Claims that official statistics have misrepresented the performance of the construction industry are unfounded, the Office for National Statistics said today.

The building industry and the Office for National Statistics have started chucking bricks at each other.

This isn’t a happy time to be involved with the production of national economic statistics.

“Services growth in December pushes up GDP estimate” was the headline on ONS’s press release announcing last week’s revised estimate of GDP in the final quarter of 2009.

ONS has defended its estimates of GDP growth, which have been attacked by economists as excessively gloomy.

New Year’s Day, and the end of a decade, is as good a time as any to look at the economy’s vital signs.