UK government misused trade data in Brexit rebuttal, Labour claims

Britain’s Labour opposition party have questioned the legality of the government’s use of trade figures to hit back at Brexit concerns voiced by industry groups.  

Shadow Trade Secretary Emily Thornberry said in a letter trade minister Greg Hands, seen by POLITICO, that she was “struggling” to see how the government’s rebuttal of figures from the Road Haulage Association was “consistent with what is legally permitted” under the Trade (Disclosure of Information) Act 2020. That legislation was rushed through parliament in a single day in December because the government said it was a critical tool to monitor the impact of Brexit.

The move adds fuel to a spat over Brexit trade figures that has lingered since early February. Last week, the UK Statistics Authority, an independent data watchdog, reprimanded the government for a lack of transparency after it issued a rebuttal of survey data from the hauliers’ body without making its own figures public.

Trade statistics have been mired in controversy in the U.K. since the Brexit referendum in 2016. The data has become highly politicized, used by those for and against leaving the EU to support contradictory arguments about the importance of EU-U.K. trade. 

On February 7, the RHA published figures based on a survey that suggested exports traveling through British ports to the EU had fallen by more than two-thirds (68 percent). The Cabinet Office issued a rebuttal blog post in response, marked as a “News story.” It used unpublished, and therefore unverifiable, figures to suggest the RHA’s survey data was incorrect.

After the UK Statistics Authority issued their reprimand, the Cabinet Office issued a note explaining where their unofficial figures had come from on Wednesday, including references to figures from November. The U.K.’s source for official data is the independent Office for National Statistics (ONS).

This note, Thornberry’s letter states, suggests the government is using trade data legislation passed in December, retrospectively, and hence outside the law’s scope. The legislation was rushed through parliament with the acquiescence of opposition parties to avoid critical Brexit disruption, said Thornberry, who contends that the government is now misusing it.

Thornberry’s letter, addressed to Trade Minister Greg Hands, asked: “… do you feel that the use of the Act’s provisions by Cabinet Office Ministers to engage in a rebuttal operation against the Road Haulage Association is consistent with your own public and private statements about the purpose of the Act, and about the urgency of securing its passage in December?”

The Cabinet Office used sensitive data from HMRC that’s used to monitor the live movement of goods through ports in its rebuttal blog post. This included real-time ferry manifest data and historical data. Labour says the historical use of the data may not be consistent with the legislation.

This data, which formed the basis for the Cabinet Office rebuttal, has still not been published in full, and, according to people familiar with the matter, it is unlikely that it will be in the future, as it is too commercially sensitive. The Cabinet Office’s explanatory note also aggregates some data used for a chart due to its commercially sensitive nature.

Official statistics published Friday, separate from those used by the Cabinet Office, showed a sharp fall in imports and exports to the EU. The drop in exports (40.7 percent), was not as severe as the RHA data suggested. However, the ONS figures came with significant caveats due to Brexit-related stockpiling in the lead-up to January and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In what appeared to be another public statement based on data which is not in the public domain, David Frost, the official who led the negotiation of the U.K.’s post-Brexit trade deal with the EU tweeted in response to official statistics: “The latest information indicates that overall freight volumes between the UK and the EU have been back to their normal levels for over a month now, ie since the start of February.”

When asked for comment, a Cabinet Office spokesperson referred back to the explanatory note published this week. The Department for Trade did not respond to a request for comment.

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