Question to the Department for International Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, for what reason the figure of 175 published in her Department’s Annual Report and Accounts 2019/20 on 16 July 2020 for the number of market access barriers fully or partly resolved in financial year 2019-20 is different to the revised figure of 181 published in Market Access Barrier Statistics: financial year 2020-21 on 25 November 2021 for the same figure.

Barriers reported refers to the number of cases identified as being registered on the Digital Market Access Service (DMAS) over a given time period, based on the data at the point of extraction. DMAS is an operational database used by government officials to assist in the removal of market access barriers.

As such, entries on DMAS are subject to ongoing revision to reflect activity and regular system administration updates are made to make sure the database is kept accurate. This can involve archiving cases established to be duplicates or identified not to be market access barriers after further investigation. This means that an extract taken from the live database on different occasions covering the same time period can return different figures.

Figures published in the Department for International Trade (DIT) Annual Report and Accounts (ARA) 2019-20 on the number of market access resolved barriers in that financial year were based on the number of barriers reported and resolved within the year. For the DIT ARA 2020-21, this measure was changed to include barriers resolved regardless of when they were reported.

This makes sure the full range of resolution activity is measured, rather than only barrier resolutions soon after identification and reflects that, for some barriers, resolution will take longer because of the complexities involved.