Senior Government figures have been using the claim Scotland is home to 25 per cent of Europe’s offshore wind resource potential for years. However, a new report from the pro-union think-tank, These Islands, debunks the figure, with ministers now admitting the figure is false and “requires updating”.
The These Island report claims the real figure is closer to four to 6 per cent, and suggests the Scottish Government attempted to justify the claim with “obviously flawed calculations”.
The SNP’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford repeated the claim in the House of Commons last week during a debate on Scottish independence and the Scottish economy. In fact, the statistic was repeated three times by three different SNP MPs, including their deputy Westminster leader, in that debate.
It has also been used by constitution secretary, Angus Robertson, and the SNP’s spokesperson on energy, Stephen Flynn, as recently as October. The false claim was also included in the publication of the National Strategy for Economic Transformation, published by Kate Forbes in March.
Internally, civil servants have also known the figure has been unreliable. Internal Government correspondence published in the These Islands report includes officials stating in October 2020 the figure had “proved very difficult to source”. One official states the 25 per cent estimate has “never, to my knowledge, been properly sourced”. Another adds in January last year that “we did recycle those figures quite robotically without really checking them”. Read more: https://www.scotsman.com/…/snp-ministers-admit-key…
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