Britain's statistics watchdog said on Friday that market-sensitive data had been shared with hundreds of civil servants before its public release on Wednesday, in breach of official rules. The figures released on Wednesday showed a strong jump in employment twinned with a slowdown in wage growth which is a key metric for the Bank of England as it gauges when to raise interest rates.
"The substance of (the) release was shared by the Department for Work and Pensions with up to 300 people, through a social media network ... by someone who is not approved to have pre-release access to the statistics," the UK Statistics Authority wrote in a letter to the top civil servant at the DWP. "The Authority is deeply concerned about the impact that breaches relating to the unauthorised, widespread sharing of statistics before their publication may have on the trustworthiness of the UK's official statistics system," the statistics watchdog said.
The letter was made public by the UK Statistics Authority on Friday. Some financial market participants have expressed fears in the past that British official data may have been leaked before the scheduled release time, though definitive evidence of this has been hard to find.