Review of pre-release access in Scotland

Experience of changes to PRA for economic and market statistics

In 2021, a phased approach to reducing and subsequently removing any pre-release access to GDP and Scottish retail sales and a reduction in the pre-release period for economic and market-sensitive statistics to a maximum of one working day were introduced in Scotland. The Scottish Government was required to review these changes.

Those participants who had experienced the changes to PRA for economic and market sensitive statistics or who currently worked with these statistics shared their experiences of this. Only a small number of participants had been in post when the changes were brought in, and they described the process of incremental decrease in number of days as difficult as this had required them to develop new PRA forms and communications with every change, and to constantly explain the changes to those who were receiving PRA. One participant with experience of the changes stated that the reduction in the PRA period had taken some time to get used to, and that they would prefer to have a longer period.

Those who currently work with economic and market sensitive statistics for which there is a 24 hour PRA or no PRA described a number of challenges. The day of publication and the 24 hours preceding it were described as high pressure and “planning for a rush”. In terms of workload and staffing, staff were required to work early in the morning, outside of their normal working hours, and to be available during the PRA period and on the day of publication. One participant described an informal agreement that they and their colleagues cannot take the day of publication or the following day off. It was common for participants not to receive the statistics a full 24 hours in advance, but rather to receive this around mid-morning or lunchtime meaning that the time available to work with these was further reduced.

And you know that's those are kind of much harder to deal with meaningfully in a lot of ways in that the length of release is so tight to when comment has to be given, that you cannot in the stage where you’re dragging analysts out their beds at, you know half six in the morning to…Well, I'm afraid we need to give a response. We're going to be asked with the press as soon as this is published. Unless we are ready, then we're in trouble. (Special adviser)

Participants in statistics production and communications roles described a lack of knowledge or awareness of the differing PRA periods for different types of statistics among wider stakeholders which leads to pressure to share statistics for which there was reduced or no PRA.

And as I say, ministers don't... A lot of them aren't overly sympathetic. They just don't really understand or want to understand. “Why am I just getting this?”, you know, “Why didn't I get told about this?”. (Comms professional)

But every single month we produce it, we have to reinforce to policy and comms colleagues that there isn't any pre-release access. They’re always kind of pressuring us for the statistics, and it's probably partly because it's inconsistent across different statistics publications. (Scottish Government statistics producer)

Various impacts of shorter or no PRA were described, such as giving a less full and detailed response to reduce the risk of ministers or advisers misrepresenting the statistics as they hadn’t had sufficient time to understand them and ask questions. While communications staff were able to draft skeleton responses to be used in different scenarios, they felt that this reduced their ability to develop proactive communications around the publication, with the effect of reducing the impact of publication.

That those arrangements can be set up, the logistics can be set up, but we don't know what the minister’s gonna say, nor do we know what it is we want to focus on through our communications products, which will include over and above a written product will include video, animation, infographics so it significantly shortens our ability to think about what it is we want to create and create it to the right standard and being correct and getting it cleared by ministers. So those are the practical impacts of 24 hours notice. (Comms professional)

Among those who do not work with market sensitive or economic statistics, there was a general understanding of the rationale behind the different PRA periods and participants were broadly supportive of the different arrangements, although some stated that they found the different arrangements confusing. There was a suggestion that a longer PRA period is more crucial for statistics relating to policy areas for which the Scottish Government is directly responsible, such as health or education, and less important for GDP statistics in which the Scottish Government does not play a direct role.