So the cat’s finally out of the bag – and it’s a big, fat smiling Cheshire one at that.

Everyone will welcome the news that the government has decided one of the measures the effect of policies is how happy it makes voters.

Happiness now ranks with alongside money and human rights as a key performance indicator when assessing the impact of policy.

Prime Minister David Cameron has directly ordered the Whitehall mandarins that keeping everyone happy is a top priority.

To push the point home, the Office of National Statistics has issued the first detailed survey of national wellbeing.

The report says: “To measure national well-being it is important not just to rely on traditional indicators of economic progress, but also to collect information from people themselves about how they assess their own well-being. Individual or subjective well-being estimates are an important addition to existing official statistics and this research report presents experimental statistics looking at the levels of subjective well-being in the British population during April to August 2011.”

The findings were distilled from the answers to four questions-

How satisfied are you with your life? – The majority (76%) of adults aged over 16 were estimated to have a rating of 7 out 10 or more. Just 8% were estimated to be below 5 out of 10.

To what extent do you think the things you do in your life are worthwhile? – 78% of adults rated this at 7 or more out of 10. About 6% gave a rating below 5 out of 10.

How happy did you feel yesterday? – 73% of adults responded with 7 or more out of 10.

How anxious did you feel yesterday? – 57% had ratings of less than 4 out of 10, while 27% of people had ratings above 5 out of 10 that were closer to 10, feeling ‘completely anxious’ than 0, ‘not at all anxious’.

If you are not happy with the results, keep smiling anyway because the statisticians are probably having a laugh.