Connect with us

Published

on

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is making major changes to how it gathers some of the UK’s most important data. These figures shape decisions on wages, benefits, and public spending.

One of the biggest shifts involves how inflation is measured, which is changing on Tuesday. The Consumer Price Index (CPI), which tracks the cost of everyday essentials like food, energy, and transport, is being updated with a new system that aims to capture price changes more accurately.

This matters because inflation figures influence the Bank of England’s decisions on interest rates, which in turn affect the cost of borrowing, savings, and even rent.

For workers, inflation also plays a role in wage negotiations. This is because when prices rise, there’s often pressure on employers and the government to increase salaries, pensions, and benefits.

The ONS will continue sending researchers to shops to check prices and speak to retailers, but from this month, a new digital system will speed up how the data is processed.

It’s also testing a new method using real checkout data from supermarkets. Instead of just recording shelf prices, it will track what people actually pay, including discounts from loyalty schemes like Clubcard and Nectar. This should give a more accurate picture of real spending habits, with full rollout expected by 2026.

The change has been brought about over concerns the previous method measured price changes but failed to capture how consumers changed what they buy as a result.

Take the example of butter, which has gone up in price by 18% in the past year. That increase was reflected in the CPI, influencing the overall inflation figure. However, many consumers will have switched to a dairy spread or margarine rather than keep paying for the more expensive butter.

How is inflation data changing?

While this should improve inflation accuracy, tracking individual product prices may become harder. Sky News’ Spending Calculator, which helps users track price changes, will need updates and won’t be refreshed this month.

An ONS spokesperson said: “From next year we will be replacing much of the physical price collection in supermarkets with information from supermarket tills. While we won’t know what each consumer has bought, we will know both the price and quality of items sold in shops up and down the country, marking a step-change in our understanding of inflation and consumer behaviour.”

Data reliability concerns prompt changes

While these changes to the inflation data are intended to better reflect consumer behaviour, other changes are being introduced due to concerns over reliability.

One of the most affected datasets is the Labour Force Survey (LFS), the UK’s largest household study, which measures the state of the labour market and helps shape decisions on interest rates and employment. However, plummeting response rates mean its reliability is now in question.

“I think policymakers just don’t have as much trust or confidence in the LFS, so they have to find other ways to get the clear insights they used to rely on the LFS for,” said Michael McMahon, professor of economics at Oxford and former Bank of England economist.

“The Bank of England has a set of regional agents who will go out and speak to businesses. They’ll speak to local bodies and even in some cases do citizens’ panels. They were doing that before the LFS issue. It’s just they have to rely on these alternatives more, because they can rely less on the LFS.”

The pandemic accelerated these issues when face-to-face LFS interviews were replaced with phone surveys, causing a sharp drop in participation.

Internal ONS emails, revealed by the Financial Times, showed how one key estimate’s sample size had “collapsed to only five individuals” — too small for reliable statistics.

Resolution Foundation analysis shows that HMRC payroll and self-employment data aligned with LFS estimates before 2020 but after the pandemic began to diverge.

To address this, the ONS is developing the Transformed Labour Force Survey (TLFS), using shorter questionnaires and shifting primarily to online responses, with some face-to-face interviews remaining.

Survey issues aren’t just affecting job figures, they’re also complicating GDP estimates.

The Living Costs and Food Survey (LCF), which tracks incomes and spending and is used for GDP estimates, has seen a sharp drop in response rates, with fewer than one in five forms completed as of December 2024. The survey is particularly time-consuming, requiring participants to log spending for two weeks. A new digital tool allowing receipts to be scanned is in development but won’t launch until late 2025.

For policymakers, these delays are frustrating. “It’s certainly a moment of embarrassment: the idea that the chancellor and the governor [of the Bank of England] go to G7 meetings, talk to other advanced economies, and explain why we don’t know how our labour market is doing with any great confidence,” said McMahon.

Flawed migration data

Recent improvements to the way the ONS gathers migration data also highlight significant failings in the recent past.

Long-term migration estimates are a vital part of public debate and key policy decisions.

Before COVID, migration estimates relied on traveller surveys at airports and ports. These surveys frequently underestimated migration levels, as they depended on people’s own predictions about how long they would stay in the UK.

Under this method, net migration was seen to have peaked in December 2022, at 764,000.

Now, the ONS has shifted to using visa records, higher education statistics, and tax data to provide a clearer picture. Under this new method, it has become clear that net migration has been much higher than previously thought, peaking at 906,000 in June 2023.

Overall, the ONS increased its estimate for net migration in 2023 by more than 25%.

However, while these changes are making migration data more reliable, they also highlight how much of the political debate on immigration in recent years has been built on incomplete figures. The transition to administrative data is a step forward, but further refinements will be needed to ensure long-term accuracy.


The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open-source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.

Continue Reading

Business

Meet the human-like robot on its first day of work

Published

on

By

Meet the human-like robot on its first day of work

A humanoid machine called Apollo has just taken a tentative, slightly jerky, but significant step forward in the robot revolution.

The 5’8″ tall robot performed the first public demonstration in a real-world setting of a real-world task – in this case assembling an engine part – entirely autonomously.

Clicking two parts together with a twist of its servo-controlled wrists, and handing it to a human colleague is a basic task. But it’s also an important moment in the much-hyped world of human-like robot development.

Mercedes-Benz is testing the use of Apollo, a humanoid robot from Apptronik, in production. Pic: Mercedes Benz
Image:
Mercedes-Benz is testing the use of Apollo, a humanoid robot from Apptronik. Pic: Mercedes Benz

“This is a really big day for us,” says Jeff Cardenas, chief executive of Apptronik, the US company behind Apollo.

“We’re excited to show this off, excited for the public to see the robot live and in person.”

Mercedes-Benz has announced a multimillion-pound investment in Apptronik and is trialling a handful of the humanoid robots at its factory in Berlin and another in Hungary.

Investors and industrial firms – particularly car makers with long experience of using robots in manufacturing – have been closely following the development of human-like robots.

The costs of small, lightweight components have fallen as artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms and computer vision technology have led to rapid advances in the field of robots that can emulate human movement and tasks.

But despite a rising number of increasingly impressive-looking cyborgs being unveiled by tech companies in the US and Asia, few have taken their first steps out of the lab.

The Apollo robot looks small and underpowered surrounded by the huge robotic arms that weld, bolt and inspect Mercedes’ latest cars at the Berlin-Marienfelde plant.

But hosting a robot with a human “form-factor” is more than just a photo opportunity, according to Mercedes-Benz.

“There’s one big advantage,” says Jorg Burzer, head of production and supply chain management at the German car maker.

“A humanoid robot is flexible, so you can basically introduce it to an assembly line or internal logistics or quality inspection… you can basically move it from one place to another.”

Mercedes-Benz is testing the use of Apollo, a humanoid robot from Apptronik, in production. Pic: Mercedes-Benz
Image:
Mercedes-Benz has announced a multimillion-pound investment in humanoid robots. Pic: Mercedes-Benz

Introducing a new assembly line, or upgrading an old one with traditional robotic arms is a major investment.

A robot that can be adapted to a range of tasks and work alongside humans would avoid that investment.

With hands and feet like ours, they can operate tools and work in the same workspaces as people.

Apollo can lift more than 25kg and potentially perform repetitive tasks that are, in the words of humanoid robot developers, too “dull, dirty or dangerous” for humans.

Apollo the robot
Image:
Apollo is 5’8″ tall and can lift 25kg

Apollo the robot

The purpose of the trial is to establish which tasks humanoid robots can usefully do and help improve the machine learning and dexterity required to do more.

“We want to try to find out what is really possible,” says Mr Burzer.

“It’s also very important to test how a humanoid robot can be integrated in running production together with our colleagues working here every day.”

Read more:
Meet the penguins of the Falklands
Badenoch says UK 2050 net zero target is ‘impossible’
Two astronauts stuck in space set to return to Earth

Texas-based Apptronik is reluctant to make claims as bold as some of their rivals.

“Everyone’s ready for a robot to come into their home and do all of their laundry and all the things that they don’t want to do. But it’s very early on,” says Mr Cardenas.

“Take the analogy of the shift to the personal computer. We’re in the early ’80s so at the very beginning.”

Investors seem to believe in a robot-dominated future. One recent forecast sees the humanoid market growing 20-fold in the next eight years, with predictions of a population of tens of millions of the machines by 2050.

One major hurdle is the AI brains behind them.

Apptronik admits a truly “general purpose” robot capable of functioning outside a predictable and controlled environment like a factory won’t be possible until computer intelligence can understand the real world like we do.

So-called “world models” are very much a work in progress for AI developers.

So the important questions, like when humanoid robots will steal our jobs, or whether they will go rogue and rise up against us can wait… for a little while at least.

Continue Reading

Business

Tesla investor calls for Elon Musk to step down as boss

Published

on

By

Tesla investor calls for Elon Musk to step down as boss

One of Tesla’s earliest investors has told Sky News Elon Musk should step aside as its chief executive unless he gives up his new government job.

Ross Gerber said in an interview with Sky’s Business Live that the tycoon and adviser to Donald Trump had lost his focus given his widening interests and was now too “divisive”.

He cited Musk’s post-election role at the helm of the Trump administration’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

It has attracted public anger, and protests, over planned swingeing cuts to federal government staff.

Money latest: Good news for holidaymakers heading to US

Mr Gerber said: “I think Tesla needs a new CEO and I decided today I was going to start saying it and so this is the first show that I’m saying it on.

“It’s time for somebody to run Tesla. The business has been neglected for too long. There are too many important things Tesla is doing, so either Elon should come back to Tesla and be the CEO of Tesla and give up his other jobs or he should focus on the government and keep doing what he is doing but find a suitable CEO of Tesla.”

More on Elon Musk

Mr Gerber told presenter Darren McCaffrey that the business was “absolutely” in crisis and the appointment was among several reasons he had sold off a substantial number of shares in recent months.

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Climate protesters vandalise Musk’s Tesla robot

A slump began shortly before Mr Trump took office, as the first salvoes of the president’s trade war were being threatened.

Tesla’s market value has plunged by more than $800bn since December and it was a further 4% down in US trading on Tuesday.

The business has been struggling on several fronts.

Electric car demand appears to have peaked across key Western markets despite steep discounting to boost appeal at a time of continued strain on consumer budgets.

Read more:
What’s gone wrong at Tesla?
Tesla charging stations set on fire in Musk backlash

Also in the mix is cheap Chinese competition nibbling away at Tesla’s market share.

Add the potential for heightened costs due to Mr Trump’s trade war, it is of little surprise that investors are concerned.

Mr Gerber said that while Tesla’s products were undoubtedly the best around, Mr Musk only had 24 hours in the day and he had split his time too thinly since his purchase of Twitter in 2022.

He added that his social media posts and work with the president since had brought too much negative publicity to Tesla.

“The company’s reputation has just been destroyed by Elon Musk”, he said.

“Sales are plummeting so, yeh, it’s a crisis. You literally can’t sell the best product in the market place because the CEO is so divisive”.

Continue Reading

Business

Thames Water delays request for even more expensive bills as six offers of new investment received

Published

on

By

Thames Water delays request for even more expensive bills as six offers of new investment received

The UK’s biggest water provider has delayed its request for even higher customer bills.

Thames Water has deferred its appeal to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the regulator tasked with deciding if the company can raise bills by even more than initially allowed.

Money blog: Supermarket values plummet after new Asda strategy

In December, water regulator Ofwat determined that bills could rise 35% to about £588 annually per household by 2030.

This was challenged by the firm serving 16 million people as being insufficient. It wanted a 53% rise.

The deferment comes as Thames Water said it received six offers of new investment and announced it would finalise a bidder by June and close the fundraising process by September.

This postponement will last 18 weeks and has been approved by Ofwat.

More on Thames Water

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Thames Water boss can ‘save’ company

Additional investment could result in a “market-led” solution to refinancing the company, Thames Water said.

It means its financial woes could be improved by investors rather than billpayers being charged more.

Read more:
Water bills to rise – Full list of what they cost now and how much they’re going up

The business was going to run out of money by 24 March, it said, but a £3bn loan from existing creditors was again given the green light on Monday.

Thames Water is struggling under a now £19bn debt pile.

It had been described as “uninvestable” by some shareholders when it failed to secure reduced fines for pollution incidents from Ofwat.

Five other water companies have challenged the amount they have been permitted to hike bills by.

Anglian Water, Northumbrian Water, South East Water, Southern Water and Wessex Water all want customers to pay more.

Continue Reading

Trending