Question to the Scotland Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, what the reasons are for his Department providing information to the public which describes trade within the UK domestic market as an export.

Scottish Government statistics have revealed that trade with the rest of the UK is worth over four times more to Scotland than its trade with the rest of the EU. The UK Government has sought to inform people about the important trading relationship that Scotland and the rest of the UK enjoy, and the relative scale of Scotland’s trade with the rest of the UK as compared to its trade with the rest of the EU. The term ‘exports’ to describe this intra-UK trade is used in the Scottish Government’s own publication, “Export Statistics Scotland 2015”, which is based on the results of the Global Connections Survey.