I regret to inform the House that there was an inaccuracy in the answer I gave to parliamentary question 31081 on 16 December, Official Report, columns 866-67W, about the numbers of persons who habitually travel to a place of work. The table, with corrected figures for 2005, is detailed below:
Thousands | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
October to December | ||||||
Area | Mode of travel | 20051 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 |
England | Train2 | 1,017 | 970 | 1,072 | 1,084 | 1,040 |
Car3 | 15,649 | 14,605 | 14,518 | 14,281 | 13,998 | |
Bus/Coach4 | 1,656 | 1,562 | 1,526 | 1,477 | 1,331 | |
East Midlands | Train2 | 13 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 13 |
Car3 | 1,393 | 1,317 | 1,321 | 1,341 | 1,279 | |
Bus/Coach4 | 90 | 99 | 120 | 97 | 97 | |
Note: 1 Following realignment from seasonal to calendar quarters, data for December are assumed to follow the same pattern as that of October and November. 2 Includes railway trains but excludes underground train and light railway or tram. 3 Includes car, van, minibus and works van. 4 Includes bus, coach and private bus. Source: ONS Labour Force Survey (LFS) |
An investigation has shown that the error was due to a change in the Labour Force Survey methodology introduced by ONS in early 2006. Specifically, the survey changed from providing data for non-standard “seasonal” quarters (i.e. “Autumn” = September to November, “Winter” = December to February, etc.) to using more standard calendar quarters from this point. As a result of this change, the Department’s estimates for the period October to December in 2005 are actually based on only two months of data (October to November) instead of three months in all later years. The 2005 estimates given in the answer should therefore have been adjusted upwards by a factor of 1.5 to take account of this difference. However, this adjustment was not applied and the error was not spotted before the draft answer was submitted.