David Mundell, you might remember, is the Secretary of State for Scotland. He’s supposed to be “Scotland’s man in the cabinet” – though most people know him as Westminster’s man in Scotland.
We’ve not seen him around much recently – at least not since it was revealed that the UK Government had carried out an analysis on the impact of Brexit on Scotland. (It's really bad)
But there's one problem. Giving evidence to a Holyrood Committee just months ago, Mundell assured MSPs that no "Scotland-specific analysis" exists.
When that analysis then leaked to the press, our Scottish Secretary was nowhere to be found, and turned down several requests from the BBC to be interviewed. He went AWOL.
Ian Blackford, the SNP's Westminster leader, said at the time: “David Mundell's silence has been deafening in the face of such grim analysis, and there are questions to answer for the Scottish Secretary when he denied there was Scotland-specific analysis – which we now know to be false."
Today, Mundell has finally surfaced – and was asked to apologise for misleading the Scottish public on the existence of the analysis.
ITV’s Westminster correspondent Harry Smith put it to him: “You are on record as saying there is no analysis of Brexit impact on Scotland. Do you regret saying that now and are able now to apologise?
This was Mundell's reply: “I’ve said, in relation to the very specific questions, that I’ve been asked, I’ve given a factual answer. Clearly various types of analysis have been done, some documents have been leaked but they were not the complete picture and certainly the most recently leaked document didn’t reflect at all the Prime Minister’s preferred outcome. I’ve never disputed that there were challenges in terms of Brexit, but I want and prefer to focus on the opportunities because I’m very clear that such opportunities exist.”
WATCH: "I don't believe that it's inevitable that there will be an economic downside to Brexit" says Scottish Secretary @DavidMundellDCT. @smitharrytv asks him about those Brexit analysis papers that he said didn't exist. pic.twitter.com/1WQLnT4IyX
— Representing Border (@ITVBorderRB) February 22, 2018
So that’s cleared that up then. No apology, though. Thanks, David.
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