osr

name	osr
description	Query the Office for Statistics Regulation — the independent regulatory arm of the UK Statistics Authority that polices the production and use of official statistics. Wraps OSR's RSS feed and HTML page fetcher for formal censures, case studies, review reports, and guidance. Use when the question is about whether a Minister or MP has been censured for misusing statistics, accreditation status of National Statistics, or compliance casework. OSR is the body that publicly rebukes politicians for citing dodgy numbers; pair with `hansard` for what was said and `interests` / `members` for who said it.
license	Open Government Licence v3.0 (Crown copyright, UK Statistics Authority)
metadata	{"facility":"osr","cli-alias":"osr","base-url":"https://osr.statisticsauthority.gov.uk","provenance":{"tier":3,"operator":"Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR)","service":"osr.statisticsauthority.gov.uk","upstream-data":"OSR's own published casework + censures + review reports + Code of Practice for Statistics guidance","citation-short":"via Office for Statistics Regulation","citation-formal":"Office for Statistics Regulation, retrieved {date}, OGL v3.0","confidence":"authoritative","confidence-notes":"Authoritative for OSR's own findings. OSR is part of the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA), itself a non-ministerial department reporting directly to Parliament under the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007."}}

Office for Statistics Regulation

Base URL: https://osr.statisticsauthority.gov.uk

OSR is the part of the UK Statistics Authority that regulates the production and the use of official statistics. Its public-facing casework typically falls in three categories:

1. Censures of Ministers and MPs when a public statement misrepresents official numbers (e.g. claims about NHS spending, crime, employment).
2. National Statistics accreditation — granting, suspending, or restoring the "National Statistics" badge on a publication under the Code of Practice for Statistics.
3. Compliance reviews of whole statistical series (e.g. housing starts, energy efficiency stats, immigration).

There is no documented JSON API. The library wraps:

Surface	Path	What
All-publications RSS	/feed/	Recent censures, case studies, reports, guidance
HTML page	/{path}	Any OSR page (/news/..., /publication/..., /casework/...)

CLI

parl osr feed --text                                       # all OSR publications
parl osr page "news/letter-to-the-prime-minister-on-..." --text
parl osr page "publication/review-of-..." --text

Joins to Parliament

• OSR censure of an MP / Minister → look up the offending statement in hansard. The OSR letter is usually addressed to the named member; cite both the OSR letter and the Hansard column.
• OSR review of a stats series → if the series underpins a policy in a Bill, pair with bills. The Bill's Impact Assessment will typically rely on those statistics.
• Code of Practice → Library briefing: Commons Library briefings sometimes prompt OSR involvement when an MP queries a number; cross-reference with library-feeds.

Caveats

• HTML-only. OSR publishes a mix of letters (PDF), short case studies (HTML), and longer review reports (PDF). Extract named persons / departments from the HTML body or the linked PDF.
• "Censure" is informal language. OSR's formal output is a letter or a case study; politically the effect of a public OSR letter is a censure but the word doesn't always appear in the document title.
• UKSA vs OSR. UKSA is the wider body (with the Board and the National Statistician); OSR is its independent regulatory arm. Cite OSR specifically for regulatory output, UKSA for governance decisions.

Provenance to cite

Tier 3 — third-party (OSR / UK Statistics Authority), authoritative.

• Inline cite: "(via Office for Statistics Regulation)" — once per paragraph.
• For formal output, name the letter / publication and the addressee: "OSR letter from Sir Robert Chote to the Prime Minister on NHS spending, {date}". Each OSR page is permalinked under /news/ or /publication/.
• OSR sits inside UKSA; don't say "Parliament censured X" — say "OSR wrote to X" (the regulator is independent of Parliament even though UKSA reports to Parliament).
• See ../../docs/provenance.md.