HOW accurate and useful are the Scottish Government’s GERS figures?
The annual release of Scotland’s spending, earnings and its notional deficit has, in recent years, resulted in a yearly stooshie.
Next Tuesday, MSPs on Holyrood’s Economy, Jobs and Fair Work Committee will hold a round-table with prominent economists, including Margaret Cuthbert and Richard Murphy, as they probe figures and the overall quality of Scotland’s economic data.
This year’s GERS figures showed the deficit had been cut to £13.3 billion over the past year, down from £14.8bn in the previous year but, at 8.3 per cent as a share of Scotland’s GDP, more than three times that of the UK’s 2.4 per cent.
Murphy, Professor of Practice in International Political Economy at City University London, told the Sunday Herald “GERS data is what I technically describe as crap” with much of the data needed to calculate GDP accurately unavailable. In his submission to the Holyrood committee, Murphy says the data has “limited accuracy or reliability at best and with regard to the Scottish deficit is potentially misleading and inaccurate”.
Cuthbert described Murphy’s comment to the newspaper paper as “appalling and verging on ignorant”.
She said the GERS data continues to improve, but that it’s time to “assess what the Scottish Parliament needs as its powers continue to grow.”
Cuthbert says there needs to be more transparency in how non-departmental public bodies compile the data they publish.
She asked: What checks are being made by the relevant central government departments on the quality of the data and its definitional fit with main government statistical data regarding the economy?”
Cuthbert also suggests there are departments within the Scottish Government who “produce statistics where it is difficult to understand what the statistics actually mean; where it is difficult to get a handle from the staff themselves on the meaning of the data”.
John McLaren, of Glasgow University’s Centre for Public Policy for Regions, says the economic data “is above average for a region but significantly below that which would normally apply for a country.”
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