Afternoon summary
- A total of 84,000 EU migrant families on tax credits would have been affected by David Cameron’s “emergency brake” if it had been introduced four years ago, official figures reveal. The number – released by HMRC six months after it was first requested by the Guardian – appears far smaller than had been suggested by the prime minister in previous public statements justifying the plan.
- Lord Rose, chair of the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign, has said that his side will win the EU referendum campaign by “a substantial margin”. (See 3.26pm.) He made the claim in a lunch to the press gallery. Matthew Elliott, chief executive of Vote Leave, said Rose was out of touch with public sentiment. Elliott said:
The cosy establishment club doesn’t want change because it does well out of the status quo. But the people want change and to take back control. It’s a David vs Goliath struggle - but we all know who ended up winning that one.
Asked about claims that boasting like this could be counterproductive (see 3.28pm), a campaign source said that voters wanted to identify with a winning side - but also that Rose was not a politician, and that he was inclined just to speak his mind when answering questions.
- John Baron, a Conservative MP, has said that parliament will become “nothing more than just a chamber of Europe, a council chamber” if it does not assert its sovereignty. He was speaking in a debate on a backbench motion saying parliament should have the power to block unwanted EU legislation. The debate was dominated by Conservative backbenchers known for their opposition to Britain’s membership of the EU.
- An opinion poll in Scotland suggests the SNP still have a huge lead over Labour ahead of the Scottish elections in May. The TNS-BRMB survey shows the SNP on 57% in the constituency section, Labour on 21% and the Tories 17%. In the regional list section the SNP is on 52%, Labour 19% and the Tories 17%. The SNP’s Derek Mackay said:
Labour woes are continuing in the face of the party’s rank incompetence north and south of the border – and with their plans to shift the burden of Tory austerity onto workers by hiking taxes on the low paid, their situation is only going to get worse.
- The EU’s top court has told the home secretary, Theresa May, she cannot deport a Moroccan mother with a British-born son simply because she has a criminal record.The advocate general of the European court of justice has told May that it will be contrary to EU law if she automatically expels or refuses a residence permit to a non-EU national with a criminal record who is a parent of a child who is an EU citizen. As Alan Travis reports, the preliminary opinion of the court’s advocate general, Maciej Szpunar, however, adds that while, in principle, deportation in such cases was contrary to EU law, he agreed with UK representations that there should be exceptional circumstances when a convicted criminal could still be deported depending on the seriousness of the offences involved.
That’s all from me for today.
Thanks for the comments.
Updated
Here is the Guardian’s Politics Weekly podcast, featuring Alberto Nardelli, Anne Perkins, Rafael Behr, Dan Roberts and Hugh Muir talking about the Iowa caucuses and the EU renegotiation.
The Out campaigns are continuing their circular firing squad act. Arron Banks, the co-founder of Leave.EU, has just put out this statement.
Leave.EU initially welcomed the news that Vote Leave wanted to call a truce and work together. However, it is now crystal clear that they have zero interest in joining forces. Cummings, Elliott and their MPs have now been offered the the chance to form a united front five times, and on each occasion our overtures have been rejected outright.
For Cummings and Elliot this is a business, not a cause. Danny Finkelstein’s excellent analysis of the situation is sadly correct.
I am angry that this group is jeopardising this historic referendum through their dishonesty and unwillingness to embrace and work with all the Brexit groups. It’s time they and the Conservative MPs associated with them decide if it’s their career or their country which matters most to them, and then they can either fit in with the rest of us or quite frankly disappear.
Banks seems to be referring to the announcement this week about Dominic Cummings and Matthew Elliott stepping down from the Vote Leave board. Cummings, an abrasive character, was seen as an obstacle to a merger between Vote Leave and Leave.EU and, after it was announced that Cummings and Elliott were leaving the board, Banks repeated his offer to merge the two organisations.
But Banks himself is not Mr Diplomacy. This is what he tweeted about the news that Lord Lawson was becoming chair of Vote Leave.
Mr ERM himself ! Could be this be any more of a Tory front ( with nod to friends ) https://t.co/tu6uxHqJ0F
— Arron Banks (@Arron_banks) February 3, 2016
In his statement Banks is referring to this column by Daniel Finkelstein in the Times (paywall). In it, Finkelstein described the alternative visions for Britain outside the EU put forward by Vote Leave, which is backed by the Ukip MP Douglas Carswell, and Leave.EU, which is backed by mainstream Ukippers, including Nigel Farage.
The vision of Carswell and his allies, including the Tory MEP Dan Hannan, is that we need to leave the EU because it is out of date. We must be an open, free market, free trading nation, linked to the English speaking world, powerful in global trading bodies. The Leave message should be optimistic, daring and broad ...
Voters are concerned about Britain losing control of its own policy, but when asked what aspect of control they are most concerned about, overwhelmingly they answer immigration. Their grasp of what the EU’s other powers and structures may be is, let’s just say, weak.
Yet many of Carswell’s Vote Leave allies don’t actually believe in strong immigration controls at all. They are free marketeers who see the benefits of free movement of workers ...
This is the great advantage of the Leave.EU campaign. It appreciates the centrality of immigration to the case for quitting. It has a very different outlook from the Carswell-Hannan group. It is much more pessimistic, much more focused on what Britain has lost and stands to lose. It doesn’t want some new English-speaking, free market internationalism. How much better would that be than the EU? It thinks the EU is too newfangled, not too modern.
Updated
I’ve asked Number 10 to elaborate on why Erna Solderg, the Norwegian prime minister, thinks the “Norwegian option” won’t work for the UK if it leaves the EU. (See 12.29pm.) A spokeswoman said that Soldberg simply made that point in her talks with David Cameron. The spokeswoman said she could not say any more about Soldberg’s reasoning.
UPDATE: Downing Street have come back to me to say this is what Cameron said about the “Norway option” at PMQs in October last year.
Some people arguing for Britain to leave the European Union, although not all of them, have pointed out a position like that of Norway as a good outcome. I would guard strongly against that. Norway pays as much per head to the EU as we do and takes twice as many migrants per head as we do in this country, but has no seat at the table and no ability to negotiate. I am not arguing that all those who want to leave the EU say that they want to follow the Norwegian path, but some do and it is very important that we are clear in this debate about the consequences of these different actions.
Updated
Here’s the New Statesman’s George Eaton on Lord Rose’s claim that the In side will win the EU referendum easily.
Big mistake for Stuart Rose to say In campaign will win "by a substantial margin". Never let voters think it's in the bag.
— George Eaton (@georgeeaton) February 4, 2016
Lord Rose says In campaign will win EU referendum by a 'substantial margin'
Lord Rose, chair of Britain Stronger in Europe, gave a speech at a press gallery lunch earlier. Here are some of the main points.
- Rose said he expected the In camp to win comfortably.
In campaign's Stuart Rose says his side will win by a "substantial margin"
— Kate Devlin (@_katedevlin) February 4, 2016
- He floated the idea of banning the publication of polls just before the referendum.
Stuart Rose suggests banning polls for a couple of weeks before the EU referendum
— Kate Devlin (@_katedevlin) February 4, 2016
Stuart Rose wants a ban on opinion polls for 2 weeks before the referendum. Presumably wants to avoid drama of THAT S.Times poll in Scotland
— Tim Shipman (@ShippersUnbound) February 4, 2016
- He said Cameron was considering doing TV debates.
Stuart Rose says Cameron considering TV debates on Europe
— Tim Shipman (@ShippersUnbound) February 4, 2016
- He said the In campaign were running a “Project Reality”, not a “Project Fear”.
"We're not running project fear, we're running project reality," says Stuart Rose
— Tim Shipman (@ShippersUnbound) February 4, 2016
Rose, the former M&S chairman, also had a good joke at his own expense, prompted by his recent memory lapse.
Stuart Rose gets a big laugh for mocking his memory loss. "It could have been worse, I could has been CEO of S&M". Credit to J.McGrory...
— Tim Shipman (@ShippersUnbound) February 4, 2016
Updated
On the World at One Daniel Mitov, the Bulgarian foreign minister, said Bulgarians living in Britain were worried about the proposals in the draft EU renegotiation. He said that the negotiations were still going on, and that there was a need for some “polishing”, particularly in terms of how the emergency brake would work. But, despite being twice asked if Bulgaria was threatening to veto the plans, he declined to make that threat. Bulgaria wanted to see a reasonable compromise, he said.
Hammond rejects claims new sovereignty law would be pointless
As Nicholas Watt reports in the Guardian today, David Cameron has said that the government will introduce some measure to assert the sovereignty of parliament. This will happen alongside the EU renegotiation, and will particularly appeal to Boris Johnson, the Conservative MP and mayor of London who has been calling for this for some time.
In his story, Nick says two options are being considered.
A few hours later, after the exchanges in the House of Commons, it became clear that the prime minister is prepared to deal with Johnson’s concerns on two levels. The prime minister is expected to:
- Declare that the UK supreme court or another official body should be vested with powers akin to those of the German constitutional court, which has the right to assess whether legal acts by the EU’s institutions remain within the scope of the powers of the EU. Cameron first floated this idea in a speech at Chatham House in November after Johnson had outlined in a private plea to the prime minister to his calls for an assertion of parliamentary sovereignty
- Propose a possible fresh act of parliament to make clear that the UK’s agreement to the primacy of EU law – which dates back to 1972 – was gifted by parliament and could therefore be withdrawn by parliament.
In the Times today (paywall) Lord Neuberger, president of the supreme court, said setting up an alternative constitutional court would be a mistake. He told the paper:
One of our great advantages compared with most of Europe is that we have a very simple system of courts and I think replicating the civil, European system of having a supreme court and a constitutional court — a supreme administrative court — is just a recipe for complication, for cost and for unnecessary duplication.
And Lord Pannick QC, the prominent human rights lawyer, told the paper that giving the supreme court a constitutional role would be pointless.
For our supreme court to be given a function similar to that of the German constitutional court would not have any practical effect. The proposal has no legal merit. It may have a useful political purpose for the government, but the prime minister should be careful about raising expectations that will not be achievable.
Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, was asked about this on the World at One. When the comments in the Times were put to him he insisted that it was worth clarifying the position of UK law in relation to EU law.
There’s always been a discussion about constitutional precedence here, which law take precedence. I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve read a lot of stuff about this and there are a lot of very eminent lawyers saying that there are ways to address this issue; maybe not the perfect solution, but there are ways to assert the supremacy of our parliament and to give us a much stronger position than we have had in the past. And I think as this discussion goes forward we will want to see these ideas discussed and explained in full.
Hammond also hit back at David Davis, rejecting his claim that the emergency brake “would not stop a push bike”. (See 9.42am.)
I think David Davis is wrong and, frankly, those people who are not looking for a good deal with Europe but are looking to argue for Britain to leave Europe, and whatever the package contained would be looking for Britain to leave Europe, are obviously going to attack whatever the package contains. But it does contain significant measures that will change the way the European Union works.
Updated
The Leave.EU campaign has hit back at the suggestion from the Norwegian prime minister, Erna Soldberg, that the “Norway option” could not work for the UK. (See 12.29pm.) A spokesman said that it was not true to say that, if Britain were in EFTA and the EEA but outside the EU like Norway, it would have no say in drafting EU rules.
There is an enormous network of discussion and consultation even within EFTA/EEA, on a global and regional level, long before these rules ever get near a statute book. The UK would be an active part of this network, along with over 190 international bodies.
EEA/EFTA representatives participate in over 500 committees and expert groups involved in what is known as “decision shaping” at single market level. Above EU level, EEA/EFTA representatives have their own seats on many global bodies which we cannot as EU member states.
Lunchtime summary
- Number 10 has rejected a claim from Alan Johnson, chair of the Labour In For Europe campaign, that the “emergency brake” allowing the UK to stop EU migrants getting in-work benefits for up to four years will have no impact on immigration. Johnson made the claim in an interview on the Today programme. But the prime minister’s spokesman told journalists at the Number 10 lobby briefing that it would make a difference. Migrant families were able to claim £6,000 a year on average in tax credits, he said:
I think common sense would tell us that reducing the financial incentive will reduce that pull factor.
As the Press Association reports, the spokesman was also unable to say whether migrants from wealthier EU states, such as Luxembourg, might end up receiving more generous child benefit payments than their British neighbours under the plan to give them child benefit at their home country rate, not the UK rate.
- The Norwegian prime minister Erna Solberg has said the “Norway option” would not work for the UK if it leaves the EU, Number 10 has said. (See 12.29pm.)
- The Conservative MP David Davis has said that the emergency brake “would not stop a push bike”. (See 9.42am.)
- David Cameron has said that the international community must raise billions of dollars more than last year to alleviate the unacceptable plight of Syrian refugees. He was speaking ahead of today’s Syria donor conference. For more details, do follow our separate live blog which is covering it.
- MPs have called for the head of a self-described neo-masculinist movement to be banned from the UK as a minister blasted him and his group as “absolutely repulsive”. A series of events planned by the Return of Kings group have been cancelled after Daryush Valizadeh, who calls himself Roosh V, said he could no longer guarantee the safety of anyone who wanted to attend. Responding to an urgent question about the meetings, Home Office minister Karen Bradley said the government “condemns in the strongest terms anyone who condones rape and sexual violence or suggests that responsibility for stopping these crimes rests with the victims”. Responding to calls for him to be banned from the UK, Bradley said that the Home Office did not routinely comment on individual cases, but that the home secretary could ban non-British citizens if she believes their presence is “not conducive to the public good”.
- The Conservative MP Geoffrey Cox QC has been told to apologise to the House of Commons after failing to declare more than £400,000 of outside income on time.
Updated
Norwegian PM says leaving the EU and adopting the 'Norway option' won't work for the UK
David Cameron met Erna Solberg, the Norwegian prime minister, in Number 10 last night. Mostly they were talking about the Syria conference, but Cameron’s EU renegotiation also came up. Norway is not in the EU, but it gets access to the single market through its membership of the European Free Trade Association. This means it has to submit to what is anachronistically referred to as “government by fax” because it has to comply with EU rules without having a say in how they are drawn up.
According to Number 10, Solberg said this would not be a good arrangement for the UK. This is from the readout of the meeting that Downing Street has just sent to journalists. A Downing Street spokesperson said:
[Cameron and Solberg] also discussed the prime minister’s work to win a renegotiated package for the UK in the European Union. Prime Minister Solberg said she supported the prime minister’s work to build a more flexible EU and to cut red tape. She also agreed with the prime minister that Norway’s position in the European Free Trade Area but outside the EU would not work for the UK.
Solberg’s comments - at least, her comments as mediated through Number 10 - are significant because one of the challenges for those campaigning for Britain to leave the EU is explaining what its future trading relationship with the EU would be like. Often they cite “the Norway option”, but Cameron now has a new argument to deploy against that.
Andrew RT Davies, leader of the Conservatives in Wales, will say in a speech later today that his party would cut ministerial salaries in the Welsh assembly by 10%. They would use the savings to encourage young people to get involved in politics through a national children and young people’s assembly for Wales.
After May the Welsh first minister’s salary is due to rise to £140,000, with other ministers’ pay rising to £100,000, and Davies says his proposal would save around £250,000 over five years.
Lucy Powell, the shadow education secretary, is giving a speech to an education summit in Sheffield today. In it, she says that the school curriculum does not prepare children well for the world of work and that ministers should not be personally involved in deciding what’s on the curriculum.
I want to open up a conversation about how we can guarantee that future curriculums are fit for purpose. Young people have the right to a programme of study that prepares them for the modern world, with a strong connection to the needs of the economy. At the moment, this just isn’t happening.
Instead, under the Tories we’ve seen parts of the curriculum personally drafted by the education secretary and then circulated for sign-off amongst cabinet ministers, each making the case for their own pet project to be included ...
Ministerial diktat on the curriculum has gone too far and this approach is failing to meet the needs of our young people and our economy. It’s no wonder then that we now have the situation where 69 per cent of businesses and two–thirds of parents do not feel the education system prepares their children for work.
It is interesting to note that, even though Michael Gove stopped being education secretary in 2014, he is still a prime target for the opposition. The complaints about ministers interfering with the curriculum primarily relate to him. Here is a classic example.
Tory MP Geoffrey Cox told to apologise to Commons after failing to declare earnings on time
A Conservative MP, Geoffrey Cox QC, has been told the apologise to the Commons after failing to declare more than £400,000 of outside earnings on time, the Press Association reports.
The standards committee found that Geoffrey Cox QC had committed a “serious” breach of rules, although it accepted he had not “intended to hide” the payments for hundreds of hours of legal work.
The Torridge and West Devon MP, known as one of parliament’s highest earners, quit as a member of the committee and referred himself to the parliamentary commissioner for standards in October after it emerged he had repeatedly missed the 28-day deadline.
In its report (pdf) the committee said: “We accept that Mr Cox had no intention to hide these payments and that he has not breached the requirements of the House for declaration of relevant interests.
“Nevertheless, as the commissioner notes, the number of payments and the sums involved in the late registration are significant and Mr Cox was in a position which should have ensured that he was more familiar with the rules and the relevant principles of public life in this area than other Members might be.”
As my colleague Ben Quinn reports, the Daily Mail’s “Who will speak for England?” editorial (see 10.47am) is being roundly mocked on Twitter.
You can read all today’s Guardian politics stories here.
As for the rest of the papers, here is the PoliticsHome list of top 10 must-reads, and here is the ConservativeHome round-up of today’s politics stories.
And here are three articles I found particularly interesting.
Michael Gove is fuelling hopes that he will back the campaign to leave the European Union by telling friends and colleagues of his deep discomfort at voting to remain.
Downing Street sources had indicated that the justice secretary was likely to side with David Cameron and George Osborne, the chancellor, by backing Britain to stay in the EU. Privately, however, Mr Gove claims to be torn between personal loyalty to the prime minister and his conscience.
He is intellectually convinced of the case for leaving but worried about contributing to a campaign that would wreck Mr Cameron’s legacy, friends said. His discomfort is said to be heightened by the prime minister’s demand that he presents plans for a court to defend Britain against new EU laws, which he believes to be unworkable. The plan for a constitutional court was seen as an attempt to secure support from Boris Johnson during the referendum campaign.
Don’t bank on Boris Johnson either. True, the London mayor — never known for his courage — is happy to play flirtatious footsie with the ‘out’ campaign. But what’s the betting that at the first whiff of a plum Cabinet job, Boris will do the PM’s bidding, keep his doubts to himself — and possibly even sign up to the ‘remain’ campaign?
Thursday's Daily Mail front page:
— Nick Sutton (@suttonnick) February 3, 2016
Who WILL speak for England?#tomorrowspaperstoday #bbcpapers #euref pic.twitter.com/BaBim27N85
Boris Johnson would make an entertaining Prime Minister. We’re less convinced he’d be good at it.
His ducking and diving over the EU question, Britain’s most significant in a generation, is not very encouraging.
We have always admired London’s Mayor for eloquently speaking his mind. But his many eurosceptic remarks are a deception.
He has repeatedly talked up Britain’s prospects outside the EU. And he plainly shares our scathing view of David Cameron’s renegotiation.
Yet he will not front the “Leave” campaign and be the powerful voice of millions who want out. Boris continues to flirt with it, but he’ll vote to “Remain”.
It’s time he came off the fence.
Updated
The FullFact blog points out, in the light of Alan Johnson’s interview, that it carried out its own fact check last year of the claim that in-work benefits were attracting EU migrants to the UK. It concluded that there was “no direct evidence on whether welfare has acted as a ‘magnet’ encouraging EU migrants to come to the UK”.
Alan Johnson on #r4today said restricting benefits to EU migrants wouldn't reduce immigration. Our factcheck: https://t.co/gfLyFbyQNQ
— Full Fact (@FullFact) February 4, 2016
Sadiq Khan, Labour’s candidate for London mayor, has unveiled a plan which he says would protect space for small businesses and start-ups in the capital. It’s part of his business framework, Sadiq Means Business.
He released figures showing that, as a result of changes to planning rules introduced by the last government allowing commercial space to be turned into housing without planning permission, commercial floor space covering 1,786,466 sqm was lost in London between May 2013 and April 2015. He said that if all that space was fully occupied, it would have housed more than 123,000 jobs, although occupancy rates suggest 48,000 jobs have been lost or are under threat because of those changes.
Khan said he would amend the London Plan to make it harder for these units to be converted into housing. In a statement he said:
Of course we need new homes, but this does not need to be at the expense of the spaces we need for the businesses that provide our jobs and drive our prosperity.
We should be focusing on building new homes on publicly and privately owned brownfield land, while using the London Plan to protect business space, and to create new start-up spaces in housing developments.
I’ll make tackling the housing crisis my number one priority while increasing the space available for small business, start-ups and entrepreneurs.
David Davis says Cameron's emergency brake 'would not stop a push bike'
David Davis, the Conservative former Europe minister, and David Cameron main rival for the party leadership in 2005, will give a big speech on Europe later. It is being billed as his first in-depth contribution to the EU debate and he will use it to say that he is voting to leave the EU, to say that the EU is beyond reform, and to explain how Britain can eliminate the risks of Brexit.
According to extracts sent out from his office in advance, he will also criticise David Cameron’s “emergency brake”. Like Alan Johnson, he will argue that it will have no effect on immigration. Davis will say:
The prime minister ‘s emergency brake on migrant benefits would not stop a push bike. And we now discover we would have to ask Brussels’s permission to even use it.
In any case, the whole concept of an emergency brake is flawed. Migrants are coming to Britain from Eastern Europe not to claim benefits but to earn more money. My figures show that they can readily earn three to four times as much working in low-skilled jobs in Britain. No amount of tinkering with our welfare rules will make a blind bit of difference to immigration numbers and the Prime Minister is being disingenuous to pretend otherwise.
In a press notice, Davis explains why he believes cutting in-work benefits for EU migrants will not reduce migration.
Davis will cite figures showing that the main attraction to would-be migrants from Eastern Europe is not Britain’s welfare system but the vast disparity in earnings between the two parts of Europe.
For instance, the monthly average wage in Romania (£400 a month) is currently less than one third of the monthly minimum wage in the UK (£1300). This gulf will widen to a factor of more than four (£400 to £1600) by 2020 when the new UK national living wage is introduced and gives a big boost to the earnings of unskilled workers.
Davis will also point out that research shows that the vast majority of Eastern European migrants to the UK are either single or couples without children and that they make minimal demands on the UK welfare system. They are coming here for work, not handouts. Only 10 per cent claim in-work benefits in their first year in the UK, rising to 20 per cent after four years as they begin to form families and have children. Even so, 80 per cent are not claiming in work benefits after four years in Britain and therefore measures to curb benefit payments such as the emergency brake can be expected to have minimal effect on migrant inflows – the public’s chief concern about the implications of EU membership.
The press notice includes this chart showing the take up of tax credits by EEA (European Economic Area - which is the EU, plus three other small countries) citizens.
Updated
Justine Greening, the international development secretary, was also on the Today programme, talking mostly about the Syria conference. But she was asked about David Cameron’s EU renegotiation, and if she thought it was fair that he was able to promote it while anti-EU ministers will not be allowed to speak out until the deal has been formally agreed, in another two weeks ago.
Unsurprisingly, she supported Cameron.
I happen to agree with the prime minister, I think this is a good deal, I hope we can seal the deal when he goes to Brussels later this month. But in the meantime we have cabinet collective responsibility and indeed the deal isn’t finally agreed yet. So I think we all need to back the Prime Minister to get the best deal for our country.
Suzanne Evans, the Ukip deputy chair, thinks Alan Johnson was given an easy ride on Today.
That wasn't an interview with Alan Johnson, he was allowed to make a speech. #r4today simply doesn't know how to challenge Europhiles #leave
— Suzanne Evans (@SuzanneEvans1) February 4, 2016
Several political parties will be involved in the campaign to keep Britain in the European Union. There are at least three cross-party umbrella groups but Labour, mindful of how campaigning alongside the Conservatives in Better Together in Scotland backfired badly on the party at the 2015 general election, has got its own campaign, Labour In For Britain, and its chair, Alan Johnson, was on the Today programme this morning.
Having multiple parties campaigning for the same thing can be an advantage, because they appeal to different groups. But it also has its drawbacks, because campaigners may contradict each other, and we saw that today when Johnson shot down one of David Cameron’s key EU arguments.
Here are the key points from the interview.
- Johnson said that cutting in-work benefits for EU migrants would not reduce immigration. Cameron has repeatedly argued that in-work benefits are one of the “pull” factors that lure EU migrants to the UK (even though the evidence for this is minimal, to put it politely), and he has been talking up the significance of the “emergency brake” that would allow the UK to stop paying full in-work benefits to EU migrants for up to four years. But Johnson said this would have no impact on immigration. Asked if it would deter people from coming to the UK, he replied:
It was never going to do that ... the issue of in-work benefits isn’t a draw factor and indeed this is a two-way process, no country has more of its people working in other developed countries than Britain – more than Poland, more than any other country in Europe. Go to a pub in Paris, go to a pub in Madrid you will hear English voices. It’s not a draw for them, either, there’s all kinds of factors why people choose to move around the European Union to work. I don’t think that’s one of them.
- But Johnson also said that Labour supported the principle behind the “emergency brake” on fairness grounds. He said:
We believe in the principal of fair contribution, that’s why it was in our manifesto that there should be a limit of two years before in-work benefits were paid. Actually there is an argument that this is better in the sense that you’re here contributing paying taxes for a period before you actually receive those benefits. And I think for British people the problem is not xenophobia, it’s not anti-Europe, it’s not any kind of racism overt or covert, it’s a fairness argument. It’s that you should be putting something into the system before you draw anything out.
- He said that pro-Europeans had not been making the case for the EU strongly enough in recent years.
I don’t think many people, including me, have been making that argument sufficiently overt the last ten years. Now we can do it in areas where Ukip are strong and areas where they are not.
There is more Europe coming later today.
Here is the agenda for the day.
10am: The Supporting Syria conference opens in London. My colleague Matthew Weaver is covering that on a separate live blog.
11am: David Davis, the Conservative MP, gives a speech on what leaving the EU would mean for the UK.
Around 12pm: MPs begin a debate on a backbench motion saying the EU renegotiation should protect parliamentary sovereignty.
As usual, I will be covering breaking all the political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web. I will post a summary at lunchtime and another in the afternoon.
If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on@AndrewSparrow.
I try to monitor the comments BTL but normally I find it impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer direct questions, although sometimes I miss them or don’t have time. Alternatively you could post a question to me on Twitter.
