Government overstates value of the new ‘£1.5 billion’ UK-Japan trade deal

Upon announcing its new free trade agreement with Japan last week, the Department for International Trade (DIT) said: “Government analysis shows that a deal with Japan will deliver a £1.5 billion boost to the UK economy.”

The problem is that this is a predicted £1.5 billion boost without taking into account the trade deal with Japan struck by the European Union, which came into effect in February 2019 and has been the basis for UK-Japan trading ever since.

In fact, back in 2018 the DIT predicted the EU-Japan deal would deliver a boost to the UK economy of £2.6 billion after 15 years—£1.1 billion more than the post-Brexit deal struck last week.

The government acknowledged this in a second press release the following day.

It’s also worth pointing out that the two estimates aren’t necessarily comparable; one expert told us the estimated value of the EU’s deal with Japan was “what an economist would refer to as a ‘back of the envelope calculation’ or a ‘ballpark estimate’.”

Why Brexit forecasts are so tricky

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This week, we exposed crucial missing information in the government’s economic forecasts. We also analysed the UK’s coronavirus testing capacity, as part of the Government’s wider handling of the crisis.

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Recurring claim:

A claim that the Royal British Legion won't be selling poppies in certain areas to avoid “upsetting minorities” is circulating again.

The charity has confirmed this is incorrect. It was also incorrect when we saw it last year. And the year before that.

We tweeted about it here

FACT CHECK

It’s wrong to say just 0.1% of the people who catch Covid-19 in the UK will die

Several readers asked us to look into an opinion article on RT.com, a Russian state news site in English, which claimed that no more than about 0.1% of people who catch Covid-19 in the UK will die from it.

This is wrong.

Although it’s notoriously difficult to estimate the actual fatality rate, even rough calculations find it is likely to be far higher than 0.1%.

By looking at English data, it is clear that the death rate in this country must be much higher than 0.1%. The REACT-2 study—a large survey to check who had Covid-19 antibodies in their blood— calculated the maximum number of infections, and even these two figures would not give a death rate as low as 0.1%

Most scientists tend to produce rates between 0.5% and 1%, which would make it between five and ten times more deadly than this article claimed.

A closer look at Covid fatality

FACT CHECK

Contrary to Instagram, there wasn’t a plane crash at Gatwick Airport this week

A post on Instagram has claimed that a plane crash at Gatwick Airport on Wednesday killed three people and injured 127.

But this didn’t happen.

Besides the lack of reports in any mainstream news outlets, we know there haven’t been any reported plane crashes at Gatwick or any other UK airport in recent days or months.

The post claims this information is from “the English Minister of Health”. The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Matt Hancock, has said nothing of the sort.

The post uses an image of an Emirates aircraft which has clearly been edited into a picture of homes in the UK. The composite image does not seem to appear anywhere else online.

You can read more about how to spot misleading images online here

Why you should check before sharing

FACT CHECK

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