By Paul Giles
This article is both light-hearted and has a serious theme. When we’ve sold a policy of “Global Britain” as “outstripping our current ‘restrictive’ trade with the EU”, what sort of disguise(s) can we relay to the public to hide the outcome when it doesn’t do anything of the sort?
One example relates to the UK joining the CPTPP.
The Department of Trade produces, as we know, an impact assessment for each new non-EU FTA, each stating the estimated UK GDP impact from the new agreement and from when. For the CPTPP, the then Department for International Trade (DIT) published the well-known but tiny 0.08% gain in its April 2021 impact assessment.
This percentage was widely reported, including in parliament, unfortunately suffering some ridicule given its tiny size. Perhaps the DIT recognised this risk and had sought to minimise it by reporting the 0.08% only once in the impact assessment and even then burying an obvious headline figure in page 60 of a detailed 66-page document.
The situation was unfortunately about to get worse. The 2021 impact assessment was republished in July 2023 with revised values. It became apparent that the 0.08% had fallen to 0.066% or even to 0.06%. What do we do? Cunning plan needed! To all appearances, a decision was made to omit the percentage altogether.
If so, it worked for a while. Trouble was, though, that the supporting data – again buried, this time in revised impact assessment page 42, footnote 80 – could be used by a particularly determined and investigative public to calculate the new percentage.
Further, DBT impact assessments are subject to a regulator, the Regulatory Policy Committee. In their July 2023 pre-publication review of the impact assessment, the percentage’s omission was noted. It appears, however, that that was the end of the story, the impact assessment wasn’t revised and no subsequent correction was published. Freedom of Information requests why the omission wasn’t followed through received only dismissive replies.
We got away with it?! Phew!
Or did we? Unfortunately the gaff was blown, accidentally, by The Guardian in November 2023. The paper had noticed that page 74 of the OBR’s November spending review (supports the Chancellor’s budget) reported the 0.08% as 0.04%. What’s going on?! A series of FoI requests eventually determined that that 0.04% was incorrect, having been based on out-of-date data.
However … that revelation drew attention to what was the correct percentage: FoI requests referenced impact assessment page 42, footnote 80! One can only imagine the ridicule that might be engendered through publishing 0.066% in the wake of an already tiny 0.08%.
So, it appears, a process of FoI stalling lasting nearly a year followed. In the middle of it all, in early 2024, the House of Commons library published the gain as 0.06% (the difference from 0.066% being due to a since-corrected DBT typo). The situation then deteriorated into farce with the DBT, when made aware, retorting that “… our response still stands, that we did not produce the 0.06%. It was produced by the commons library so we would not be able to comment on their methodology.”
In fact, the HoC library had used the DBT’s own data and methodology in just calculating the percentage from the data shown on the above page 42, footnote 80, exactly as any enquirer could have done.
On 6 April 2025, that is nearly 18 months after the correct percentage was known to the DBT, the BBC’s Kuenssberg programme was still reporting the out of date 0.08%.
Finally, in May of this year, i.e. after nearly two and a half years of weaving and dodging, the then Minister of Trade, Sir Chris Bryant, published the 0.066% in official correspondence. He refused, though, to update the impact assessment in any way, saying “the information is available in the public domain to make this calculation.” Of course. And with luck no one else will be bold enough to try!
So hours and hours of taxpayer time across over two and a half years was wasted just because the publishers of an impact assessment chose to omit a single known and previously reported percentage. For what reason? It appears in deference to a determined desire to cover up, even to the smallest extent, for another Brexit failure?
© Paul Giles September 2026
