Author

Georgina Sturge

Georgina Sturge is a Statistician at the House of Commons Library. She is one of a team of 12 senior statisticians who advise the 650 Members of Parliament - from all parties - on the use of statistics and who carry out research for them. Whenever there is a debate in Parliament, they compile general background information for Members and answer their direct questions.

Georgina sees first-hand how data is used in the policy process. She sees the constant demand for it, how politicians are not able to take 'no data' for an answer, how statistics get warped and how nuance and uncertainty are overlooked. She sees how important decisions being made based on data that is really not robust enough for that purpose.

Her background is in quantitative public policy analysis. She trained in this at the United Nations University and Maastricht University Graduate School of Governance. Prior to working at Parliament, she worked as a primary researcher in the fields of global development, international migration, social security, poverty and inequality. She has helped design and carry out primary data collection through large-scale population surveys in several countries.

She is a member of the Office for National Statistics' expert advisory group on population and migration statistics and an advisor to the University of Oxford's Migration Observatory.