The missing numbers which hold back Wales

Simon Hobson

Time-and-again in the Senedd, members struggle to place reliable numbers on subjects being debated.

A case in point was a recent debate between Labour’s Eluned Morgan and Conservative Darren Millar.

They clashed over unemployment figures. Millar cited the ‘dire’ September 2025 work statistics, which showed Wales with the highest joblessness rate in the United Kingdom. Mr Millar stated that unemployment was up 50 per cent since Labour took over the UK government in July 2024.

This, according to Mr Millar, means unemployment in Wales has reached a ten-year high of 5.7 per cent. Ms. Morgan countered that the data was not reliable. ‘The ONS says that the ‘labour force survey’ is not reliable when it comes to Wales’, she said, referring to the Office for National Statistics’ own caution over small sample sizes taken from Wales.

The Welsh Government, she argued, instead relies on the annual population survey, which puts unemployment closer to 4.1 per cent in Wales.

The data gap that cripples’ decision-making

Whichever number is closer to the truth, the exchange laid bare a deeper problem: Wales lacks the means to measure its own economy, labour force, and society with precision. We rely on data collected and interpreted in London, filtered through methodologies designed for England. This is not a technical quibble. It goes to the heart of whether Wales can govern itself effectively. Policy without reliable data is little more than guesswork dressed up as management.

If the next Welsh Government is serious about competence, and about the nation’s long-term path to self-determination, it must build a ‘Welsh Department of Information and Statistics’, which goes beyond the current best efforts of ‘StatsWales’. Wales needs an organisation with a legal mandate to collect, verify and publish Wales-specific data across economic, educational, social, health, environmental, all domains. Because without our own data, we are condemned to making decisions in the dark.

The statistical fog

The ONS has acknowledged repeatedly that its ‘labour force survey’ is less reliable for Wales than for England. Sample sizes in Wales are too small to draw confident conclusions about month-to-month changes. The result is that headlines fluctuate wildly. One month Wales can be reported as outperforming the UK average; the next, lagging it. Ministers and political parties cherry pick data to suite their narrative or waste policy debating time arguing about whose version of reality to believe.

All the while business owners, workers, educators, hospital managers and those politicians who want to make meaningful policy, face uncertainty about what is happening and which data sets to apply to Wales.

This statistical fog infects almost every policy debate. Whether on poverty, health outcomes, migration, infrastructure and transport or the environment. Even devolved functions like housing or education are analysed through a UK-wide lens that cannot see the nuances of rural Ceredigion, the industrial valleys, or the growth corridors of the north-east.

How can a government plan industrial strategy, allocate public investment, meaningfully argue for more fiscal control at the Senedd or measure the success of a green-jobs programme without an accurate picture of its own economy? It can’t. It ends up reacting to London’s agenda rather than setting its own.

Lessons from America

The United States offers a cautionary tale. The Trump administration has undermined the country’s scientific and statistical institutions. Data collection programmes have been halted. Researchers muzzled, public dashboards have vanished from websites, and entire datasets on public health, climate, and environmental quality have had funding withdrawn. The result has been a collapse in the integrity of public information. When data is destroyed or is inaccurate, accountability dies.

Wales should take this as a warning. Our vulnerability lies not in censorship or malicious defunding but in dependency. We are reliant on a system that does not prioritise us. The UK Government has no incentive to fund a richer statistical base for a devolved nation it sees as peripheral.

Building the infrastructure of self-government

Creating a ‘Welsh Department of Information and Statistics’ would not be about bureaucracy; it would be about sovereignty. Every functional self-governing nation in the world maintains its own national statistical office: trusted, apolitical, and technically capable. Scotland has invested heavily in data-driven government. Even the Channel Islands maintain their own data services.

Such a department in Wales could begin by strengthening ‘StatsWales’: taking data gathering and retention powers from Westminster. Practically, this can begin with reducing the granularity of household, labour-market and business surveys, ensuring they are robust enough to support monthly and quarterly estimates. It could modernise data collection through partnerships with universities and local authorities, digitalising and coordinating with Eurostat to ensure international comparability. Most importantly, it would put Welsh ministers, and Welsh citizens, in possession of facts about Wales, not filtered assumptions.

Imagine the difference if decisions about jobs, skills and investment were guided by live Welsh data showing which industries are growing, which regions are stagnating, and where, for instance, green transition opportunities lie. Imagine a health service able to track patient outcomes and demographic pressures in real time.

From dependency to confidence

A government that cannot measure its society cannot work to improve it. The recurring fights in the Senedd over whose statistics to trust make Wales look like a subordinate administration rather than a self-respecting democracy.

If we aspire to be more than the status quo, and to the responsibilities that come with more political and economic powers, we must start by taking ownership of knowledge itself. Reliable, transparent, Welsh-gathered data is the foundation of modern statehood. It is how we protect our government from misinformation, how we evaluate policy honestly, and how we earn the trust of Welsh citizens.

Wales deserves better than statistical guesswork. It deserves the truth, its own truth, measured by and for its people.