UK customs officials lost track of 4920 tonnes of Scottish salmon exports to the EU in the first month of Brexit.
MPs were shocked to hear evidence that salmon companies sent 5,000 tonnes of fish into the EU in January but HMRC recorded exports of only 80 tonnes for the period.
Hamish Macdonell, of the Scottish Salmon Producers Organisation, told MPs that the export figures for Scottish salmon published by HMRC were off by 97 per cent.
He told the Commons Scottish Affairs Committee: “There is a real issue over the validity of the export stats which have been put out by HMRC. The figures for January are not just wrong, they are very wrong.”
“It is very difficult I think for you as the committee, and for anybody else really to assess the impact of Brexit, when we don’t have a proper baseline of stats.”
Macdonell said that around 5000 tonnes of Scottish Salmon was exported to Europe in January. The Eurostat system, which records imports into the EU, shows 4700 tonnes of Scottish salmon being brought in. However HMRC’s data “shows we only sent 80”.
He said: “This is only 3 per cent of the amount that actually went there.”
Douglas Ross MP, the Scottish Tory leader who is a member of the committee, was astonished
He said: “This a massive burach, the whole thing is a mess.”
Ross asked Macdonnell: “That’s just an incredible statement that we’ve had from you. So you’re effectively saying that somehow HMRC have lost 97 per cent of the salmon that was exported to the European Union?”
Macdonnell said: “That has been the big problem, at the very least in January in terms of the collation of the figures.
“Something happened to do with the way the figures were collected and I don’t know who is to blame or where the problem has come from, but unless we can get a really proper baseline of how much fish is actually going into Europe, it’s impossible to tell what the impact of Brexit has been.”
Macdonnell added: “The February figures were much more as we would expect, but our concern is that we don’t know whether those February figures include some from January which have been pushed on, or whether they are the actual February figures and it was just a blip that happened in January.”
“Until we know for sure what’s happened, it’s really difficult then to make any judgments.”
Ross later cross-examined Scotland Office Minister David Duguid on the discrepancy who passed the blame onto HMRC officials.
Duguid said: “It’s being looked into by HMRC as we speak. I think we first became aware of this when the stats came out that reported on January exports."
“I think the latest figures are looking a bit more representative. It’s just the January figures for whatever reason, I think they were using a different methodology or a new methodology, but I’m really not that intimately involved with the investigation into it.”
Ross described the revelation as incredible.
He said: “Mr Macdonnell called it a blip, I think it’s a massive burach the whole thing’s a mess. We have to get to the bottom of it, but how confident can we be that the Feb figures are just catching up with the January figures.”
