Politics Live

At the SNP's election campaign launch last week, Nicola Sturgeon said that Scotland leaving the customs union and single market “will cost every person in Scotland £1,600.”

This is another one of those claims that's based on a real figure, but one that's had the uncertainty stripped away... and has then been stretched to the point of being misleading. 

It’s based on Scottish government analysis which estimates that post-Brexit, if the UK is outside of the EU’s single market and customs union, Scotland’s GDP would be 6% lower in 2030 than it would have been had the UK stayed in the EU. That doesn’t mean the economy shrinks by 6%—just that it’s expected to grow by 6% less than it otherwise would have. And even that figure is pretty uncertain.

The £1,600 per person then comes from simply dividing that amount of GDP reduction by the population of Scotland.

But you can’t say that slower GDP growth will cost every person £1,600: GDP isn’t evenly distributed among everybody, and personal income is affected by a lot more than GDP.

We've written this up in a full-length fact check, which you can read here.

In recent days the Labour party's web systems have been hit by what the party described as a “sophisticated and large scale cyber attack”. But what is a DDoS attack, and exactly how sophisticated is it? We asked Professor Alan Woodward of the Surrey Centre for Cyber Security:

“I was surprised to see Labour describe this attack as sophisticated. DDoS attacks are as old as the hills and you can buy them off the shelf: little knowledge required. Criminals providing crime as a service often have DDoS attacks as their entry level offering.

“Any high profile site should expect a DDoS attack and be prepared for it. There are many service providers who will help protect against such an attack.”

You can read our full article here.