Question reference: S6W-15645
- Asked by: Alex Cole-Hamilton, MSP for Edinburgh Western, Scottish Liberal Democrats
- Date lodged: 9 March 2023
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Current status: Answered by Angus Robertson on 23 March 2023
Question
To ask the Scottish Government, further to the answer to the urgent question by Angus Robertson on 28 February 2023, whether the Cabinet Secretary for the Constitution, External Affairs and Culture plans to request the addition of a correction in the Official Report, within the 20 working day deadline of 28 March 2023, in relation to his statement that the claim that Scotland has 25% of Europe’s potential offshore wind resource “is now considered to be overtaken by developments”, in light of the UK Statistics Authority’s reported investigation and letter of 7 December 2022 stating that it was never accurate and that “it is good practice for elected representatives to correct their use of official statistics”.
Answer
The Scottish Government has accepted that this statistic relating to Scotland’s offshore wind potential needs revising. In response to the issues raised in the UK Statistics Authority’s letter, dated 7 December 2022, the Scottish Government has engaged directly with the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) setting out the steps that have been taken to ensure the statistic is not used further, and provided an update on the analytical work that is underway to produce a replacement statistic, which will be published in due course.