David Layton

The Honourable David Layton MBE (5 July 1914 – 31 July 2009) was a British economist and industrial relations specialist who in 1966 founded Incomes Data Services.

Life A younger son of Walter Layton, 1st Baron Layton (1884–1966), by his marriage to Eleanor Dorothea Osmaston, a daughter of Francis Plumptre Beresford Osmaston, a barrister, Layton had four sisters and two brothers. He was educated at Gresham's School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he earned a degree in economics and a blue for field hockey. He was an executive of the National Coal Board from 1946 to 1963, taking a break from that to serve on the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, in 1952–1953. After leaving the National Coal Board, Layton spent a year with the Acton Society Trust, in his own words "preparing a study of the shortcomings of published information on wages and conditions of work", which was published in 1965. At the 1964 general election, he stood as the Liberal parliamentary candidate for Battersea South, coming third, as expected, to the Labour and Conservative candidates. He did not stand again, but nevertheless kept up close links with the Liberal Party.

During a miners' strike in February 1974, Layton pointed out that figures being used to compare miners' pay with other workers' pay were flawed, as the National Coal Board was including holiday pay in earnings for miners, but not in the figures for the pay of others. The front page of the London Evening Standard called Layton "the man who did his sums", and the revelation had a large impact on the dispute. with whom he had three children, Jonathan (now 4th Baron Layton), Mark and Hilary. They separated in 1966. He married secondly Joy Parkinson in 1972.

Publications David Layton, Wages — fog or facts? A case for independent collection and analysis of information on incomes (Institute of Economic Affairs, 1965)