Afternoon summary
- Ministers have suffered a big defeat in the House of Lords as peers have voted in favour of an amendment forcing the government to publish income-related figures for child poverty. The amendment was tabled by the Bishop of Duham and backed strongly by Labour peers and others. It undermines a key part of the welfare bill, which is intended to abolish income-related child poverty targets and replace them with ones measuring “life chances” instead.
- David Gauke, the Treasury minister, has told MPs that he could not say what effective rate of tax Google were paying. Replying to an urgent Commons question about Google’s deal to pay £130m owed in taxes to HMRC, Gauke said it was wrong to assume this was equivalent to a 3% tax rage. That figure was misleading, he told MPs.
In terms of the 3% figure which you mentioned, that is the very reason why I drew attention to the way that corporation tax is worked out. [Tax is paid] not on the basis of the profits relating to sales in a particular country, it is on the basis of the economic activity and assets held in a country and there are severe dangers were we to move in the direction of it being based on profits relating to sales ... There is no lower special rate for Google or any other taxpayer in this country.
But when challenged by Labour’s Diana Johnson if he would say what effective rate Google was paying, he replied:
No. The position is because of taxpayer confidentiality. The point I was making in the course of my remarks was that to look at profits from sales in the United Kingdom is not a way in which one can calculate it. The tax rate is currently 20%. That applies to everybody, but in terms of the effective tax rate that depends on the particular circumstances of any business.
- The Commons Treasury committee has launched an inquiry into tax policy and the tax base. In the Commons Andrew Tyrie, the committee chair, said he thought “fundamental reform of the corporate tax base probably now needs to be considered”. In a statement later he said:
The complexity of tax law is turning what should be a straightforward principle – that everybody should pay the correct amount of tax – in to a piece of elastic. For corporation tax, for instance, the problem is exacerbated by the globalisation of economic activity and any liability to tax that accompanies it.
A corporation’s duty to shareholders will be to minimise its tax liability. It should be the duty of those making tax policy to find better ways to limit the elasticity. Google may be the symptom, but it is not the cause.
There is a lot the government could be doing. Tax policy must be made more practicable and the tax system more coherent. Tax needs to be fair. It needs to provide more certainty and stability. There is a lot to do and a lot for the Committee to examine.
- Sir Eric Pickles, the Conservative former communities secretary, has joined Labour MPs in urging the government to accept the recommendation from Save the Children to take in 3,000 unaccompanied child refugees. Telling MPs there were parallels with the Kindertransport, he told MPs:
There are children out there who are at risk and I would urge the government to look carefully about this. After all this is the 25th of January - a month ago we were celebrating that great Christian festival of children and I hope that that spirit lingers beyond Boxing Day.
-
Lord Parkinson, the former Conservative cabinet minister and favoured protégé of Margaret Thatcher, has died. Here is the Guardian’s obituary.
In a tribute to him David Cameron said:
[Parkinson] was the first big political figure that I ever worked for and got to know. He was a man of huge ability. He was passionate that what he was doing and the team of ministers that he worked with was about transforming Britain in the 1980s by improving industrial relations, by reforming the trade unions, by making sure that business was in the private sector, by encouraging entrepreneurship.
He was someone I really enjoyed working with a great deal. He was part of a great political generation that did really extraordinary things for our country. He will be hugely missed on all sides of the political divide.
- Enda Kenny, the Irish prime minister, has said that he expects Cameron’s EU renegotiation to succeed.
Enda Kenny says he believes all David Cameron's four key EU demands can be concluded successfully and strongly
— Carole Walker (@carolewalkercw) January 25, 2016
And this is from Sam Royston, chair of the End Child Poverty Coalition and policy director at the Children’s Society.
By seeking to abandon commitments to report on and tackle the number of children living in families on low incomes the government seemed to think it could make child poverty magically disappear. Scrapping the Child Poverty Act and replacing it with measures based on worklessness and low educational attainment is not enough to help the millions of children who are suffering in real poverty now. Income is at the heart of child poverty and the House of Lords has acknowledged that today.
In 2010 all the main political parties committed to measure and report on the number of children living in poverty and to eradicate it by 2020. It is not too late for the government to keep this promise.
Here’s Alison Garnham, chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group, on the Lords vote.
Today’s vote by the House of Lords shows how much of a mess the government has got itself into on poverty.
It’s needed the House of Lords to act and insist that, yes, the government should continue to report to parliament on what’s happening to child poverty and, yes, that when you talk about poverty and life chances, you cannot simply ignore income. The Lords is on the side of the experts and the public here.
MPs now have a chance to demonstrate their commitment to tackling child poverty by holding on to the Lords amendment when the Bill comes back to them.
Tory bid to scrap income-related child poverty measures defeated in Lords by majority of 92
The government has just suffered a huge defeat in the Lords, where peers have voted by 290 votes to 198 - a majority of 92 - in favour of an amendment to the welfare bill to ordering the government to publish annual figures for income-related child poverty.
This undermines one of the main aims of the bill, which abolishes income-related child poverty targets.
There is more detail on the background to the vote here, in this story.
Updated
Andy Burnham, the shadow home secretary, says no child should be left to fend for themselves. The vast majority of British people would accept that we have a moral duty to act.
He urges the government to reconsider its policy of only taking refugees from the camps in countries near Syria, not from Europe. That distinction is getting harder to maintain.
Burnham says he understands the claim that this would increase incentives to come to Europe. But that could be dealt with by treating this as a one-off, he says.
Sir Eric Pickles, the Conservative former communities secretary, urges the government to take in more refugee children. He says only recently we were celebrating that great festival of children, Christmas.
Yvette Cooper, head of Labour’s refugee taskforce, says there rumours that the government will only take child refugees from camps in countries near Syria.
But that is not good enough, she says.
She says Britain should also take refugee children from camps in Europe.
She says many MPs will this week sign the Holocaust Memorial Day commitment.
Lord Dubs, the Labour peer, was saved as a child refugee from the Holocaust. We should save more children like him, she says.
Urgent question on child refugees
James Brokenshire, the Home Office minister, is responding to an urgent question from Labour’s Yvette Cooper on child refugees.
Yesterday the Observer said the government was considering taking 3,000 unaccompanied child refugees.
He says UNHCR generally says it is best for child refugees to remain in the region where they are.
But the prime minister has said that the government will consider taking more child refugees into the UK.
When that work is complete, ministers will announce their decision.
Gauke says there are no sweetheart deals. HMRC does not conduct sweetheart deals, he says.
Labour’s Andrew Gwynne says we are talking about firms, not individuals. So confidentiality does not apply. How much does Google owe?
Gauke says confidentiality has been part of the tax system for years. If Britain abandoned that, it would be a less attractive place for companies to operate from.
Nigel Mills, a Conservative, asks if the government will make firms publish their tax returns.
Gauke says the UK has much the same approach to tax confidentiality as other countries.
Labour’s Valerie Vaz asks what Google’s theoretical tax liability is.
Gauke says Google is subject to the same standard rate as everyone else.
Labour’s Helen Jones says this deal is just “an encouragement to tax avoidance”.
Gauke says HMRC were working on this for a number of years. They are now satisfied with what they have seen.
Gauke says there is nothing to suggest that there was anything other than proper enforcement of the law that led to this deal.
Labour’s Diana Johnson says, if Gauke is saying this deal is not about Google paying a 3% tax rate, what rate were they paying?
Gauke says he cannot. He was making the point that people were making newspaper calculations based on sales, not profits.
Matt Warman, a Conservative, says as a journalist he used to write stories about Google and tax. Has any other country offered Google such a generous deal?
Gauke says he is not aware of any other country coming to a deal like this yet.
Greg Mulholland, the Lib Dem MP, says if small firms did not pay their tax, they would be sitting down with the police. He says HMRC provides a very poor service.
Gauke says HMRC’s service is getting better.
There should be fairness to every taxpayer, he says.
Labour’s Alison McGovern says small businesses in her constituency have been queuing up to complain about the sweetheart deals for big business. Will he meet her to discuss this problem.
Gauke says, as it’s her, he will.
Labour’s Chris Matheson says the Conservatives have form on giving “mates’ rates” to banks, hedge funds and big globalised corporations over tax.
Gauke says in the last parliament the government increased the tax on banks and hedge funds.
Tory MP Steve Baker calls the tax deal with Google "derisory" and "unacceptable to the public" even though it is legal
— Rowena Mason (@rowenamason) January 25, 2016
Labour’s Wes Streeting says people filling in their tax returns now won’t have the luxury of being able to strike this kind of sweetheart deal with HMRC.
Gauke says the claims about sweetheart deals are an insult to HMRC.
Mark Field, a Conservative, asks if this deal sets a precedent, or if it is just a one-off.
Gauke says an individual deal depends on the facts of the case. But companies are looking at their tax arrangement, and there is a better alignment between tax and economic business.
Labour’s Dennis Skinner asks why Italy demanded £1bn from Google, but Britain settled for £130m.
Gauke says there is a difference between putting in a claim, and coming to a settlement in accordance with the law.
Mark Garnier, a Conservative, asks if Google broke any laws between 2005 and 2011.
Gauke says he cannot comment on that. He is not privy to information not in the public domain.
Labour’s Caroline Flint says George Osborne said before the election that he would not tolerate big companies avoiding tax. Experts say Google should be paying £2bn, not £130m.
This is from the tax campaigner Richard Murphy.
Andrew Tyrie says corporation tax reform is needed. I agree. Unitary taxation is the answer #google That is not the answer David Gauke gave
— Richard Murphy (@RichardJMurphy) January 25, 2016
Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative chair of the Treasury committee, says his committee is holding an inquiry looking at the corporate tax base. Does Gauke agree that fundamental reform of the corporate tax base probably needs to be considered?
Gauke says the government encouraged the OECD to set up the base erosion and profit shifting project to consider this issue.
John McDonnell says it was disrespectful of George Osborne to announce this deal by means of a tweet over the weekend without coming to the Commons to make a statement.
He praises all those who have campaigned for tax justice.
And he says that Google has achieved the feat of uniting him, the Sun newspaper, the mayor of London and even Number 10, according to today’s report, in saying this is not a “major success”.
He urged the government to stop cutting jobs at HMRC.
Gauke said jobs were not being cut at HMRC.
David Gauke @DavidGauke "We have been more effective than ever in collecting tax. The number of HMRC staff is going up." #googletax
— Kamal Ahmed (@bbckamal) January 25, 2016
Updated
David Gauke, the Treasury minister, is replying.
He says the government has taken the lead in getting companies to pay their fair share of tax. It introduced the diverted profits tax, and it invested in HMRC to help them focus on compliance.
They have got another £38bn from big business.
The government has cut taxes, he says. But is is making sure taxes are paid.
This is action that Labour did not take.
The Google statement is “solid evidence” that firms are changing their practices, he says.
He says corporation tax is charged on profits, not turnover. It is not based on sales in the UK, but on economic activity and assets in the UK. For example, if a car company made cars here but sold them in the US, they would be taxed here, for where the cars were made, not where they were sold.
Urgent question on Google
John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, asks for a statement on the tax settlement reached with Google.
George Osborne, the chancellor, has paid tribute to Cecil Parkinson.
Sad to hear of death of Cecil Parkinson. I worked with him when he was Party Chairman in 1997-8 - he was there in our hour of greatest need
— George Osborne (@George_Osborne) January 25, 2016
And so has William Hague, the former Conservative leader.
Very sad to hear about the death of my friend Cecil Parkinson. An exceptional talent and an extraordinarily nice man to work with.
— William Hague (@WilliamJHague) January 25, 2016
Cecil Parkinson was Conservative party chairman at the time of the 1983 general election victory and at that point was Margaret Thatcher’s preferred successor. According to Charles Moore’s excellent biography (the second volume came out last year, covering this period) she called him in shortly before the election and offered to make him foreign secretary, with a view to him becoming chancellor a few years later. It was at that point that he told her that he had a mistress, Sara Keays, who was expecting a child. Thatcher, who was surprisingly liberal on these matters, dismissed this as a problem, and (according to the Moore book) said something about how Anthony Eden was a notorious womaniser. But Parkinson realised that it would be a mistake for him to take the high-profile post of foreign secretary, and instead became trade secretary after the election. His assessment of his prospects of staying in office in the light of his affair was more realistic than Thatcher’s and later that year he resigned, after Keays went public with a claim that Parkinson had gone back on a promise to marry her.
Parkinson returned to office later in the Thatcher years, but in relatively low-profile posts (energy and transport) and he left the cabinet when Thatcher stood down. The list of people in British politics who can say that at one point they were the clear favourite as next prime minister is a relatively short one, but Parkinson is on it.
Cecil Parkinson has died
Cecil Parkinson has died, the Press Association has announced.
Former Tory minister Lord Cecil Parkinson has died after a long battle with cancer, his family has announced.
Updated
Lunchtime summary
- Downing Street has distanced itself from George Osborne’s claim at the weekend that the £130m deal with Google on tax was a “major success”. At the Number 10 lobby briefing, the prime minister’s spokewoman gave it a more qualified welcome. Osborne also seems to have toned down his language, describing it as “good news” in a clip for the BBC. John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, is asking an urgent question on the matter in the Commons at 3.30pm.
- Lord Rose, chair of Britain Stronger in Europe, has urged David Cameron to call an early referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU. At an event to publicise new claims about the value of the single market to the UK, he said:
We will be ready for any eventuality. Once we have a deal, whenever that deal might be, let’s assume it is in February, why would you want to wait? I think there is enough time to get the information out, to get the facts out, to have a healthy debate. Why would you want to wait?
- Corbyn has said that the Labour party is making progress under his leadership and that it is “getting on fine”.
Updated
George Osborne, the chancellor, has been talking more about the Google tax deal. He said that it was “good news” that Google was paying tax and that this did not happen under Labour. So if Labour are complaining about it, he said, “they should have done something about it when they were in office”.
Watch: UK Chancellor George Osborne on Google tax deal https://t.co/dPaprRUQKY via @BBCNews
— AndrewSparrow (@AndrewSparrow) January 25, 2016
Rachel Reeves, the former shadow work and pensions secretary, was on the Daily Politics earlier. She said Labour should not be wasting time talking about issues like Trident and the Falklands. According to the BBC, she said:
The longer we spend debating these internal issues about how we select the leader, Trident, the Falklands, the less time we’re spending debating things that really matter to people... That is a dereliction of duty as our duty as an opposition party should be holding the government to account and setting out an alternative agenda.
She said that Jeremy Corbyn had been successful at attracting new members to Labour. But he had to translate that into success on the doorstep, she said.
Updated
It’s not been a great day for Lord Rose. As the Press Association reports, in another interview today he forgot the name of the pro EU-membership campaign that he chairs.
The chairman of the main group campaigning to keep the UK in the European Union fluffed his lines as he failed four times to get the organisation’s name right.
Lord Rose failed to correctly say he was leading the Britain Stronger In Europe campaign, eventually settling on the “Better Stay in Britain Campaign”.
The former Marks & Spencer boss first said he was chairman of online grocer Ocado before realising he was being grilled about the EU campaign rather than his business experience.
Asked to identify himself at the start of a Sky News interview, he said: “Stuart Rose and I’m the chairman of Ocado, I’m chairman of - sorry - of Stay in Britain, Better in Britain campaign.”
Realising his mistake and laughing, he said: “Right, start again.”
Having a second attempt at getting the organisation right during the interview at the Brompton cycles factory in west London, Lord Rose again failed to correctly name the group.
“Stuart Rose and I’m the chairman of the Better in Britain campaign, Better Stay in Britain campaign.”
The name of the Britain Stronger in Europe organisation has been sent up by rival Eurosceptic groups, who have chosen to refer to it by the acronym BSE - a reminder of the difficulties with Brussels over the “Mad Cow Disease” outbreak.
David Gauke, the financial secretary to the Treasury, will be responding to John McDonnell’s urgent question on Google, the Treasury says.
In his Telegraph column Boris Johnson, the Conservative MP and mayor of London, suggests that George Osborne should be doing more to get firms like Google to pay tax in the UK. Here is an excerpt.
The Irish decided they wanted to go for an ultra-low corporation tax, at 12.5 per cent. It was their sovereign ambition to attract the HQ of Apple and others. They wanted Irish taxi drivers to have the honour of ferrying Apple executives around, and they wanted Irish waitresses to snaffle their huge tips. The EU commission is partly excited by the chance to bash a corporate American giant; but mainly it is a chance to attack tax arbitrage between member states – to move ever closer towards uniformity and away from a spirit of healthy competition between jurisdictions.
We need that competition. We need the Irish to be able to do their own thing. Otherwise business tax rates would simply rise in lockstep across Europe. We should be resisting the commission’s approach, and we should recognise that the fault in the whole affair lies with our national arrangements – our own system for not getting a fair whack from the tech giants. After years of Labour inertia, George Osborne has made progress. The Google payback is a start. We now need to go further. We want, need and deserve these companies somehow to pay more tax in the UK. But the problem does not lie with the firms, or the Irish government, and it certainly should not need Brussels to sort it out.
And this is from the Labour MP Wes Streeting, accusing George Osborne of being “breathtakingly complacent” over Google.
Just spoke to BBC News asking how HMRC reached Google deal and why our Chancellor is so breathtakingly complacent. pic.twitter.com/LJvpPmS6lE
— Wes Streeting MP (@wesstreeting) January 25, 2016
Here is Tim Loughton, the Conservative former children’s minister, on the Google tax repayment on the Daily Politics.
Conservative MP @timloughton gives a cautious welcome to Google's tax repayment #bbcdp pic.twitter.com/FAmnkaGnOf
— DailySunday Politics (@daily_politics) January 25, 2016
John McDonnell granted Commons urgent question on Google tax deal
We are getting a Commons urgent question on the Google tax deal. John McDonnell,the shadow chancellor, has secured it.
2 UQs granted: 1) Settlement reached between HMRC and Google (@johnmcdonnellMP) 2) Child refugees in Europe (Yvette Cooper)
— Labour Whips (@labourwhips) January 25, 2016
N0 10 lobby briefing - Summary
Here are the main points from the Number 10 lobby briefing.
- Downing Street did not endorse George Osborne’s claim that the Google tax deal was “a major success”. Osborne used the phrase at the weekend after the £130m tax back payment was announced. The prime minister’s spokeswoman was repeatedly asked if David Cameron also saw this as a “major success”, and she repeatedly declined to use that phrase. Instead she described it as a “step forward” and a “positive step”. She said that this announcement was a consequence of the work done by the government to ensure multination companies paid their tax. Asked if it was enough, she replied:
Clearly, there is more for the government to do to make sure that multinational companies pay their tax. The assessments of this are made by HMRC.
- Number 10 distanced itself from Lord Rose’s claim that David Cameron was trying to bring EU migration to a “standstill” through his renegotation. The prime minister’s spokeswoman said Cameron was looking for ways of “better controlling” migration from the EU, but refused to accept that getting a “standstill” was part of the plan. Asked if Rose was wrong about the renegotiation intentions, she said: “It is for Lord Rose to set out his views.”
- The spokeswoman said that Cameron believed “you can be British, European and Eurosceptic” all at the same time. She was responding to a question about whether Cameron’s claim in an interview with French TV last week that he feels deeply European contradicted his claim to be a Eurosceptic.
- The spokeswoman said the government would make its statement about whether it will admit 3,000 unaccompanied migrant children into the UK next month.
- The spokeswoman played down suggestions from Patrick McLoughlin, the transport secretary, last week that the EU referendum could lead to a further delay in the decision about a third runway at Heathrow. These were “two separate issues”, she said. She said that government had already set out the work that needed to be done before a decision could be taken (an assessment of the air pollution impact, primarily) and that that work should be finished by the summer.
- The spokeswoman brushed aside Nicola Sturgeon’s claim that holding the EU referendum in June would be a mistake. The process for deciding the date was set out in the Referendum Act, she said
- Downing Street said officials were examining the latest propaganda video that appears to come from Islamic State. It was a terrorist group that is “clearly declining and in retreat,” the prime minister’s spokeswoman said.
- Sajid Javid, the business secretary, is today visiting the Airbnb HQ in London to mark the fact the firm has had its four millionth UK customer. Asked if this meant that the government endorsed the firm, the prime minister’s spokeswoman said the visit was about supporting business.
Corbyn says Labour is 'getting along just fine' under his leadership
I’m back from the Number 10 lobby briefing. I will post a summary shortly.
In the meantime, here is Jeremy Corbyn’s full quote when asked about the state of the Labour party on ITV’s This Morning.
I am doing my very best to present politics in a human way, to also campaign for Labour to win the general election in 2020.
Party members are very happy. I spend a lot of time travelling round the country campaigning and I have the most fascinating debates you have ever heard in your life with some of my colleagues in parliament but we are getting on fine.
We have defeated the government on tax credits, we defeated them on police cuts, we defeated them on that appalling idea of running Saudi Arabia’s prisons on behalf of its royal family.
We are making progress as a party, don’t worry about that. Everybody’s getting along just fine.
Updated
Jeremy Corbyn has been on ITV’s This Morning, talking mostly about refugees. (He visited Calais on Saturday.) Here are the main points.
- Corbyn said that Britain should take in more refugees.
Corbyn says the 20k refugees Cameron has agreed to are the equivalent of "a few tube trains of passengers" over 5 yrs
— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) January 25, 2016
Jeremy Corbyn says it is up to all governments, including France and Britain "to be a bit more human about this"
— John Ashmore (@smashmorePH) January 25, 2016
Corbyn asked how many refugees he wants to take "I can't put a number on it" Wants UK to join EU scheme so "we all take a share of refugees"
— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) January 25, 2016
- He said refugees with a connection to the UK should get priority.
Corbyn suggests "those that have a clear family connection to Britain" should be allowed into the UK
— John Ashmore (@smashmorePH) January 25, 2016
Jeremy Corbyn: "There are a number of people in those camps that have got British passports...the Home Office isn't allowing them in"
— John Ashmore (@smashmorePH) January 25, 2016
Jeremy Corbyn clarifies that it is passport-holders trying to bring their families with them that are being turned down by the Home Office
— John Ashmore (@smashmorePH) January 25, 2016
- He criticised the French police for their treatment of refugees in Calais.
Jeremy Corbyn says French police turned away a vanload of blankets and bananas intended for refugees in Dunkirk.
— John Ashmore (@smashmorePH) January 25, 2016
- He said everyone in the Labour party was “getting on just fine” under his leadership.
Corbyn on PLP: "I've had some of the most fascinating debates u've ever heard in yr life with my colleagues.Everyone's getting on just fine"
— Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) January 25, 2016
I’m off to the Number 10 lobby briefing now. I will post again after 11.30am.
And here is some Twitter comment on Lord Rose’s interview.
From PoliticsHome’s Kevin Schofield
I'm imagining a @StrongerInPress spin doctor trying to wrap a shepherd's crook round Stuart Rose's neck. @BBCr4today
— Kevin Schofield (@PolhomeEditor) January 25, 2016
From Bloomberg’s Robert Hutton
Seven minutes into an interview arguing against Brexit, Stuart Rose finally gets to The Message: "It's A Huge Risk."
— Robert Hutton (@RobDotHutton) January 25, 2016
From the academic Matthew Goodwin and the Telegraph’s Peter Foster
@GoodwinMJ agreed. He's hopeless and past it. But he's not the messenger. Cameron, Hague, Major, Branson, CBI are.
— Peter Foster (@pmdfoster) January 25, 2016
From the Daily Mail’s Tim Sculthorpe
Assume the Project Fear book has been well thumbed by Stronger In as Lord Rose pits today's 'imperfect reality' against 'risks' of tomorrow
— Tim Sculthorpe (@timsculthorpe) January 25, 2016
Lord Rose's Today interview - Summary and analysis
I suppose we should call it the “business leader fallacy”. It is the assumption that, if you are running a political campaign, a successful business leader will make a better figurehead than a politician because businessmen and women are more trusted.
It’s true. They are. (Just look at the recent Ipsos MORI veracity index.) And clergymen are trusted more than plumbers. But you wouldn’t ask the vicar to fix your toilet.
Likewise, leading a national campaign is politics and it requires a skill set most likely to be acquired by doing this stuff for a living. Lord Rose is heading the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign and he was given a big slot on the Today programme this morning. And he was actually rather poor. It wasn’t that he made any horrendous gaffes; it is just that he failed to project a big message very clearly, he did not deflect the difficult questions very easily, and at time he fell into the trap of of making glib, unsubstantiated generalisations. (See 9.22am.) In Downing Street they will have listened to the interview with some concern, although the one consolation they have is that, as soon as David Cameron’s EU renegotiation is over, Cameron himself will become the de facto leader of Britain Stronger in Europe.
Here are the key points from the interviews.
- Rose claimed that Cameron was trying to negotiate a “standstill” on EU renegotiation. (See 9.22am.)
- He claimed that research showed that Britain’s trade with the EU was 55% higher than it otherwise would be because of membership of the single market. This was equivalent to £133bn in trade, he said.
- He said that leaving the EU would be a risk.
I’m a bit of a Eurosceptic myself. I understand the imperfections of Europe. I’ve traded in Europe. There are imperfections, but by and large it serves us well. But what we don’t know is: what are we exchanging it for? The reality of what we’ve got today against the risk of what we might not have tomorrow ...
Do we want to sacrifice the imperfect reality that we have today for the risk of tomorrow?
- He said that if Britain left the EU, it would immediately have to start paying tariffs to trade with EU countries. He conceded that trade deals might be negotiated, but he said tariffs would apply in the meantime.
As soon as we came out of the single market, new tariffs would be put upon us until we negotiated new deals on a bilateral arrangement with every country that we had to do deals with.
- He defended a contentious claim that being in the EU is worth £3,000 to every household. Rose repeated this claim recently in an article in the Sun. When Webb said this claim had been rubbished by the Channel 4 FactCheck blog, Rose refused to withdraw it. He said it has been quoted only yesterday by the CBI.
It was quoted yesterday by Paul Drechsler who is the president of the CBI. The CBI is a reputable organisation. They represent British industry and they wouldn’t be putting out numbers if they didn’t feel there was some veracity to those numbers and so I won’t withdraw that number. We know it costs us some £340 for every individual to be a member of the EU; we say there’s a £3,000 benefit coming back the other way for every member who is in the EU ... I am going to let the statisticians argue amongst themselves.
Here’s an extract from what the Channel 4 FactCheck blog said about this.
So should we take this claim that EU membership boosts GDP by up to 5 per cent seriously? We think not. It’s way more optimistic than most other estimates, and we can’t don’t really know how the CBI researchers have arrived at this figure.
- He refused to say what proportion of Britain Stronger in Europe’s funding came from big banks. But he insisted that the group had wide-ranging support, not just from the City.
First of all we are cross party and our membership comes from the people who represent student unions, represent universities, represent trade unions represent the Labour party and the Liberal party ... We get contributions on a daily basis, small, medium and large contributions.
Rose was being interviewed by Justin Webb, and Webb made a very good point when he said that, with the rival camps throwing out conflicting statistics, the EU referendum debate was going to end up like the “first world war trenches”, with both sides fighting each other to a standstill. Webb told Rose:
The risk is, for you, is that all the facts that you come out with will be countered by other people’s facts and we will get into a morass of debate about facts of figures, all of them supposition - because we don’t actually know what the picture would be like after we voted to leave.
Webb also said that Today would be interviewing a leader from the Out camp tomorrow. But given that there are now three big rival Out campaigns, it will not be easy for them deciding who to have on.
Updated
Lord Rose, the former Marks & Spencer chief executive who new chairs Britain Stronger in Europe, the lead campaign urging people to vote to remain in the EU, was on the Today programme. Britain Stronger in Europe is releasing new figures today about the value of the single market to the UK, but it was a wide-ranging interview that covered many aspects of the EU referendum debate and the most interesting section was on immigration.
Rose argued that immigration was going to remain a problem whether Britain stayed in the EU or not.
We are trying to concentrate on the facts ... we are trying to give hard facts to the UK population ... Migration is hard facts but migration is one of the great things that is happening in the world today. It’s an event or it is a phenomenon worldwide which is not just a UK issue, it’s a worldwide issue. Politicians are going to have to grapple with that. Immigration isn’t going to go away if we were outside the EU. This is something we have got to deal with. Its a crisis, it’s a European crisis and it’s a world crisis. And it’s a terrifying crisis.
When it was put to him that if Britain left the EU, it would have the proper control over immigration, he at first said that was the case already.
We do decide, effectively [who enters UK], because we are not part of the Schengen agreement ...
Then, when Today’s Justin Webb said being in the EU meant Britain could not exclude EU migrants, Rose accepted that.
That is irrefutable – if we are in the EU, and we are part of that club, people with an EU passport can come here. Equally, those UK citizens who want to go to the EU can also do the same, so it’s a quid pro quo.
But then he went on to claim that David Cameron was trying to negotiate “some sort of standstill” on EU migration.
Now, what the prime minister is trying to do is negotiate some sort of standstill on that, if possible. I don’t know what’s in the prime minister’s mind. I don’t know what he will negotiate. But I do support him in his efforts, and let’s see what comes out.
That was striking because it is not what Cameron has said. He wants the UK to be allowed to stop EU migrants getting in-work benefits for four years because he thinks that will make coming to Britain to work less attractive, but he has never claimed this would bring EU migration to “a standstill”.
This is from the Financial Times’s Gideon Rachman.
Stuart Rose raising unrealistic expectation that Cameron might negotiate "standstill" on immigration from EU on Today prog
— Gideon Rachman (@gideonrachman) January 25, 2016
On balance, it probably wasn’t a great interview. I will post more from it later.
Here is the agenda for the day.
9.30am: Britain Stronger in Europe publishes research about the value of the single market to the EU.
10am: Dominic Grieve, the former attorney general, and others give evidence to the Freedom of Information Commission.
11am: Number 10 lobby briefing.
11.30am: John Swinney, Scotland’s finance minister, gives evidence to the Scottish affairs committee at a hearing in Perth.
3pm: Peers begin a debate on the welfare reform bill. At some point there will be a vote on a Labour bid to stop the government abolishing income-related child poverty targets.
3.30pm: David Cameron holds a press conference in Downing Street with Enda Kenny, the Irish Taoiseach.
As usual, I will also be covering breaking 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.
