Catalogue description Records of the Statistics Departments, and Retail Prices Index Advisory Committee

Prior to the creation of the Ministry of Labour, the collection and publication of statistics relating to questions affecting labour were undertaken by the Board of Trade, and in 1913 the Labour Statistics Department of the Board of Trade had been separated from the Labour Department. In 1917, the Board's Department of Labour Statistics was transferred to the Ministry of Labour, retaining its independence until 1919, when it merged with the Labour Intelligence Division of the Headquarters Department to form an Intelligence and Statistics Department. The following year it came under the General Department. In 1924 it was renamed the Statistics Division (later Statistics Branch) and became a separate department in 1938. The Statistics Department and division provided a statistical service to the government, industry and the nation generally.

A standing departmental committee exercised general direction and control over the work of the Statistics Department and Division whose responsibilities covered statistics on employment, unemployment, vacancies, placing, earnings, wage rates, hours of work, labour costs, stoppages arising from industrial disputes, family expenditure and the index of retail prices. The department collected and supervised the publication of statistics on hours and earnings, wage rates, unemployment, cost of living, industrial unrest, and trade union membership at home and abroad. These were first published in 1893 in the (later the Board of Trade Labour Department Gazette, subsequently renamed the Ministry of Labour Gazette.

In the inter-war period, restrictions on staff curtailed the activities of the department. During the Second World War, however, it expanded its activities to general statistical series covering the entire working population. In 1947 the Statistics of Trade Act required selected employers to submit monthly returns to the ministry, thereby ensuring that this new work continued in peacetime.

In August 1946, the Cost of Living Advisory Committee was appointed to advise the Minister of Labour and National service on the official cost of living figure, including the basis of its calculation. It first operated in 1946-1947, and was recalled in 1951-1952, 1955-1956, 1961-1962 and 1967-1968 to consider whether revision of the cost of living figure, its calculation and the basis for its calculation were appropriate. The committee comprised representatives of the ministry, trades unions, the Co-operative movement, academics, industrialists and other employers, as well as representatives from statistics departments of other government departments.

Subsequent to the abolition of the Ministry of Labour in 1968, the Statistics Department became the Statistics Division of the Department of Employment and Productivity (from 1970, the Department of Employment). On the creation of the Department of Employment and Productivity, the Cost of Living Advisory Committee was re-named the Retail Prices Index Advisory Committee, comprising the same representatives and performing the same functions as its predecessor, convening in 1970-1971, 1976, 1977 and 1984-1986.

Statistics gathered by the ministry and its successors form an important part of the basic information required for government economic and social policy. A considerable volume of statistics are published, and are used extensively for a wide range of purposes.