Obituary: Michael John Mackey Erritt, 1931-2002

Abstract

John Erritt spent his early years in Dar es Salaam where his father worked as an engineer in the colonial service. He was educated at St Andrew's College in Dublin during World War II before rejoining his parents in East Africa and completing his secondary education at the Prince of Wales School in Nairobi. The family subsequently returned to Britain where John next attended Queen's University Belfast, graduating in 1953. He stayed in Belfast, working as a research officer for the Science and Industry Committee under Charles Carter until joining the Central Statistical Office in London in 1955. There he began work with Leonard Nicholson on the first uses of the Family Expenditure Survey to provide analyses of the effects of public finance (taxes and benefits, both direct and indirect) on the redistribution of income. These analyses were to enable policy makers to take decisions about taxes and public expenditure with some knowledge of their incidence on different income groups, and the basic methodology is still in use today for that purpose. One important insight revealed by the analyses, which was not perhaps generally understood at that time, was that the indirect benefits received by lower income groups, through public expendit- ure on services such as education and health care, were more significant in reducing income inequalities than the effects of direct taxes on higher income groups. The results of the work were first presented at the 1961 meeting of the International Association for Research in Income and Wealth (Income and Wealth series X, 1964) and published in Economic Trends for November 1962 (anonymously, as at that time it was generally not the practice to attribute official articles to named authors). One notable feature of the early work on redistribution of income analyses was the extensive use of the computing facilities at the National Physical Laboratory. This was largely the work of Philip Redfern, Alan Croxford and around a million punched cards which were processed to produce the tax or benefit content of each item for each type of household. This may have been the first serious use of computers for analysis by official statisticians. By the early 1960s John had moved on to the Board of Trade, which was followed by a spell at the Treasury, a further period at the Board of Trade and then promotion to Chief Statistician at the Inland Revenue in 1968 under Toby Paine. Senior posts at the Department of Industry and Trade, Ministry of Defence (where he was Director of Statistics from 1981 to 1985) and Central Statistical Office followed. He retired as Deputy Director of the Central Statistical Office in 1991 having been awarded the well-deserved honour of Companion of the Order of the Bath. His career in government statistics covered a period in which a great many changes occurred. The UK's decentralized system had considerable strengths in which the main role of the statistician was seen as ensuring that statistical methods were brought to bear on the work of Government in an efficient and effective way. John had the right combination of personal and professional qualities to do this well, as well as drawing on the experience gained in a wide variety of subject-matter areas to provide an invaluable contribution to the senior management of the Government Statistical Service in the latter part of his career. He was always mindful of the importance of strong interdepartmental co-operation, not only to provide the service that is needed by the Government of the day, but also to fulfil the wider demands for what we now refer to as national statistics. When it became clear that the decentralized system could no longer deliver a satisfactory statistical service to the Government or the nation he played an important part in the work leading up to the major reorganizations of the 1990s. In his fight against cancer John Erritt exhibited the same qualities of calm courage and practical common sense that made him such a valued friend and colleague. The many people at his service of thanksgiving in October 2002 were all reminded of the numerous occasions when his kindness, generosity and good humour had enriched their lives.