The debacle over Scotland’s census will not, it seems, have a happy ending. Nearly a quarter of households (some 604,000) are yet to complete their return, and had been facing £1,000 fines from today. It could have been a prosecution of unprecedented scale, but the deadline has been extended to the end of May. Sir Tom Devine, perhaps Scotland’s best-known historian, has said he thinks all is lost. ‘Such is the scale of the disaster the authorities have had little choice but to offer a new deadline,’ he said. ‘Will the extension work? It is very doubtful.’ The SNP has not admitted to any fault, but instead blamed (you guessed it) the media, ‘anxiety’ caused by ‘recent world events’, the cost of living crisis and Covid. All of these things faced the English, who returned the census at a rate of 97 per cent. In Scotland, it’s 77 per cent.
It’s hard to govern a country if you’re not sure who’s in it, what they do and how they live – which is why countries large and small put so much work into their census. It matters because people matter. But if a quarter of the population is missing, then, as academics are starting to point out, the exercise could be rendered ‘useless’. There are concerns too about the extension. The census is meant to provide a snapshot of life in the country on a specific day (20 March) within a specific window. Researchers say now though that a widened collection period could damage data quality for future studies that use the census as its core.
This could be, in a hotly-contested category, Holyrood’s greatest failure yet.
Scotland has always had its own census, with its history tracing back to 1790. It’s not something that’s devolved or reserved. But aligning the census across the UK has proved invaluable to researchers – so much so that in recent years the NRS, ONS and Northern Ireland’s stats body (NISRA) have worked together to ensure comparable results. An aim agreed between the four nations reads: ‘The 2021 Census outputs should constitute consistent, coherent and accessible statistics for the UK, individual countries and geographic areas within each country.’ Northern Ireland even uses the same computer systems as the ONS, meaning they benefit from using an English system that would be costly to purchase themselves. Could Scotland’s census problems have been avoided if Scotland shared systems too?
Extension doesn’t come cheap. The original delay added nearly £30 million to the costs, and some £10 million has been committed for the month-long reprieve. In total, Scotland’s census is looking to cost the taxpayer almost twice as much per head as it did in England and Wales (£27 vs £15). The government says every pound invested in the census generates between £5 and £6 of ‘economic benefit’. Does that rule still apply when the outcomes are botched?
Why the original delay? Audit Scotland produced a detailed report into the decision. Mistake one was to estimate that 3,500 people would be needed to knock on doors, half the number mobilised in 2011. Officials say higher numbers were impossible because of Covid restrictions. Back then Scots were required to stay within their council area. England was more open. For most of March and April last year Scotland had higher Covid rates. In the end only 1,250 ‘field staff’ were hired in Scotland.
Other small countries (that the SNP are so keen to compare themselves to) take the census very seriously. In 2019, New Zealand’s Government Statistician resigned after the census had a return rate of 83 per cent. The rate among the Māori population was particularly low, with nearly a third failing to return the census. A review found ‘less than optimal outcomes’ and Stats NZ said the failure led to ‘significant data gap’ due to ‘[placing] too much emphasis on the online census’.
The online survey software in Scotland has been beset with problems, and some 68,000 have started the form but are yet to hit the submit button. The wording of questions have irritated government critics, but It’s not just unionists and gender critical feminists who have taken issue. A committed nationalist, involved in Scotland’s’ folk community, told the Spectator how the wording of Gaelic language questions were too binary and will only capture fluent Gaels: ‘It’s just frustrating as the Gaelic speaking community do so much on trying to encourage people to use any Gaelic they have and then none of it counts.’
It’s hard to escape the idea that this census is perhaps irreparably damaged. Comparisons with the rest of the UK’s data were always going to be questioned after the delay was announced. But now Scotland’s own figures will perhaps be questioned in their own right. Statisticians are trained with how to deal with this – using estimates and extrapolations to fill gaps – but the error margins can be wide. Ministers will no doubt apologise, laugh this off and find a way to lay the blame at Westminster’s door, but the potential damage this fiasco has caused could be felt for years to come. This could be, in a hotly-contested category, Holyrood’s greatest failure yet.
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