Simon Cook

British pensioners are wealthier than ever. New figures from the Office for National Statistics, analysed by The Spectator’s data hub, show pensioner savings soaring whilst stagnating for those in work.  When the coalition government brought in the triple lock in 2011, it had a noble purpose – to protect pensioners from falling behind. The state pension had failed to keep pace with earnings, leaving many struggling. The ratchet effect – linking pensions to inflation, wage growth or 2.5 per cent, whichever was higher – promised to solve this. But almost 15 years later, has it delivered? And at what cost? Last week the ONS released its mammoth review of household wealth in Britain, with new data covering the pandemic years from 2020 to 2022.

One of the perennial scapegoats of the NHS is the patient who doesn’t turn up for their GP appointment. The headlines write themselves: millions of pounds wasted and other patients can’t get seen. But while missed GP visits have become a symbol of inefficiency, a far bigger – and often overlooked – problem lies within our hospitals. Every day, there are more than 300,000 outpatient appointments at hospitals, from MRI and breast scans to plaster casts and blood tests. And every day, 20,000 patients don’t turn up. On the surface the data looks like a success story for the NHS, with the percentage of appointments that patients miss gently falling over the last decade.

Are independent schools gaming the system to give a disproportionate advantage to their pupils in exams? That’s one possible inference from a new data release from Ofqual (the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation) on access arrangements for school exams. The release sheds light on adjustments designed so that students with disabilities aren’t disadvantaged in assessments. This might include, for example, papers in braille for a blind student or allowing a student with dyslexia to use a word processor. Giving a pupil 25 per cent extra time to complete an exam is the most common adjustment schools can provide.

Every year, the government weighs and measures children in Reception (ages 4-5) and Year 6 (ages 10-11). The National Child Measurement Programme isn’t always popular with parents but it gives us priceless public health information on hundreds of thousands of children. With such a robust data set, it gives us the ability to look at how children change over time and test some of the theories that get thrown around about childhood growth and obesity. During the summer, a report from the Food Foundation claimed that the average height of five year olds was falling and had been since 2013. Gordon Brown thundered that this was down to ‘food bank Britain’ and experts previously ascribed this to government austerity in the 2010s.  But is this actually true?

Some £22 billion of the £40 billion in tax rises the Chancellor announced this week will go straight to the NHS – an NHS that was already better funded than at any point in its history. It seems that no matter how many cash injections – huge or enormous – the health service gets, its problems continue. Could staff sickness be part of the problem? I’ve crunched the numbers for The Spectator’s data hub and this is what I found. The NHS is a notoriously stressful place to work and The Spectator’s analysis of sickness data for hospital and community services staff shows the toll it takes – as well as the huge variation between different roles.

The good news picture continues to build for Omicron. Late on New Year’s Eve, the UK Health Security Agency released an update to their estimates for vaccine effectiveness, and for the first time they’ve been able to give a picture of how well vaccines protect against hospitalisation from Omicron. The figure is strong: 88 per cent. This bodes well for a country with the highest booster uptake in Europe (94 per cent of over-60s are now boosted) and the study should offer reassurance ahead of Monday’s decision on whether to impose more restrictions on England. First of all, this chart shows protection against symptomatic disease. Oxford/AstraZeneca is ineffective against Omicron for symptomatic infection.

Man makes Covid predictions and God laughs. Yet with the stakes this high in Britain, every bit of real-world data is useful. That’s why South Africa is so important: it’s a country with a well-digitised healthcare sector that we have to thank for sequencing the Omicron variant, and has been first to experience the impact. That’s why its figures, released daily, are being watched so eagerly world over. Right now, there are two questions: is Omicron now falling? And if so, what conclusions can we draw? The epicentre is Gauteng province: home to Johannesburg, Pretoria and about a quarter of South Africans.