Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The head of the Office for National Statistics has stepped down with immediate effect citing “ongoing health issues”, after the UK data agency came under fire for flaws in key economic indicators.
Sir Ian Diamond resigned because the health issues meant he was “unable to give the full commitment he would like to drive the organisation forward”, said the UK Statistics Authority, which oversees the ONS.
Diamond has been replaced as national statistician by Emma Rourke, ONS deputy national statistician for health, population and methods, pending longer-term arrangements, the UKSA said on Friday.
Mike Keoghan, another ONS deputy national statistician, left the agency in March.
Diamond’s exit comes as a review commissioned by the UKSA and Cabinet Office is scrutinising the agency’s leadership, culture and structure after a series of errors in economic indicators, alongside delays to data publication.
A sharp decline in response rates to the ONS labour force survey, which underpins critical data such as the unemployment rate, has made it difficult for the Bank of England, ministers and researchers to assess the UK jobs market.
A “transformed” LFS, intended to give policymakers a more accurate picture, has suffered repeated delays and will now launch only towards the end of 2026.
Last autumn, an internal review of the errors that caused the survey’s collapse found failures of leadership had contributed to a crisis in morale at the agency, with poor strategic choices leading to “systematic and compounding under-investment in surveys”.
An interim review into broader concerns over the quality of figures, published last month by the Office for Statistics Regulation, the regulatory arm of the UKSA, pointed to “insufficient investment” in data collection.
It called on the ONS to take “decisive action to restore confidence”, less than a week after the agency reported a real-terms cut to its budget for 2025-26. The ONS is now scaling back its work in key policy areas — including the measurement of public sector productivity and of crime against children — in order to focus on its core economic statistics.
Diamond, who won praise during his early tenure for the way the agency responded to the needs of the Covid-19 pandemic, said in a statement that it had been “an honour and a privilege to lead the ONS over the past five and a half years”.
But he added that the next phase of delivery for the agency would require “energetic leadership”, including implementing the findings of the independent probe being led by former senior mandarin Sir Robert Devereux.
“Unfortunately, I have made the decision that, due to ongoing health issues, I am unable to give the commitment to the role of national statistician that I would like to and feel that it is the right time for somebody else to pick up the baton,” Diamond said.
