Dear Mr.Drakeford
The Minister for Health and Social Services has passed me your letter on the content and timing of official statistics on health dated 5 December 2012.
I welcome the comments from the Health and Social Care Committee on the frequency and accessibility of official statistics and these will be taken into account as I consider the responses overall to the consultation exercise.
As you will have seen in the consultation document the proposal is to free up capacity of statisticians within Welsh Government to allow more considered and holistic analysis and reporting on a topic area. However, although the formal statistical releases may be less frequent, we are seeking to do this in a way which ensures management information is still publicly available at least on the same frequency as previously.
The further benefit of this proposal is the potential to ensure the management information is put into the public domain as soon as possible, to ensure public debate is informed by the most up to date information. In the case of A&E information, this has led to the information being available 10-15 days earlier than previously and although it is not quality assured to the level of National Statistics we believe it is of a good enough quality to be released.
If you would like to submit any further detailed comments to the consultation we would be happy to receive them. We also welcome comments and feedback from users of our statistics at any time so please do not feel you are limited to the timescale of this consultation
Yours sincerely
Glyn Jones
Acting Chief Statistician