Michael Gove s Cabinet Office was rebuked for using unverifiable data to dispute claims of UK exports plummeting after Brexit MICHAEL Gove has been accused of wilfully ignoring the facts in an effort to avoid accountability for the “long-term damage” caused by Brexit. The SNP said that the Cabinet Office minister and his Tory colleagues were “sticking their heads in the sand” rather than face up to the realities of Brexit’s impact on the UK economy. The news comes after a newly released report found that Brexit and Covid had combined to cause the UK to lose market share in key global economies.
Professor Leitch made the claims at the Scottish Government s daily COVID-19 briefing on February 26 with Health Secretary Jeane Freeman.
Mr Leitch was responding to comments made by Professor Mark Woolhouse who said Scotland did not come close to eliminating COVID last summer as had been claimed by the Scottish Government.
The Professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the University of Edinburgh had said earlier this month: “Scotland was not close to elimination at any stage during this epidemic.”
Responding to Professor Woolhouse, Mr Leitch added: “We didn t eliminate the virus but we maximally suppressed it. We had a month with nobody dying of COVID, three months after a lockdown.
3.1 Methodology
E&W statistics presented in this dataset are from the monthly survey of milk availability and usage by dairies in England and Wales. It is a voluntary sample survey with the largest 34 dairies sampled monthly and an additional 20 dairies surveyed quarterly (the quarterly data is apportioned into monthly data for the relevant 3 month period).
These 54 dairies cover approximately 90% of the total milk available for processing (based on the long term comparison with RPA volume data) so the survey data is raised to 100% of milk delivered to dairies in England and Wales.
UK results are derived as a sum of the survey results from England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Similar surveys are run by the Scottish Government and the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) for Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland results are available at the Daera milk-ultilisation statistics webpage. Data for Scotland are not available separately due to confid
Last modified on Sun 7 Mar 2021 00.11 EST
The Cabinet Office run by Michael Gove has been officially reprimanded by the UK Statistics Authority for using unpublished and unverifiable data in an attempt to deny that Brexit had caused a massive fall in volumes of trade through British ports.
Observer on 7 February that cited a survey by the Road Haulage Association (RHA) of its international members showing export volumes had dropped by a staggering 68% in January through British ports and the Channel Tunnel.
The RHA wrote to Gove at the time saying: “Intelligence that we are collecting on an ongoing basis from international hauliers suggests that loads to the EU have reduced by as much as 68%, which can also be evidenced by the increased number of empty trailers which are not currently considered in the statistics.”