Fraser of Allander Institute – The NEN

Measuring the Voluntary Sector

Whether it’s developing skills and training to enter the workforce, investing in buildings and equipment, or providing services to fill gaps left by the public sector, the voluntary sector plays a significant part in the UK economy. However, measurement of its economic contribution is inherently complex, meaning the role it plays is often undervalued (write CIARA CRUMMEY and MAIRI SPOWAGE of FRASER of ALLANDER INSTITUTE).

There are several difficulties in measuring this economic contribution compared to methods used for the private sector. One reason for this is a lack of an adequate, recognised definition across the sector, which leads to wide variation in valuations.

Core National Accounts can be used to estimate the voluntary sector, through the Non-Profit Institutions Serving Households (NPISH) sector. However, the UK voluntary sector is much larger than the organisations that are included within NPISH, given the specific definition of this sector. Voluntary organisations are spread across sectors and industries in the National Accounts, so the use of NPISH results in significant undervaluation of the sector’s economic contribution.

Researchers at the FAI are collaborating with VCSE Data and Insights National Observatory at Nottingham Trent University on a new ESCoE research project that aims to explore the problems with measuring the voluntary sector.

It will answer questions surrounding NPISH and the National Accounts and improve measurement of the sector within the UK National Accounts framework. This project builds on previous FAI research on Scottish charities and links to other ESCoE work on National Accounts and beyond GDP.

Why does this matter?

The inability to measure the voluntary sector’s contribution to the UK economy limits its comparison to the non-voluntary sector, meaning that it may be undervalued or overlooked. Accurate measurement would allow for better recognition of the sector’s economic contribution.

This could encourage further volunteering and involvement and investment in the sector, along with better use and allocation of resources. Unleashing the potential of the voluntary sector by measuring it more accurately could also allow its inclusion in economic growth strategies to improve both regional and national economic performance.

What are the possible solutions?

Significant research has been conducted into how the voluntary sector can be measured more accurately, and what data is required to do so. Various methods have been identified to produce a variety of estimates of the size and contributions of the sector. These methods have used different definitions of the sector.

Extensive research has been conducted into the use of satellite accounts, as an extension to National Accounts, to measure both the size and impact of the voluntary sector.

National Accounts provide a single overview of all economic activity in a country through collating and presenting the output, expenditure, and income activities of a country’s economic actors; satellite accounts provide a framework that is linked to the National Accounts but allows for a more detailed focus on a certain field or aspect of the economy.

Stakeholders have highlighted that the existence of a satellite account is as important as what it includes to provide validity for the sector. They recommend that an initial satellite account should start with the simplest definitions and be improved with further additions over time. It should take a modular approach, allowing for different definitions of the sector, and should allow for comparisons with other sectors in the economy.

In 2023, Pro Bono Economics conducted an in-depth feasibility study into satellite accounts and developed a preliminary framework for its creation.

Their recommended short-term approach uses the legal status on the Inter-Departmental Business Register (IDBR) and organisation type in the Labour Force Survey (LFS) to identify organisations that are not included in NPISH but are considered to be within civil society. They suggest a modular approach where data can be broken down and compared by Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes.

They also propose an ‘intermediate approach’ to capture organisations within civil society that have been missed. They provide details on how to identify these organisations, where to access relevant data and how to select what data to include. However, they acknowledge that this ‘intermediate’ approach is still limited in measuring all aspects of the sector and highlight the need for further research on volunteering, social enterprises and growth measurements.

Whatever form a satellite account takes in the UK, it is clear from previous research that one of the biggest challenges is the delineation of the sector. Given the different views of stakeholders, it is likely that a ‘menu’ of definitions is likely to be required to ensure this product has greatest utility for users.

What issues remain?

Despite these significant recent advances, issues still remain in measuring the voluntary sector and capturing its economic contributions.

The first issue is the lack of a clear, adequate definition that is recognised and adopted across the sector. Until this is agreed, measurement methodologies and estimates will continue to differ.

NPISH in the National Accounts is also an inadequate measure of the voluntary sector. NPISH is defined as economic units that supply services on a non-commercial basis. To be considered, NPISH institutions must: provide goods and services either for free or below market prices; mainly derive their income from grants and donations; and not be controlled by the government. Therefore, NPISH does not capture all voluntary sector organisations.

As a result, using the value of the NPISH sector significantly underestimates the economic contribution of the voluntary sector. Additionally, the methodology used by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) to create these estimates in unclear and not publicly documented, so it cannot be critiqued or replicated in devolved countries’ national accounts.

Finally, while the Pro Bono Economics report has made great advances in the technicalities of constructing a satellite account, several questions still remain to ensure the entire sector is accurately measured.

This includes a need for further understanding on how the IDBR legal status flag is constructed and how to capture other organisations not included on the IDBR (including many small organisations).

Additional considerations include how to capture informal volunteering, data collection on sources of funding for organisations, how to identify social enterprises and how to prevent double counting across multiple data records.

A new research project

Our project aims to answer some of these questions surrounding NPISH and the National Accounts. It will focus on three elements:

Documenting ONS methodology for calculating NPISH
Interviewing data providers and users
Investigating recommendations for data on the voluntary sector used in National Accounts

1. Documenting ONS methodology for calculating NPISH

Through this project we will formally document the full methodology used to create the NPISH statistics in the National Accounts. NPISH includes charities, higher education and further education, political parties, and trade unions, and we will highlight what data is used for each of these elements.

In particular, we will focus on documenting the data process for charities, at both the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) level (who provide charity data to the ONS), and how the ONS then use this data. NCVO provide ONS with data for charities in England and Wales, collected from the Charity Commission register.

These charities undergo a ‘market test’, where charities that ‘fail’ the market test (if 50% or more of income comes from donations and legacies) remain in NPISH, and the rest are captured in the industrial market sectors of the National Accounts.

We will document and review these processes and outline recommendations for improvements on how to make NPISH more representative of charities outwith England and Wales and allow for replication in both regional and devolved National Accounts.

2. Interviewing data providers and users

We plan to interview key practitioners in the sector about their understanding of the role of data in the development of national accounts. These will include national infrastructure organisations involved in producing the data for the accounts, organisations that might use the accounts for their work understanding and campaigning about the sector, and government officials. We will identify what role they think National Accounts plays in their work and how they think it shapes understanding of the voluntary sector within society.

3. Investigating recommendations for data on the voluntary sector used in National Accounts

Following on from our interviews with providers, we will recommend improvements and investments in the data infrastructure for the voluntary sector, ensuring regulators, voluntary sector representative organisations, and statistical producers are focussed on supporting the production of appropriate and accurate statistics about the sector.
We will investigate the IDBR flag recommendation underpinning the PBE recommendations for a satellite account. A better understanding of this flag will identify if it would be possible to use this flag to describe voluntary organisations across the National Accounts, including those currently considered outside the NPISH sector.

We will also analyse the data collected for charities in Scotland and Northern Ireland to identify how this can be included in UK NPISH calculations in addition to NCVO data. Finally, we will examine the sectors charities self-report into, and design a mapping methodology between different industry classification codes This will ensure greater consistency in the classifications used across charity registers.

As part of this final research stage, this ESCoE research project will support an economic student summer placement through the Economics Futures programme, hosted at the Fraser of Allander Institute.

This placement will focus on highlighting the differences in charity registers held across the UK. We will then use the data held in the charity registers in Scotland and Northern Ireland as a proxy to estimate the number of charities that are under the minimum registration requirements in England and Wales, so are not captured in their register. This same methodology will be applied to identify charities missing from UK business register data, to inform recommendations on expanding the data used for measuring the charities in NPISH.

Overall, this research will provide a review of the current National Accounts practise. Our recommendations have the potential to improve the National Accounts construction methodology and allow for more accurate measurement of NPISH in both UK, regional and devolved country’s National Accounts.

This will complement the building of a civil society satellite account, if the underpinning National Accounts are fundamentally more robust.

First Minister outlines his ambitions for Scotland’s economy

The First Minister has set out his ambitions for Scotland’s economy during a speech in Glasgow.

Speaking at the Barclays Campus in Glasgow’s financial district on Friday, First Minister John Swinney outlined his government’s approach to economic policy making.

Mr Swinney said poor decision-making at UK level, typified by Brexit and immigration policy, means the Scottish Government must work even harder with its limited powers to help businesses and workers thrive.

The First Minister stated his determination to bring hope and optimism and said he will “go all out” to encourage economic investment.

John Swinney said policy making will be governed by:

Moderate left of centre, progressive values
A partnership approach with unions and business
A focus on actions
Problem solving based on evidence

The First Minister will highlight significant announcements in Scotland’s renewable energy sector this week and actions the Scottish Government is taking to boost high growth businesses.

The First Minister said: “My goal is to help people live happier and healthier lives with higher living standards and to help businesses boost profitability.

“The evidence shows that independent countries that are comparable to Scotland are wealthier and fairer than the UK.

“Scotland has the talents and resources to match that performance with independence but in the here and now and in the face of Brexit we must work even harder to help Scotland’s economy with the powers we have.

“I will go all out to encourage investment in Scotland and I will ensure people know my government is a firmly pro-business administration.

“A partnership with trade unions and business will be at the core of my approach and through that approach and given our resources, not least incredible renewable energy, we should look to the future with hope and optimism.”

ANALYSIS: FRASER of ALLANDER INSTITUTE

New FM – new approach on the economy?

Today, the new First Minister John Swinney set out his broad economic aspirations for Scotland (write MAIRI SPOWAGE and EMMA CONGREVE).

In a speech at the impressive Barclays Glasgow Campus (which he said embodied the ambition he wished to have for the economy), he set out the vision he had for Scotland to have a strong, successful, innovative and dynamic economy.

For people who were after specific policy actions, the speech was light on detail, but it was not perhaps fair to expect the FM to outline these sorts of specifics in a speech like this.

The FM also had a difficult line to tread, given (as he himself pointed out) that he has been a Minister in government for 16 of the last 17 years and wanted to talk about successes in a record he is “immensely proud of”. At the same time, he needed to recognise that there were failings in the previous administration that had led to him being in office as First Minister.

Economic Growth is front and centre

The First Minister had said as he took office that eradicating child poverty was his key policy objective. This morning he was keen to set out that there is no conflict between eradicating child poverty and boosting economic growth – rather, they go hand in hand. He set out that boosting the economy will create opportunities for people and raise living standards and that reducing poverty raises spending power and boosts productivity. This is to a large degree true, but there will at times be trade-offs that will require one to be prioritised over the other.

Given the key stakeholders from businesses and business organisations in the room for his speech today, he was very keen to set out that his government was going to work collaboratively with businesses and other organisations to design and implement policies to strengthen the economy. Even more broadly, the FM said that he wished to bring more consensus building back into Scottish politics to try to achieve outcomes – to “build up, not tear down” as he put it.

There was a clear “Scotland is open for business” from the FM today. Supporting more investment in Scotland (particularly related to the Energy Transition and Housing) is clearly a priority for this new administration. This featured heavily in this speech and has been supported by some of the policy announcements made earlier this week.

We will do, rather than write strategy documents

A widely welcomed aspect of the speech is likely to be the FM’s acknowledgment that his government could probably do with carrying out “more concrete actions and fewer strategy documents”.

We have been on record a number of times as saying that the Scottish Government produces too many and too weighty strategy documents. So this is a crowd pleaser to a room of people who are likely to want to see action rather than just warm words and have seen endless strategies come and go.

However, it is important to remember what the problem sometimes was with these documents. Sometimes, in the case of recent economic strategy documents, the problem is that they aren’t really strategies – if they set out high-level principles that no one can disagree with, but don’t provide a meaningful framework for prioritisation and dealing with trade-offs, then they aren’t particularly useful.

In other cases, even where strategies are set, they can often gather dust on a shelf rather than meaningfully drive activity in government.

All of this from the FM is likely to be broadly welcomed – it’s an easy sell to say there will be less bureaucracy. But let’s not forget that we still need a clear economic strategy from the FM and the DFM – and that a strategy is not a strategy unless it rules some things out and recognises trade-offs and carries through into day-to-day activity. This clarity and policy stability is what is likely to be required to inspire the confidence in investors that this new administration would like to see.

Looking forward, not back

Many of the questions from journalists in the room today were designed to get the FM’s views on what went wrong with economic policy under the previous leadership, In addition, he was asked what his government was likely to do on policies like rent controls, short term lets legislation, and tax increases (specifically income tax) that have been put in place at the past budgets. Essentially, people were keen to hear what, in these specific areas, might change under a John Swinney government.

The FM said clearly that he was “looking forward, not back” in response to the question about what went wrong under Humza Yousaf.

With regards to specific policies where regulation was impacting businesses, he said his Cabinet colleagues were looking at lots of areas of policy and that more details on specific policies would be following in the weeks and months to come.

On tax, he was more forthcoming – acknowledging that the higher tax rates on above-median earners in Scotland are an important component of raising revenue in straitened fiscal times, but also saying that “we can’t keep raising taxes”. It will be interesting to see how this approach to tax is reflected in the Government’s Draft Tax Strategy, which is due alongside the Medium Term Financial Strategy (date currently tbc). That is if these two documents survive the cull of strategies …

Evidence-based approaches

The FM today said a number of times that the government he leads will be more practical and will be driven by the evidence of “what works”. We are very supportive of this, of course, and hope it signals a shift of more meaningful appraisal and assessment of policy options within the Scottish Government, with the associated investment in evaluation.

In doing this, unintended consequences, whether economic or otherwise, are more likely to be identified and can be proactively mitigated, and/or it can allow the government to change course at an earlier stage.

In addition, progress and continuous improvement can only happen in a culture of meaningful evaluation and being prepared to learn from what worked and what didn’t work.

For example, how well has the policy on rent freezes and caps worked to date? It would initially appear from rental costs that it has had the opposite effect on rents than the government presumably desired, and it would also appear to have had an impact on investor confidence in the sector. Given the FM’s focus on housing in his speech today, and his commitment to be evidence-based, it will be interesting to see how this policy area progresses.

Is this a meaningful shift in approach?

With his speech today, that is certainly what the FM is trying to convey. He was saying many of the right things to hearten those who want to see the government focus on economic growth.

However, the proof will be in the policy action that is actually taken. So, let’s wait for these details in the weeks to come.

Climate Change 2030 Targets – Focusing on the “How” of Policymaking

On Thursday, the Scottish Government announced the 2030 climate change target is “out of reach”. So, what went wrong (writes Fraser of Allander Institute’s JAMES ALLAN)?

In 2022, we undertook research commissioned by ClimateXChange for the Joint Budget Review between the Scottish Government and Scottish Parliament on matters related to climate change.

Our remit focused on how budgetary and policy decisions are made rather than individual policies themselves. This required us to piece together through many interviews how civil servants were developing policy in practice, how decisions were being made and challenged internally and what information was flowing to Ministers and Parliament.

The culmination was a number of recommendations, one of which was for a “Net Zero Assessment” of policies as they are being developed. The basic principle is simple – if your policy is likely to have significant positive or negative impacts on greenhouse gas emissions, you need to roughly estimate the emissions that policy is likely to create. In most cases, this isn’t hugely difficult and some parts of government were already applying fairly rigorous assessments. But for many areas, these were patchily applied at best or seemingly sidestepped at worst.

In the areas where civil servants seemed less likely to routinely produce emissions estimates, it became apparent that these were often not being asked for by those approving projects. Approval without challenge beyond the financial cost led into a cultural view that some processes were optional.

It was encouraging to see that the climate change action policy package announced alongside the 2030 target statement reinforced earlier commitments to introduce a Net Zero Assessment.

Dropping targets can be disappointing but the Scottish Government now has the opportunity to take stock and refocus efforts where immediate progress is critical. Setting targets is not enough to meet them. Nor is it enough to have genuine ambition to reduce emissions – which we regularly encountered in our interviews. Both of these cannot create change that outweighs a system of processes and practice that gravitate towards the status quo.

But this also means that it is not simply enough to add a process like a Net Zero Assessment and assume that policymaking in practice will suddenly start following expected processes. A Net Zero Assessment must be sufficiently embedded within practices so that incentives and norms within Government act as a support rather than a counterweight. This isn’t easy – governments are having to grapple with this challenge globally.

But first and foremost, this means ensuring that a challenge function is in place and that challenge function has sufficient clout. The results of net zero assessments must be asked for, they must have taken place early enough in a project before too much momentum has built up, and there must be a degree of centralisation in this challenge function so that lagging policy areas are identified and supported.

This is the “how” of policy, rather than the “what” of policy. Is it the only step the Scottish Government will need to take to hit 2045 targets?

No – not by a long shot. Many difficult decisions lie ahead. But you cannot make and deliver on effective decisions without good evidence and robust processes. Significant and immediate focus now on the “how” of policy must be seen as a non-negotiable requirement if the Government wishes to make substantial further progress on its 2045 climate targets.

The introduction of a Net Zero Assessment will be a big step forward for the Scottish Government and will demonstrate global leadership on climate change processes. But don’t forget that the challenge function is just as important as the process itself.

I want to end this article with the concluding remarks from our report to the Joint Budget Review, which refers to the methodology within a Net Zero Assessment as an “individual level carbon assessment”.

These parting comments seem as relevant now as they were when published in December 2022:

‘A key emissions reduction target looms in 2030. While eight years away, many of the decisions the Government makes today are deciding its level of emissions in 2030. Missing this target substantially raises the risk of missing Scotland’s 2045 net zero target and results in challenging economic headwinds in the 2030s.

‘Our recommendations therefore cannot be left for years down the road, when the outcome of Scotland’s progress, determined by decisions taken now, becomes inevitable.

‘It is critical that the Scottish Government creates an environment of continuous improvement in policymaking processes. This environment can develop the processes that will ultimately help deliver the required outcomes in the short, medium and long-term.

‘Therefore, we conclude this report with a clear message that the mistakes of the past cannot be repeated.

‘In 2008, a project to explore a methodology for a high-level carbon assessment was undertaken. This resulted in the Carbon Assessment published annually alongside the Scottish Government’s Draft Budget.

‘It was widely recognised at the time that this was a limited tool, and that the critical next step in achieving carbon reductions was the development of individual-level carbon assessments, running in a parallel project.

‘It appears, from what we have seen, that this project was never taken forward. Fourteen years have now passed. This work cannot wait any longer to be seriously implemented.

‘Some of these recommendations will be challenging to implement – Government-wide change is never simple. But nor are these recommendations untested on an international stage.

‘The Scottish Government will need ambition, it will need the courage to embrace change, and it will need to treat a declared global climate emergency as just that – an emergency.‘

What is the UK Budget?

Why do we need one?

When are decisions made?

And why is so much of the jargon cricket-based?

We are less than a week away from the Budget – a special day for the House of Commons, and one of incredible significance for the UK as a whole (writes Fraser of Allander Institute’s João Sousa).

In a speech expected to last around 60 minutes, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, will lay out plans for taxation and spending over the coming years, introduce some immediate tax measures and provide an update on the economic and fiscal forecasts he received from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR).

But though important, it can also be a confusing event for those not deeply involved in the process – even those meant to scrutinise it! A former Leader of the Opposition once remarked in his response about the Chancellor’s statement “that quite obviously no Member of this House, apart from any financial genius who may be here, can fully grasp” it.

But what we can do is demystify it and provide some historical context. So join us on this tour through the weird history of how it has come to be the way it is.

A statement to the House of Commons – but it wasn’t always like that

The Budget Statement – or historically called the Financial Statement – was originally made to the Committee of Ways and Means, a committee similar to the Committee of the Whole House (which still exists) concerned with financial matters, and in which all members could sit. This is why the Budget was originally chaired by the Chairman of Ways and Means, one of the most senior Deputy Speakers, rather than the Speaker of the House.

In 1967, the Committee of Ways and Means was abolished as part of a series of reforms to modernise the operation of the House under the Commons’ Leadership of Richard Crossman. Unfortunately, the modernisation didn’t extend to the existing the inherently sexist name of Chairman of Ways and Means – Dame Eleanor Laing (the current post holder) continues to be referred to as Chairman in official proceedings. Maybe it’s time we finally ditched it.

The Chairman of Ways and Means continues to chair the Budget debate to this day, which can look odd to the casual observer. The reply is also not by the corresponding shadow cabinet member, as one would expect, but by the Leader of the Opposition – a custom dating back to the 1938 Budget, which seems to have arisen from the fact that the Ministers of the Crown Act 1937 defined the role and duties of the Leader of the Opposition, as well as granting them a cabinet minister-equivalent salary.

The development of specific roles in the shadow cabinet happened significantly later (during the 1950s with the advent of television), by which point the convention had already been established.

The Budget has become more powerful and concentrated over time

The Committee on Ways and Means formally allowed for any member to raise proposals for taxation and spending, which would not be the case in a sitting of the House – during which the Government has control of the agenda, or “business” in the jargon.

In practice, however, this almost never happened. As party discipline grew over time and stronger governments backed by a Commons majority became the norm, the Government’s majority served to eliminate that possibility.

When the Committee was abolished in 1967, all responsibilities for fiscal policy decisions were transferred wholesale to the Chancellor of the Exchequer – but in practice that had already happened.

The Budget is now a three-part statement: it encompasses economic forecasts, taxation proposals and spending plans. It wasn’t always like that. The financial statement itself was originally concerned principally with tax powers.

Spending plans were a consideration of course, as they determined the balance that the Chancellor wanted to strike, but they were (and still are formally) voted separately as part of the Estimates process.

It was only in 1993 that Ken Clarke formally merged the presentation of plans for tax and spend as part of the move to an Autumn Budget – although really the Government had been using the Budget for many decades to pre-announce and revise spending plans when presenting the Budget.

Economic forecasting has contributed to fiscal events being more frequent – which is not necessarily great

What about economic forecasts? They are a more recent addition to the Government’s business, certainly in the level of detail that they exist today, and are to some extent a by-product of the need to more accurately forecast the public finances of a more complex economy.

But it was the 1970s inflationary shocks that really caused economic forecasting to become front and centre of the Chancellor’s statements to the Commons. It was also felt that an annual update was too infrequent given the rapidly evolving situation, and therefore that it would be appropriate for the Treasury to publish forecasts twice a year from a macroeconomic model that it was to build in order to project economic conditions.

Many of the provisions contained in Schedule 5 of the Industry Act 1975 would strike a current observer as peculiar or even downright ridiculous – for example, the need to require explicitly that “[t]he model shall be maintained on a computer” – but the twice yearly publication specified in that has subsequently been enshrined into the Budget Responsibility and National Audit Act 2011, which governs the operations of the OBR and its relationship with the Treasury.

For many years, the Budget was by far and away the largest fiscal event of the year, and for all intents and purposes, the only one worthy of that name. The Autumn/Summer/Spring Statement (timings have fluctuated over the years) was merely a statement of updated economic and fiscal forecasts – the only recent example of which was Philip Hammond’s 2019 Spring Statement, which did not even have a command paper alongside it.

The bloat in the “secondary” fiscal event started in 1998, with the introduction of the Pre-Budget Report. It was billed as setting out “the direction of Government policy and further measures that are under consideration in the run up to the 1999 Budget”, but it became another decision-making point in its own right. This approach has continued ever since, even if the name has changed, save for that singular 2019 Spring Statement.

This development evolved as a series of historical accidents – the need for more frequent forecasts, and an attempt to lay out the direction of travel for government policy – but has been seized by successive Chancellors as an opportunity to “make the weather” and generate headlines. But many experts – and we agree with them – would argue that having than one budget-like event a year is not a great thing, encouraging tinkering and zig-zagging policy rather than the stability that is often needed.

It is often argued as a reason for having more of these events that economic conditions can and do require at times rapid response – take the Covid-19 pandemic for example. That was such a rapidly evolving situation that it necessitated what the OBR called “twelve ‘mini-Budgets’ through the course of the year” during 2020-21. But emergency situations have always called for emergency statements to the House – something that already happened before the requirement for multiple events a year (take 1961 or 1966, for example). It’s the insistence on having them when it isn’t required that creates unwelcome uncertain.

Why do we even need a Budget every year?

In its current state, the operation of the UK’s public finances requires a number of resolutions to be passed in each financial year. The main reason is to allow the collection of income tax, which is brought into place by statutory instrument each year and must be renewed.

The Finance Bill also generally takes forward changes announced at the Budget, but that can take a while to pass through Parliament. In the meantime, the Government can collect taxes at newly announced rates by using the Provisional Collection of Taxes Act 1968.

This is why you’ll hear the Deputy Speaker mention this rather obscure act of parliament and the Budget resolutions just before calling the Chancellor to make their statement.

Could we have a Budget less than once a year? It would be possible, though some changes would have to be made. In practical terms, however, a year is quite a natural length for planning and monitoring expenditure and tax receipts – and there is often enough movement in the economy for it to be worthwhile and convenient to make decisions at such an interval.

How does the forecasting process work, and when are decisions made?

As per the Memorandum of Understanding between the OBR, Treasury and other government departments, the Chancellor has to give the OBR 10 weeks’ notice to produce a forecast in normal circumstances. The letter of the requirement was fulfilled in this case – though arguably not the spirit, as notice was given on 27 December. So the effective notice period was more like 8 and half to 9 weeks.

In a welcome move, the OBR has in recent times published the timetable for the forecast process. This has increased transparency, though it still requires some interpretation. The forecast timetable can broadly be divided into two periods: pre- and post-measures.

Pre-measures rounds (in this case, 1 and 2) refer to the incorporation of underlying data, both economic and administrative. For example, the OBR will have taken on new GDP figures and inflation data, as well as tax receipts and spending figures from government departments.

The last pre-measures round closed on 14 February, and so market determinants – including, importantly, interest rates and market expectations about the Bank of England’s behaviour in the coming months – will have been closed around a week before (6 or 7 February). They are now fixed and will not have been updated since then, despite the fact that there will have inevitably been movements.

This is a normal process in the OBR’s forecast, for two reasons. One is that the fiscal forecast needs to be conducted by departments and scrutinised by the OBR, and that takes around a week in early rounds.

But there is also a significant amount of time for the Chancellor to make decisions about policy measures on a stable base. Jeremy Hunt has been keen to extend the length of the decision-making period, and that has meant the OBR is now closing the forecast period about a week earlier.

Rounds 3 and 4 will have given the Chancellor the opportunity to notify the OBR of all major policy measures. These rounds allow the OBR to model any large impacts of major policies on the economy (also known as indirect or second-round effects). This forecast is then returned to the Treasury. Round 4 was returned on Wednesday (28th February), and all major decisions have now been taken.

This means any supposed agonising by Jeremy Hunt over whether to abolish ‘non-dom’ tax status in the coming days is purely pitch-rolling: a PR exercise to guide people through a supposed decision-making process that in fact has already happened.

All major decisions (i.e. over £1bn) are now closed. The final scorecard will be delivered to the OBR on Friday, 1 March. All numbers will then be closed for good, subject to any errors being found, and the OBR will spend the weekend writing their Economic and Fiscal Outlook. Likewise, the Treasury will be writing the speech for the Chancellor and the Red Book that comes out on Wednesday.

Of course, this won’t avoid many news articles over the weekend about the Chancellor still having to make tough decisions, and poring over the numbers to make it all add up. But if you’re reading this, you’ll know how to spot when a reporter is being fed lines directly from 11 Downing Street.

Speaking of which, what exactly is the scorecard?

Much like pitch-rolling, the scorecard is a term borrowed from cricket and in the Treasury’s parlance, it refers to the detailed list of measures taken by the Chancellor since the last fiscal event. It is essentially a very large spreadsheet, with often hundreds of rows detailed the movement in each tax and spending stream from each measure. It was originally called the tally, and it has been present in one form or another in every Budget document going back to the 1870s.

The table does quite resemble a cricket scorecard, and the metaphor has stuck. But it also resembles many other large tables, so why cricket?

It’s probably not unrelated to it being historically a past-time of the upper classes and very popular with Parliamentarians, reflecting the make-up and cultural references of those historically in the Treasury and Parliament.

There are a few different versions of the scorecard – table 4.1 in the Red Book is the one that Westminster insiders are most familiar with already, which is also called the ‘presentational’ scorecard. This is the ‘themed’-version, and measures are quite often grouped together. For most people, that is already more than enough.

But for the purists, the OBR publishes supplementary table 3.11, which is a version of the ‘analytical’ scorecard – which just means it has all the detail on revenue and spending stream.

The OBR’s version is also much more transparent, including a section labelled ‘non-scorecard’ measures – meaning decisions that the Government has taken and probably should have included in their presentation, but has decided not to. This used to be a large number, but has been heavily cut back – in large part because the OBR started publishing it.

Look out for more analysis from Fraser of Allander next week

National study highlights Edinburgh housing provider’s tech success

Major research praises housing specialist for sector innovation

A LEADING housing specialist has been recognised in a national research project for its technology advances in Scotland’s social care sector.

Blackwood Homes and Care has been praised as a leader in adopting new social care technologies, according to a major report published by Strathclyde University’s Fraser of Allander Institute.

The research project examined fresh-thinking and technology adoption across Scotland’s housing, health and social care sectors with the aim of better understanding the potential for innovation clusters, the role of public investment and capacity for innovation in the key sectors.

Despite the research reenforcing sector-wide challenges, Edinburgh-based Blackwood and its bespoke tech solutions were included as a case study of what is possible within tech-enabled care, despite the challenges faced by the sector.

Simon Fitzpatrick, Chief Executive at Blackwood said: “We are constantly striving to find new ways to improve the lives of the people we support. Receiving recognition and awareness for it always motivates us to keep pushing boundaries and leading the way.

“The research study by the Fraser of Allander Institute is an extremely valuable piece of work for the sector that we’re thrilled to be positively featured in. It’s very rewarding to be recognised.”

One tech solution mentioned in the report is Blackwood’s CleverCogs technology, a specially designed tablet-based system, which has delivered measurable improvements in quality of life and efficiencies in service delivery, despite major budgetary constraints.

Many Blackwood properties feature its CleverCogs technology which is personalised and links users to care and health services, home automation, local information, entertainment and video access to family and friends. The CleverCogs digital system lets users customise it to suit their life.

Emma Congreve, Deputy Director at the University of Strathclyde’s Fraser of Allander Institute said: “We were asked by the Scottish Government to analyse the current social care innovation landscape and the potential for further development of tech solutions for those who draw on care.

“Blackwood homes provided an example of an organisation that has been able to take forward significant technological innovations. As our report stated, based on our research with others in the sector, this was an exception rather than the rule.”

The report, which was released late last year, also noted Blackwood’s strategy of close collaboration with residents and technology partners to develop solutions tailored to their needs – noting the crucial role of innovation-focused leadership in driving progress and cultural change.

Blackwood is now renowned as Scotland’s most tech-focused housing specialist, deploying cutting-edge technology to help its customers to live independently. With 600 staff across Scotland, the charity’s headquarters are in Edinburgh.

Simon added: “Making change is a team effort of course, so it’s fantastic to see our co-design approaches with customers and partners held up as an example model.

“The report does an excellent job of highlighting the hurdles the housing and care sector is having to jump in Scotland at the moment and it can be difficult to continue to innovate new forms of tech-enabled care while combatting challenges like funding or labour shortages.

“Despite that, it only gives us more fuel to continue that fresh thinking to allow people to live as independently as possible.

“Our customers are at the heart of everything we do and we owe it to them to explore every opportunity that technology offers to enhance the quality of their lives. It’s rewarding that Blackwood is setting the standard in that.”

As Scotland’s most tech-focused housing provider, its Blackwood House design guide – developed in partnership with architects Lewis and Hickey – is the gold standard for accessible housing.

Over the next five years Blackwood aims to build 400 such homes, that can adapt to tenants’ future needs. Each can be adapted to include a host of benefits such as lift access, remotely controlled automated functions, and digital care and housing systems.

The housing specialist puts customers at the heart of everything it does, and their satisfaction is critical to Blackwood’s success. As a modern, supportive employer it also provides individuals with pathways towards achieving long and rewarding careers in roles that make a positive difference.

For more information, visit: https://www.blackwoodgroup.org.uk/

Why is the gap in employment between disabled and non-disabled people in Scotland so large?

by FRASER of ALLANDER INSTITUTE’s Allison Cataleno and Chirsty McFadyen

Back in September, we published some initial findings on the disability employment gap in Scotland, in collaboration with the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe).

This blog looked at the ways in which the gap in employment rates between disabled and non-disabled people has changed since 2014, finding that Scotland has lower rates of employment for disabled people compared to the rest of the UK. The gap has been closing more quickly, however.

This initial research led us to a question: why has the gap been closing more quickly? And furthermore, what changes have happened for different groups of people with disabilities?

Our full report, published today, models the reasons behind this change, and explores more detailed statistics on employment differences by type of disability.

Our work is based on a previous report by the DWP which looked at changes in the disability employment gap across the UK.

Some of our key findings include:

The employment rate for disabled people in Scotland has increased by 9 percentage points since 2014. Non-disabled employment rates also increased by 3 percentage points during this time period. This increase in the employment rate has been larger in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK, although the employment rate remains lower.
The employment rate has largely increased due to an increase in disability prevalence (70% of the total change), meaning that this change is primarily due to working people becoming disabled. A small portion of the change (10%) was due to a change in working patterns among disabled people.
On average, Scotland’s disabled working age population grew by about 4.6% each year between 2014 and 2022, while Scotland’s total working age population grew by less than 0.1%
Over half of the change in disability prevalence is due to an increase in reporting mental health-related disabilities and learning difficulties. In 2014, over a third of disabled people in Scotland reported musculoskeletal conditions as their main issue, and around a quarter reported a mental health condition or learning difficulty. These proportions have now switched.
Employment rates for all types of disability have increased since 2014. Musculoskeletal conditions – those affecting arms, legs, feet, neck, and back – had significant increases in employment rates, without significant increases in disability prevalence. By comparison, rates of reported mental illness grew substantially in both employment rates and in total prevalence, although the change in employment outpaced the change in population size.
Disabled people are disproportionately less likely to work in manufacturing; professional, scientific, and technical activities; or construction, and are more likely to work in education, retail, and health and social work.

Read the full report here.

How will the ‘Back to Work Plan’ impact Scottish benefit recipients?

The proposals in the UK Government’s Back to Work Plan contain a confusing mixture of devolved and reserved responsibilities, which leave us slightly mystified as to exactly how this is all going to work in practice (writes Fraser of Allander Institute’s MAIRI SPOWAGE):

In his speech, the Chancellor said: “… last week I announced our Back to Work Plan. We will reform the Fit Note process so that treatment rather than time off work becomes the default.

“We will reform the Work Capability Assessment to reflect greater flexibility and availability of home working after the pandemic. And we will spend £1.3 billion over the next five years to help nearly 700,000 people with health conditions find jobs.

“Over 180,000 more people will be helped through the Universal Support Programme and nearly 500,000 more people will be offered treatment for mental health conditions and employment support.

“Over the forecast period, the OBR judge these measures will more than halve the net flow of people who are signed off work with no work search requirements. At the same time, we will provide a further £1.3 billion of funding to offer extra help to the 300,000 people who have been unemployed for over a year without having sickness or a disability.

“But we will ask for something in return. If after 18 months of intensive support jobseekers have not found a job, we will roll out a programme requiring them to take part in a mandatory work placement to increase their skills and improve their employability. And if they choose not to engage with the work search process for six months, we will close their case and stop their benefits.”

These changes have the potential to impact recipients of Universal Credit. The complication is that UC is reserved, while many elements of employment support – the “extra help” that the Chancellor talks about – is, on the whole, devolved.

Because of this, many of the support mechanisms to help people avoid sanctions in England (& Wales in most cases) generated Barnett consequentials, including:

Restart: expand eligibility and extend the scheme for two years
Mandatory Work Placements: phased rollout
Universal Support: increase to 100,000 starts per year
Talking Therapies: expand access and increase provision
Individual Placement and Support (IPS): expand access
Sanctions: closing claims for disengaged claimants & end of scheme review
Fit Note Reform trial

So, in summary, it looks like the sanctions could be applied in a reserved benefit, following support that may or may not be provided by the Scottish devolved employability system as the Scottish Government could choose to spend the money on something else.

We wait for more details from both the UK & Scottish Governments about how this is going to work in practice.

Understanding the impact of the transition to net zero on low paid jobs

Discussions about the necessities and trade-offs around the transition to net zero are back on the news agenda this week (write Fraser of Allander Institute’s EMMA CONGREVER and CIARA CRUMMEY).

The changes required to meet net zero targets are complex and challenging yet the risks of not doing enough are immense. Inherent in this are trade-offs but also opportunities. An ordered transition where businesses and households have certainty over what they will need to do is the best way to minimise harm to incomes and to maximise the benefits that can be realised.

For many businesses and households, the costs associated transition to net zero will be manageable, and perhaps even cost effective in the long run. But for some, the upfront costs will be difficult to manage.

Whilst there is a general awareness of the direct costs that will fall on households from, for example the phasing out of gas boilers (a devolved policy, so not affected by the UK Prime Minister’s recent announcement) there is also the impact in livelihoods due to changes in the structure of the economy.

At the moment, all the attention is on the ‘just transition’ for workers in carbon-intensive industries, in the North East in particular. But the impact on jobs could be far wider than this.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation asked us, along with colleagues in the Strathclyde Business School, to look into the potential for disruption to jobs in the wider Scottish economy, particularly in relation to low paid jobs. Our assessment of the available literature and various Scottish Government plans, reports and action plans didn’t provide much to go on, so we embarked on some experimental mapping and modelling of the potential intersection of net zero and low pay.

Today we published a report that we hope provides a rationale and a way forward for government, and others, to consider this issue fully. Whilst we can’t yet confidently put a figure on it, we have found that there is potential for significant disruption to jobs in sectors that employ large numbers of low pay workers, including retail and hospitality.

The mechanisms through which this impact could be felt are varied. Issues we looked at included the knock-on impact from depressed wages in areas where carbon intensive businesses cease trading. We also considered the impact on the viability of businesses with large commercial footprints who may need to invest large amounts to bring buildings up to new energy efficient standards.

There are many unknowns in this type of analysis, including the sufficiency of government policy and the behavioural response from consumers. For example, the Scottish Government is hoping to see car use reduced in Scotland.

Households may also independently decide they wish to reduce car use. It is easy to see how this could impact on the viability of out-of-town shopping centres that rely on customers arriving by car and if there aren’t serious efforts to provide adequate replacement public transport or alternative active travel routes, these large centres of employment may become unviable.

Some of the scenarios that we work through may not lead to jobs disappearing completely, but simply shifting to other places or other sectors. There are two further issues to consider here. Firstly, low paid workers tend to be less flexible on where they can work, due to a variety of factors including available transport and difficulties finding affordable childcare to cover long commuting times.

They also tend have less of a financial buffer to deal with even short periods of unemployment. Secondly, simply moving low paid jobs from one place to another misses a crucial opportunity to maximise the benefits that the transition to net zero could bring by providing career pathways into new, higher paid, growth sectors.

There is an opportunity here to better join up Scottish Government ambitions on tackling poverty and the transition to net zero that is currently missing from both the Just Transition plans and the Fair Work Action Plan. We hope this analysis will be useful in informing the future development of this work.

5,436,600 Scots and counting …

The first results of the Scottish Census which took place in March 2022 have been released today, which show that the Scottish population has increased by 2.7% since the last Census in 2011 (write Fraser of Allander Institute’s MAIRI SPOWAGE and JOAO SOUSA).

Digging underneath this, there were 585,000 births and 634,800 deaths since the 2011 Census. So, without migration, the Scottish population would have decreased by 49,800. Net migration of +191,000 people is the reason that we have seen this population growth in Scotland.

The Census shows that the population in Scotland grew less quickly than England and Wales (+6.3%) and Northern Ireland (+5.1%).

The main story is of an ageing population

The numbers show a significant increase in the share of the population that is over the age of 65. 1 in 5 people were aged 65 or over in 2022; it was only 1 in 8 in 1971 and 1 in 6 in 2011.

The larger share of older people is largely a good news story, reflecting the success in increasing life expectancy over the long run. But fewer children are also being born.

So not only is today’s share of the population over the age 65 larger than ever before, it will continue to grow in the coming decades (even with the levels of inward net migration seen over the last decade or so).

Chart: Dependency ratios at successive Scottish Census

The old age dependency ratio is at the highest level since 1971. Despite the falling young age dependency ratio, the overall dependency ratio has started to tick up in 2022

Source: National Records of Scotland, FAI calculations

This means that the working age population – which produces most economic output and pays the largest share of the taxes that fund public services – will need to support a larger share of the population than in previous decades.

Older people generally also need to rely on health and social care more, which increases funding pressures on public services, and increases the number of people entitled to claim state pension – bringing into focus the cost over the long term of policies such as the triple lock.

This is not a Scottish-specific issue, or even a UK-specific one, but it is one the country will need to grapple with. As the Office for Budget Responsibility and the Scottish Fiscal Commission’s recent analysis showed, if these spending pressures were to be accommodated, it would mean an unsustainable path for the public finances, which would have to be addressed by either tax increases, spending reductions, or (most likely) a combination of the two.

The population is also moving within Scotland

The published results also provide an up-to-date picture of population counts and structure across council areas – and the 2.7% increase in national population has not been equal across the board.

Areas around Edinburgh showed the strongest increases, with Midlothian (16.1%), East Lothian (12.6%) and Edinburgh City itself (7.6%) topping the list. At the other end of the scale, Na h-Eileanan Siar (-5.5%), Inverclyde (-3.8%) and Dumfries and Galloway (-3.6%) showed the sharpest declines. In total, 22 of the 32 council areas showed an increase in population.

These changes in population have also led to changes in the structure of the population in different council areas. The four areas with the largest proportional increase in the share of over 65s (Shetland, Aberdeenshire, Clackmannanshire, Highland) are all lower population density than the national average, which itself is a long way below that of the large urban centres. All four also saw falls in the share of the working age population of 5% or more.

By contrast, Glasgow City saw its share of the working age population increase by 0.6%, and Edinburgh City’s decreased by only 1.6%, well under the average decline across Scotland of 3.7%.

These results serve as an illustration of the difficulties faced by more rural areas of Scotland in attracting people of working age relative to large urban areas, and the disparate effects of an ageing population on different areas of the country.

Are the Census results reliable?

There has been considerable coverage of the approach to the Scottish Census given the challenges that were faced in ensuring a good return rate in order to have as good quality as possible.

National Records of Scotland had to extend the deadline to allow households more time to get the forms in, and ended up with a return rate of 90%, compared to the 94% that they achieved in the 2011 Census. This also compares rather unfavourably to the (admittedly very good) response rate in England and Wales in 2021 of 97% (in 2011, the E&W return rate was also 94%).

So why was the return rate lower than it had been in the past?

For anyone who doesn’t remember, in July 2020, about 9 months before the Scottish Census originally scheduled for 2021 was supposed to take place, National Records of Scotland decided that they would delay the Scottish Census for a year due to “the impact of the Covid pandemic”.

The ONS and NISRA, who are responsible for the Census in England and Wales and Northern Ireland respectively, took a different view and proceeded with their census on the original planned date.

At the time, there was concern about the impact that this delay could have on the coherence of the census data across the UK, and the potential (for ever more) for this incoherence to weaken the power that the Census has to provide a snapshot of the UK population. This is particularly true for the groups that are only really reached well in a full population census – small and underrepresented groups, for example.

However, there is no doubt that this delay had an impact on the return rate for the Scottish Census, perhaps due to the lack of benefit that would have been accrued from the coverage and publicity of the UK-wide census going on at the same time.

Having said that, use of a coverage survey and the additional data sources used to supplement the gaps caused by non-returns is not unusual. Even at 94% coverage, these techniques would be used to ensure that the whole population is reflected in the counts. This is not, in itself, a reason to question the validity of the Census results.

However, the lower response rate does mean more of this is required from these results. And in some places in the country with particularly low return rates, such as Glasgow, it does make the results more uncertain.

National Records of Scotland have assessed the overall margins of error at the Scotland level is similar to 2011: but no doubt will be doing more assessment over the next year(s) on how the lower return rate could affect particular groups or geographies.

Disabled Employment in Scotland

FRASER OF ALLANDER INSTITUTE PUBLISHES INITIAL FINDINGS

Disabled adults are significantly less likely to be in work compared to adults without disabilities (write ALLISON CATALANO and CHIRSTY McFADYEN).

In Scotland, 81% of working aged adults without disabilities had jobs in 2021, compared to just under 50% of adults with disabilities. This discrepancy of 31 percentage points – called the “disability employment gap” – is larger in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK (Chart 1).

Scotland has a goal of reducing the disability employment gap by half between 2016 and 2038. The 2021 numbers, encouragingly, show an improvement of 6 percentage points. A higher proportion of disabled people moved into work in Scotland between 2014 and 2021 compared to the UK as a whole, as well.

Chart 1: Gap in employment between people with and without disabilities in Scotland and in the UK, 2014-21

Source: Annual Population Survey, 2014-2021

In 2023, the DWP published a report on the employment of disabled people in the UK. This report looked at the reason why employment among people with disabilities has increased, while employment for the rest of the population has stayed roughly the same.

The DWP report highlighted four reasons behind the growth in the number of disabled people in employment:

Disability prevalence has increased in the UK, and the most common types of disabilities have changed.
The non-disabled employment rate has increased, implying that more jobs are available to both groups.
The disability employment gap has been narrowing overall.
There are more individuals in the working-age population.

The level of detail provided in the DWP report for the UK is difficult to replicate for Scotland with publicly available data: smaller sample sizes north of the border mean that more restrictions are placed on the data available to ensure that appropriate care has been taken with interpreting the robustness of results.

The Fraser of Allander Institute, in collaboration with the Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe) are undertaking work to understand whether the same factors are driving changes in Scotland, and if not, what is different here and why.

This work is ongoing and future articles will get into more of the detail. This article sets the scene about the scale of the issue in Scotland vs the UK based on what know from data currently available.

What’s the state of disability employment in Scotland?

Scotland has a higher proportion of working-aged disabled people compared to the UK. It also has a lower rate of employment among disabled people, and a larger gap in employment between people with and without disabilities. Employment rates are noticeably different for different types of disabilities in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK, and disabled peoples are less likely to have educational qualifications in Scotland.

How is disability defined?

The current definition used in UK (and Scottish) surveys comes from the Government Statistical Service and the 2010 Equality Act. This change affected data collection from mid-2013 onwards, meaning that it’s not possible to compare current data to data before 2013. Our analysis specifically looks at the data since 2014 as a result.

This definition covers people who report “current physical or mental health conditions of illnesses lasting or expected to last 12 months or more; and that these conditions or illnesses reduce their ability to carry out day-to-day activities.” Previously, the definition was based on the Disability Discrimination Act (2005) (DDA), which applied to “all people with a long term health problem or disability that limits their day-to-day activities.” The slight difference in these terms means that some people may qualify as DDA disabled but not as Equality Act disabled.

Scotland has consistently had a higher proportion of working-aged disabled people.

In 2014, around 18% of the Scottish working-age population were classified as Equality Act disabled.

Since 2014, the number of disabled working-age adults has grown by around 222,000 people, making up over 24% of the working-age population as of 2021. By comparison, the total size of the working-age population only grew by around 31,000 people over the same time period. had a higher proportion of disabled adults in 2014 than the UK average, and this gap has widened over time. The 2021 data shows a further significant divergence, but this may be due to particular issues related to the pandemic and may not persist (Chart 2).

Chart 2: The size of the Scottish population with and without disabilities, and the proportion of the population with disabilities from 2014-21.

Scotland has a higher disability gap and a lower rate of employment among disabled people.

Employment rates for working-aged people without disabilities in Scotland is roughly the same as in the rest of the UK. Employment rates for disabled people is much lower, however.

Since 2014, disabled people have moved into work faster in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK. The employment gap fell by around 6.5 percentage points between 2014 and 2021 in Scotland, compared to a fall of around 4.5 percentage points for the entire UK (Chart 3).

Chart 3: Proportion of adults between 16-64 that are in work by disability status, Scotland and the UK, 2014-21

Scotland has different employment rates for people with different types of disabilities.

Unsurprisingly, Scotland has lower employment rates than the UK as a whole for the vast majority of types of disability.

The largest differences in employment rates are for people with diabetes, chest or breathing problems, and difficulty with seeing, hearing, or speech. Scotland fares better in the employment of people with stomach, liver, kidney and digestion problems, for instance, and slightly better for people with autism.[1]

Chart 4: Proportion of the working-age population with disabilities by working status and type of disability, 2022

Source: Annual Population Survey, 2014-2021. * Estimates are based on a small sample size and may not be precise.

Disabled people have lower qualification levels in Scotland.

Disabled people are more likely to have no qualifications than those without disabilities, both in Scotland and the UK. Scottish adults are also more likely to have no qualifications compared to the rest of the UK, although the gap in qualifications for disabled people is larger for Scotland than for the rest of the country (Chart 4).

The proportion of people with no qualifications has been falling in recent years. This may be due to older people, on average, being less likely to have formal qualifications, and as they move to retirement age, the number of working age people without qualifications goes down.

For disabled people, it may also be true that the increase in the number of disabled people have changed the make-up of the disabled population, especially for people who are becoming disabled later in life (for example, due to mental health issues that present post-education).

Chart 5: Proportion of working-age adults with no qualifications by disability status, Scotland & rUK, 2014-21

Where are there gaps in our knowledge?

As discussed at the start, publicly available data on disability types is severely limited. For example, survey data in Scotland has detailed disaggregation on different types of disability, but only publicly provides information on whether or not someone qualifies as disabled under the 2010 Equality Act definition. The Scottish Government has been making strides to improve this data, however – a 2022 publication analyses disability employment by type of disability, but only examines one year.

One particular issue that we have found is for people who have a learning disability where the data is extremely poor. We will be publishing a new article later this week that sets out some of the particular issues for people with a learning disability.

Our next phase of research will look into more of the detail around employment levels for people in Scotland living with different disabilities based on access to non-public secure data held by the ONS. There may still be limits on the data we are able to use (for example, where robustness thresholds set by the ONS are not met), but we hope we will be able to add to the evidence base here in Scotland and provide better insights for policy makers and stakeholders on where support needs to be focussed.