Just watched the Science and Technology Committee oral evidence session in its inquiry into ‘The Census and social science’. The first part of the video is about engineering – so you need to skip to 10.18 for the Census part. This shows three 3 peoples’ views regarding the need (or lack of) the census. Professor Les Mayhew believes that we are already have alternatives that are much better, more timely and accurate to the census. However, the other two considered the census to be a valuable source, with Professor David Blane stating that both Finland and Italy who have linked registers are green with envy with the UKs census, and notes that we need to rid ourselves of the idea that you will ever get yourself a perfect dataset. Professor Heather Joshi , highlights that the census can be used as a Benchmark of data that isn’t readily available from administrative resources.
A fascinating debate that covers some of the issues:
http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=9634
Just noticed that there is a further session, which takes place on 14 December2011:
