Methods

How this desk reads the data

We would rather be slow and sourced than first and vague. This note is the working rulebook.

Primary over secondary

Inflation, labour, public finances and national accounts start at the ONS. Monetary policy starts at the Bank of England’s statements, minutes and Monetary Policy Report. Fiscal forecasts start at the OBR. Scottish fiscal numbers start at the Scottish Fiscal Commission and the Scottish Budget documents. Market prices are described as market prices, not as official statistics.

Forecast versus outturn

A projection in a Bank or OBR report is not a fact about the world. We will say “the Bank expects” or “the March forecast had” when that is what we mean. Outturns get dated: “CPI was 2.9 per cent in the year to July 2026”.

Revisions

Labour Force Survey figures, public finances and GDP are revised. If a later vintage changes the story, we update the essay rather than pretend the first sentence was carved in stone.

Judgment

The last paragraphs of an essay are usually a judgment: what we think the Committee, the gilt market or a regional labour market will do with the facts. Those sentences are labelled by tone, not by a disclaimer sticker. They are still not advice.

What we will not do

We will not invent a telephone number, a regulator reference, or a data point we have not seen. We will not present a screenshot of a chart as if it were a full time series. If a series is too uncertain to use — a broken LFS print, a first estimate of borrowing — we will say so.

Questions about method: write to the desk.