I'll stick with you just in an international context is there any evidence that inclusion of what may be deemed controversial questions in the census impact participation and ultimately completing of the survey? I'm not sure that we could you could say that there's any kind of clear body of evidence that you could say oh yes this is the thing is that countries surprisingly ask different census questions so questions which would be considered acceptable in one country and maybe not acceptable in another and the vice versa which is fascinating and otherwise easily explainable and so individual censuses in individual countries often have a controversial question or two but there's not I can't I can't think of any particular body of evidence I'd certainly refer you to Sir Ian as well here where the the success or otherwise the census has been nailed to oh you've got the wording wrong from that question the reality is that most population members tend not to be very engaged with the debate about the questions and as we've seen they become aware of it when the form arrives they largely fill it in without reading the guidance now that is not an investigation specific questions in Scotland it's not something which the international student group have been tasked to or have been looking at but I wouldn't generally consider that the choice of wording in the questions is one of the major drivers of the census response. Thank you that's very helpful Professor Sir Ian Diamond do you have any thoughts? Yeah no no no very good question and were I teaching how to do a census as I did for about 30 years I would say be careful not to have sensitive questions and there are a number of questions which have been tested in England and Wales particularly around income and there's always been a big user demand to ask income on the census and the obvious financial statistics in the 1990s and indeed 2000 did a lot of experiments to see whether it would potentially impact on response and the judgment and I you know that the evidence was mixed and the judgment was not to ask income and one of the things that the government have asked the obvious financial statistics to do is to produce income estimates using administrative data following the census and that is something that we intend to do. In the other way following the initiation of the Scottish Parliament the 2001 census in Scotland the MSPs were concerned that the initial plans did not give you the opportunity to put Scottish in as your nationality and so at the last minute the then Registrar General's office of Scotland had to reprint the census forms in order to give the option of writing Scottish because it was felt that that might that not having an option might impact on response but I don't know of anywhere where a question can be definitely seen to have impacted on response but could I add one further point I'm really sorry during the evidence that I have given you this morning I think on two occasions I have indicated that the results should be ready in the spring of 2023 I've been informed while I'm here that the current expectation will be one year after the finish of collection so I just would like to clarify that point if I may I'm sorry I was led to something else I now have clarity I apologise if that is something that I've said it I just wanted to clarify that thank you thanks for that clarification on your contributions back to you convener thank you very much for your evidence this morning I wondered there's been a few of the more subtle questions about what might influence people doing it and one of the things that you mentioned earlier on was the number of surveys that families are receiving and I just wondered if you is that surveys from local government from government or just general surveys that are coming into people's families and when we might know what policies policy decisions could have influenced the return because of that I'm thinking of participatory budgetary surveys that now go out regularly from councils that may not be happening elsewhere in the country oh we've lost Serena again please yep sorry yep no the point I was making which I don't know about you convener but I rarely get through a day without two or three survey questionnaires hitting my inbox or I'm asking and some of them are asking my views on something I might have done recently some of them are asking me my views on who I might vote for in a future election and I believe that that is leading to a kind of survey fatigue and that is why the point you make is unbelievably important we need as a government and this is something that the Office for National Statistics put a lot of effort into is to have impeccable public engagement so that people are seriously aware of why their data are being why their opinion is being asked for how it is going to be used and we can and I believe incredibly important that we have feedback you said this we did that you're really super important and I think that is important because when we talk to people you know if we just say will you fill in our survey it appears and I've done this so many times whereas actually if we say look this survey is a government survey this is what it's going to be used for this is how it will impact positively on your fellow citizens potentially your neighbourhood or whatever and it's incredibly important we have these data then people say I'll take part no problem there are still issues with making sure that you have contact particularly with those most marginalised members of society but it is very much about ensuring that people know why you are answering the other point I would just make which comes back to the point right at the beginning about digital services and that is that we were incredibly impressed in England and Wales that we had a much higher digital uptake than we were expecting particularly amongst elderly people you know we were expecting that elderly people might be digitally challenged I have no evidence for what I'm about to say but it may have been that spending a lot of time on zoom with grandchildren or something had meant that they were made able to engage digitally and I think that is potentially important for the future I'm looking to my colleagues I think that that's exhausted our questions this morning so thank you both Professor Sirian Diamond and Professor David Martin for your attendance at the committee this morning and we now move into private session for our final agenda item thank you