Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will be making representations to the government of the US about reports of the elimination and non-disclosure of scientific data for the Arctic region; and whether they will make representations to UN agencies about the maintenance of this data collection as the Arctic climate changes.

Whilst this Government does recognise that countries will make their own judgments about how best to contribute to and maintain the scientific record, we fully acknowledge the importance of the integrity of the scientific record. We place significant value on science and evidence-based policy making and we will continue to advocate transparent and open scientific data sharing with our international partners.

At present, it would not be appropriate to comment on specifics without further evidence of the reports being made. The UK and the US do however have a long and successful history of working together on a wide range of scientific and technical disciplines. The UK-US scientific partnership is one of the world’s strongest - nearly 30% of the UK’s international co-authored papers are with the US, producing an impact 50% higher than the UK research base average. We expect this collaboration to continue long into the future.