A traditional yet innovative economic statistician, Lawrence (Laurie) Berman, who has died aged 95, was Director of Statistics at the Department of Trade and Industry from 1972 to 1983.

A prominent government statistician for 31 years, he was equally at home with economists and statisticians, and could distinguish a bad statistic from a good one.

Berman was born in Hammersmith, west London, into a modest family, the second son of a tobacconist.

He attended St Clement Danes Grammar School with which he was evacuated to Oxford when he was 11.

He lived with a family there and learned to swim, ride a bike and play chess. One day when he was back in London doing a maths exam, his daughter Caroline Turner recalls, a Luftwaffe V-1 “doodlebug” landed on the playground.

The children were told to hide under their desks, and ink mysteriously spilled onto his whole paper so it couldn’t be marked.

He had been placed a year ahead in school, so finished his Higher School Certificate early. He left aged 16, and worked in Lloyds bank in London’s Fleet Street.

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Lawrence Berman (Photo: handout)

The bank manager was so impressed that he advised his father to send him to university.

He then studied at the London School of Economics where, in 1947 at the age of 19, he gained a first-class honours degree in Economics and Statistics. He was proud of being the first member of his family to go to university.

Although Berman was called up for National Service, having a first-class degree invalidated that.

He was put on the Professional and Scientific Register, and then worked on a postgraduate project at the LSE Research Division with Professor Tibor Barna, who later moved to Oxford. Berman followed him there and continued working as a research assistant.

When Barna went to the UN in Geneva, he invited Lawrence, then 21, to join him in the Economic Research Division for Europe. He worked at the Palais des Nations, right under the flag at the front of the League of Nations Building until February 1952.

Berman bought a Morris Minor car in Geneva, despite not yet having learnt to drive. He had to ask someone else to back it out of the garage, but then managed to drive it home to London, where he took his driving test!

Keen to join the civil service in London, he next worked at the Central Statistical Office (now the Office of National Statistics) as an assistant statistician in 1952.
During his 20 years there he was mainly involved in national accounts. He was the first editor of the National Income Blue Book and held that post until 1960.

He was responsible for the development of quarterly national accounts, flow of funds accounts, financial statistics and input output tables.

Berman met his wife to be, Kathleen Lewis, a talented portrait artist, at a dance organised by Shepherds Bush Synagogue. She was selling raffle tickets, spotted him, and sold him a ticket. They married in 1954, and had two children – Richard then Caroline.

They moved from Chiswick to Edgware in 1959, where Berman remained for the rest of his life.

For many years he worked with the Treasury preparing both short-term and medium-term economic forecasts before the advent of computers, slide rules and calculating machines were the tools of the trade.

One achievement was to devise the “public sector borrowing requirement”, which provided the statistical link between the traditional Exchequer accounts and the newer national income accounts.
Berman also produced the first official estimates of the money supply. His contribution to the development of national accounts led to an invitation to join the International Association of Income and Wealth.

In 1968, not long after Claus Moser took over and expanded the CSO, Berman was promoted to assistant director. In 1972 he moved on promotion to become Director of Statistics at the Department of Trade and Industry. At 42 he was at that time the youngest deputy secretary (grade 2) in the civil service.

There he developed and interpreted a wide range of economic statistics. He notably persuaded ministers to permit value-added tax information to be used for statistical purposes.

This virtually eliminated the need for large scale and complex statistical inquiries involving much bureaucracy.

After 1979 came retrenchment. The government’s appetite for statistics was reduced and the number of staff it employed was cut. The three deputy secretaries in the Government Statistical Service were eliminated and Berman took early retirement in 1983.

Later, he and Kathleen, went to Barbados, where he worked as a statistical consultant to the Caribbean Tourism and Research Association.

Back in England he carried out several consultancy assignments but then decided to spend more time with his family and travel. He was perhaps unlucky not to achieve the very top job in the Government Statistical Service.

This may have been because he was too robust in defending the integrity of his figures when dealing with one or two top administrators and ministers. As a top civil servant, he received the Companion of the Bath honour from the late Queen at Buckingham Palace in 1975.

Berman was a member of Yeshurun synagogue in Edgware for more than 60 years. He was famous for wearing colourful bow ties.
Berman was devastated when Kathleen pre-deceased him at the age of 61 from cancer in 1996.

However, a few years later he met Deirdre, who made him happy and kept him extremely busy for the next 20 years or so.

He is survived by his children, Richard Berman and Caroline Turner, his grandchildren, Jacob, Camilla and Gabriel Turner and Charlotte and Theo Berman, and his great grandchildren Raphael, Miriam and Roni.

Lawrence Berman, born May 15, 1928. Died, May 16, 2023