David Walker, Director of Communications at the soon-to-be-abolished Audit Commission, has written an interesting article for Public Finance.

He examines the Government's idea of everyman as auditor, the do-it-yourself scheme which marries the Big Society to data transparency. The idea is that we're all supposed to scan Government spending figures as they appear on sites such as www.data.gov.uk, and pick up misdemeanours. As somebody who spends a good deal of time trying to do this with statistical data, I can promise it's not easy.

Eric Pickles (pictured) has been widely praised in Conservative circles for his plans to abolish the Audit Commission, originally invented (if my memory serves) by Michael Heseltine. The decision strikes me as short-sighted. The commission is now trying to reinvent itself as an employee-owned cooperative or mutual.

Walker makes several points of interest to statististicians. University Minister David Willetts, he reports, is fighting tooth and nail to get funding for the 2012 cohort study amid fears that it will succumb to the spending review. Social research generally could be facing a hard time, while Grant Shapps, Communities Minister, has indicated that there is no future for the Place Survey, a  biennial survey of people's views about the places where they live. (That may not cause too many tears: read here what Straight Statistics said about it).

Walker's conclusion is that this is a Government that cares relatively little about evidence, and while he's hardly an unbiased observer, working for a body facing the axe and married to Polly Toynbee of The Guardian, I think he may be right.