Michael Gove, a leading Brexit campaigner, has defended the Vote Leave slogan that claimed leaving the EU would free up £350m a week for the NHS, describing the figure as 'robust' and arguing it cannot yet be proven false because the UK has not left the EU.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Gove also renewed his argument that economic experts should be challenged, expanding on his controversial claim that the public had 'had enough of experts'. He cited an academic study suggesting experts are prone to groupthink and pointed to past errors by the IMF, including on the euro and the EU referendum.
Gove said: 'Sometimes we're invited to take experts as though they were prophets... I think the right response in a democracy to assertions made by experts is to say show us the evidence, show us the facts.' He agreed, however, that experts should not be dismissed out of hand, warning against 'iconoclasm and a distaste for elites'.
Stephanie Flanders, a former BBC economics editor, agreed that economists have a long record of being wrong on forecasts, but expressed concerns about expertise being dismissed. She said Gove had 'captured something' with his phrase.
Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, criticised Gove's defence of the £350m claim on Twitter. Gove also clashed with economists Jonathan Portes and David Blanchflower over a Change Britain report suggesting leaving the single market could save £450m a week, a figure dismissed as 'junk' by Portes.
