Chair, Electoral Commission

Policy Leaders Fellow Alumnus, Centre for Science and Policy

John Pullinger CB was appointed Chair of the Electoral Commission in March 2021. He was formerly UK National Statistician, the Head of the Government Statistical Service, and the Chief Executive of the UK Statistics Authority. As such, he held executive responsibility for the Office for National Statistics.

He started his career as an assistant statistician at the Department of Trade and Industry, then moved to the Department of the Environment, taking responsibility for statistics on local government revenues. Following this he took up a post at the Office of Manpower Economics.

In 1992 he became Director of Policy and Planning at the then Central Statistical Office and in this role he became project manager for the creation of the Office for National Statistics. He later became a member of the Office for National Statistics management board. As an established Head of Profession for statistics, he chaired many of the Government Statistical Service committees and played an active role in the then Government’s Accountability and Incentives project. He went on to lead the neighbourhood statistics programme and was actively involved in the developments of statistical governance which lead to the creation of National Statistics and the Statistics Commission in 2000. In 2004, John became the 14th Librarian of the House of Commons.

John Pullinger is a former President of the Royal Statistical Society. He is a chartered statistician and was the inaugural chair of the Royal Statistical Society’s “getstats” campaign. He was appointed as a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in the 2014 New Year’s Honours for services to Parliament and to the community through Great Culverden Park Ltd.