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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

EU referendum: Vote Leave's Dominic Cummings questioned by MPs - Politics live

Dominic Cummings
Dominic Cummings Photograph: Parliament TV

Summary

  • Dominic Cummings, the campaign director of Vote Leave, has been described as having “no grip on reality at all” after startling Tory and Labour members of the Commons Treasury committee with a series of provocative claims. After questioning him Helen Goodman, a Labour member of the committee, posted a message on Twitter saying: “Genuinely alarmed at the behaviour of Dominic Cummings who runs Vote Leave, He seems to have no grip on reality at all.” Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative chair of the committee, accused him near the start of the hearing of playing “fast and loose” with the facts. During the hearing Cummings accused the Bank of England and the Treasury of “scaremongering”, described Treasury civil servants as “charlatans” and accused the Cabinet Office of threatening people who did not support it on the EU. Tyrie said these were “truly extraordinary claims” and challenged him to provide evidence to back them up.
  • Cummings claimed officials in Number 10 and the Cabinet Office were issuing threats to people and organisations that did not support their policy on the EU. He said this happened in 1999, when the government wanted business to support joining the euro, and it was happening now, he said.

That happened repeatedly in the euro campaign. It has happened repeatedly in this campaign as well. Calls go out from Jeremy Heywood’s office in the Cabinet Office saying, ‘You don’t want to be on that side or bad things might happen to you.’

When he was asked if he was accusing Heywood, the cabinet secretary, of issuing threats, Cummings replied:

All sorts of people in the Cabinet Office call people all the time and make threats, some more overt and some more covert. I don’t want to say Jeremy Heywood himself has particularly and specifically done anything. But everyone close to how government operates knows the power of the Cabinet Office and the power of the cabinet secretary and the power of, subtly-worded in a very English way, threats.

He also said he thought officials and special advisers were involved. “It is part of what their job description is,” he said.

  • Cummings claimed that the government was considering announcing new concessions from the EU before the referendum to shore up support for a Remain vote. The Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg said the government announced “devo-max” shortly before the Scottish independence referendum when it was afraid of losing and he asked Cummings if he thought the same would happen again. Would the government offer “Euro-min”, Rees-Mogg asked. Cummings replied:

I think there’s a pretty good chance of that. I have spoken to people in government, in Whitehall, in the Cabinet Office who have actively been thinking about some of these schemes. One of the most obvious schemes, if Cameron and Osborne are desperate, is for them to announce some kind of ‘We will amend the 1972 European Communities Act to ensure it will not do blah, blah, blah in the future.’ They were thinking about some kind of scam like that in the hope that it would persuade Boris to support them. Of course, that did not work. Boris stuck to his principles ... But they are clearly thinking about something like that.

It would not surprise me at all to see Cameron and Osborne on stage offering something like that, possibly with representatives from the European Union saying, ‘Oh yes, we’ll do this new deal, don’t worry.’

  • Cummings said having a European single market in services would be “deeply destructive” for the UK. The government argues that it needs to remain in the EU because the country’s large services sector would lose out if it were excluded from the single market, which is currently being extended to cover services. But Cummings said he did not accept this.

A single market in services would actually be deeply destructive for Great Britain. We attract the biggest proportion of investment into the European Union precisely because we have a different legal system to Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain etc. We have a common law system, courts, contract, insurance, etc etc, which is the reason why we suck in all this money from around the world. The idea of harmonising all our rules on all of this with Greece would be disastrous for these investment flows. So I reject your premise. The idea that we want a single market in services is false. Harmonisation of all of these rules is damaging, often.

  • Cummings refused to rule out the prospect of there being a second referendum if Britain votes to leave the EU. One theory is that the EU may offer new concessions, making a second referendum attractive. Boris Johnson once floated with this idea, but dropped it after it was powerfully mocked by Cameron in the Commons.
  • Cummings accused the CBI of lying about business support for the EU. He said:

I witnessed exactly the same process on the euro campaign in 1999 when they lied repeatedly about their membership. They lied about how many members they had, they lied about how they were surveying them. They persistently lied about business opinion, and they have been doing the same thing on the EU.

The CBI is so dishonest. It won’t even tell you how many members it has got. That’s the scale of its dishonesty.

  • He said Cameron was “crazy” to say that he would trigger article 50, starting the two-year withdrawal process from the EU, immediately if Britain voted for Brexit. Cummings said there was no need to act that soon. In fact, there might be no need to trigger article 50 at all, he argued, because an alternative withdrawal process might be possible.

That’s all from me for today.

Thanks for the comments.

Updated

Tyrie thanks Cummings for his evidence. They have been going for more than three hours, he says.

And that’s it.

I’ll post a summary soon.

Cummings says Vote Leave could hire someone to produce some “spurious numbers” about the benefits of leaving the EU.

But these exercises are bogus, he says.

Cummings says if you had asked the House of Commons and Whitehall and the establishment about foreign policy in the 1930s, they would have backed appeasement. But they were wrong.

He says the conventional wisdom is often wrong.

Andrew Tyrie tells Cummings that he has made it clear that Cummings is going to persist with claims, like the one about the EU costing £350m a week.

He says Vote Leave has been putting out literature that appears to be from the NHS. Many people would consider that as misleading.

He says Cummings has accused the Bank of England and the Treasury of scaremongering.

He says Cummings has accused Goldman Sachs of trying to buy laws in Brussels. And Cummings has accused Cabinet Office officials of using threats.

Tyrie says that, if Cummings has evidence to back up these claims, he should provide it.

He invites Cummings to respond.

Cummings says Vote Leave will continue to use the gross figure for the cost of the EU, not the net figure.

Q: Are you implying Whitehall is suppressing data that might illustrate the cost of the EU?

Definitely, says Cummings. He says the Treasury committee should launch an inquiry into this.

He says he does not accept that the Vote Leave NHS literature is misleading. Although he says it would be wrong to put that in a hospital. When it was reported that Vote Leave had distribute this in a hospital, he investigated and found no evidence it was them. They would not do that, he says.

This hearing has almost gone on for three hours. Apparently right at the start, before the TV feed came on (I’m monitoring the hearing from the Parliament TV feed), Dominic Cummings told the committee he would have to be gone by 4pm. Andrew Tyrie explained to him that that was not how it worked, and that if he did try to leave, he would be recalled.

That might explain why MPs are not keen to wrap up quickly. Select committees don’t take kindly to that sort of behaviour.

Just after those exchanges Wes Streeting, a Labour MP on the committee, posted these messages on Twitter.

John Crace is sketching the hearing for tomorrow’s paper. It should be a good read.

Here is some YouTube footage of one of the livelier exchanges earlier between Andrew Tyrie and Dominic Cummings.

Andrew Tyrie questioning Dominic Cummings

Cummings says the Cabinet Office has been making threats to businesses with regard to what they should do in the referendum. He says he is not specifically saying it was Sir Jeremy Heywood, the cabinet secretary. But officials and civil servants have been doing this, he says. That is what they do.

The CBI has posted a chart on Twitter to reinforce its claim that a majority of businesses are opposed to Brexit.

Andrew Tyrie says Matthew Elliott and Arron Banks could not be here today for personal reasons. They will get another chance to give evidence, he says.

Q: Do you think, if the EU were to disintegrate as a result of Brexit, that would be a positive thing?

Cummings says he would not use the word disintegrate himself.

What the UK does will have an effect on the EU. And voting to leave would force the EU to change. There would be a “more pluralist European system”, he says. And that would be a good thing.

The Brussels system is proving disastrous politically and economically, he says. A Brexit vote would disrupt that, and that would be good.

The EU would not be able to persist with relentless centralisation.

Q: Would the eurozone collapse?

Cummings says it was a mistake to set it up.

Q: Would Brexit help the break up of the eurozone?

Cummings says the eurozone could end in a blow up. That would be disastrous for everyone. Or there could be an ordered dismantling of it. That might be in everyone’s advantage. But it would be hard to achieve, he says.

Journalists who are monitoring this hearing don’t feel that Dominic Cummings is making a terribly good impression. Here are some tweets.

From the FT’s Giles Wilkes

From ITV’s Adam Smith

From the FT’s Sebastian Payne

From Huffington Post’s Owen Bennett

Q: Vote Leave talks about a free trade zone from Iceland to the Russian border. What is this arrangement?

Cummings says that refers to a network of relationships. But free trade applies. The exception is Belarus.

Mark Garnier, a Conservative, goes next.

Q: In the Guardian today you are quoted saying there are umpteen EU ambassadors saying they would be willing to do a free trade deal with the UK if it left. Who are they?

Cummings won’t says.

Q: How many is umpteen? Between 13 and 19?

That would be a reasonable guess, says Cummings.

He says he cannot name these people because the conversations were private. And in public they might deny saying this, because otherwise they would undermine the Remain case.

Garnier says, by not answering these questions, Garnier comes over as “slightly shifty”.

Cummings 'has no grip on reality at all', Helen Goodman says

The Labour MP Helen Goodman has also been tweeting about the impression he made on her when she questioned him earlier.

Q: In Scotland the government offered devo-max in a panic just before the referendum. Do you think there is a chance of the EU offering some kind of equivalent just before the referendum.

Cummings says this may happen.

It would not surprise him to see Cameron and Osborne on a stage, with someone from the EU, offering a much better deal.

He says, in those circumstances, it would be best to vote no, to test whether they were sincere. If the UK voted to stay in, it would not be able to hold the EU to the deal.

Q: In the past you floated the idea of a second referendum, if the EU were to come back and offer better terms. How likely is that?

Cummings says he wrote the blog floating that idea before Vote Leave was even set up.

He says the European Commission has form for trying to get countries to think again when it loses a referendum.

He says the Foreign Office and the commission may be tempted by this approach.

But he says he thinks this is unlikely. They are so terrified of the EU project falling apart that they would rather have the UK out, he says.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, a Conservative, goes next. He has made a personal donation to Vote Leave, he says. But it won’t be declarable because it is relatively small, he says.

Q: David Cameron says he would trigger article 50 immediately if Britain votes to leave the EU.

Cummings says that would be a “crazy idea”. He does not think the Commons would allow that.

Q: Jon Cunliffe, the Bank of England deputy governor, said a wise government would take a bit of time deciding what it wanted first before triggering article 50. Do you agree?

Cummings says he does. It would not be right to send people like Philip Hammond to negotiate withdrawal. The government would have to decide who to proceed. And then it would have to decide whether or not it was going to use article 50.

Q: How long would withdrawal take?

Cummings says he cannot answer that. But 90% of the problems could be solved fairly quickly, he says.

Updated

Goodman says Vote Leave seems to be dominated by a small number of people from finance who do not know much about manufacturing, on which many British jobs depend.

Cummings says Vote Leave’s donors do not have an impact on its policies.

And he says Vote Leave has a wide ranger of funders.

Vote Leave will be publishing its list of donors, he says.

And the CBI has been tweeting a response to Cummings’s claim that it does not represent business opinion.

Rachel Reeves has tweeted about her exchange with Dominic Cummings.

Q: How many UK jobs do you think depend on the EU?

Cummings says it is meaningless to put the question like that.

Using the word “depend” renders the claim that 3m jobs depend on the EU meaningless.

He says he spoke to the person who wrote the report using that figure in 1999. That person said the use of that figure by pro-euro campaigns was “worse than Goebbels”.

He says only 5% of firms export to the EU. But 95% don’t.

Helen Goodman, the Labour MP, goes next.

Q: In your letter to the Electoral Commission applying for lead campaign designation, you said you wanted to enhance democracy, and leave a legacy to that effect. How does that square with saying you wanted to disrupt company AGMs?

Cummings says the CBI is deeply dodgy. They lied about business opinion. And they did the same in 1999 over the euro.

Q: So are you saying it is lying?

Cummings says the CBI is so dishonest it won’t even say how many members it has.

Q: You claim the CBI is misrepresenting the views of its members. But one third of FTSE 100 firms have said they are opposed to Brexit. Do you have the support of any FTSE 100 comanies.

Simon Wolfson from Next supports us, says Cummings.

Q: That was as an individual. What about company boards?

Cummings says boards stay out of it.

Rachel Reeves goes next.

Q: If we leave the EU, won’t financial firms move to the continent?

Cummings says he does not accept that. That is what they said when they wanted the UK to join the euro. Britain did not join the euro, and these firms did not leave.

Q: Are you saying you are using money to buy legislation in Brussels?

Cummings says that is what is going on. He says it is hard to know the difference between bribery and lobbying.

Andrew Tyrie goes next.

Q: Government policy since the 1980s has been to extend the single market. So you are saying that has been a mistake?

Yes, says Cumming.

Reeves says in Leeds, where she is an MP, financial services are very important. At the moment firms can operate in the EU because rules are passported; ie, if firms can operate here, they can operate on the continent too.

Cummings says firms like Goldman Sachs spend millions in the “corrupt Brussels lobbying system” ensuring the rules work in their favour.

Q: So you would be happy if we did not have access to the single market in services?

Cummings says he is not saying that.

He says the key thing is that he wants regulation to be set by the UK.

Q: Gove said in his speech that the EU has free trade deals with countries that do not involve free movement. Let’s not confuse free trade with the single market. If we are outside the single market, we won’t get free trade in services, will we?

Cummings says many aspects of the single market are negative.

And would a single market in services be such a good idea?

He says, firstly, that people have been talking about a free market in services for a long time, and it has not developed.

And, secondly, a free market in services would be bad for the UK, he says. If we set rules for services at an EU level, the ECJ would have the final say.

Cummings says the euro is mangling the Greek economy “into a nightmare”.

Cummings says the establishment has got every big foreign policy decision wrong since trying to deal with Bismarck in the 19th century.

Q: Do you think Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, was scaremongering when he said Brexit was the biggest domestic risk to the economy?

Cummings says he does not think those words were wise or accurate. Carney has made all sorts of mistakes with his interventions, he says.

Q: Vote Leave described this as scaremongering.

Cummings says Vote Leave will expose all scaremongering.

Q: So were Carney’s comments scaremongering.

Cummings says they were.

Labour’s Rachel Reeves go next.

Q: Matthew Elliott said that it would be better to have a referendum giving people the choice between two clear propositions. So will your side spell out exactly what the alternative to EU membership would be?

Cummings says Michael Gove set this out in his speech yesterday.

Q: Will Vote Leave set out its analysis of the macro-economic impact of leaving the EU.

Cummings says it will, but it will not publish something like the Treasury document. That was the work of “charlatans”, he says.

Q: Who will do it?

You will find out when we publish.

Q: And when will you do that?

Cummings won’t say.

Chris Philp, a Conservative, is asking questions now.

Q: How do you think our trade arrangements with the rest of the world will evolve if we leave the EU?

Cummings says the UK will get a seat on the WTO and have the ability to negotiate its own trade deals.

Q: Does the civil service have the ability to negotiate these deals?

Cummings says there are huge problems with the way Whitehall works. He would not be confident with the Foreign Office negotiating anything.

These guys can’t negotiate their way out of a paper bag.

So in the short term there would be a problem.

Q: So relying on them to negotiate new trade deals is a bit of a stretch?

Cummings says this is part of a broader problem. It would be wrong to think leaving the EU will solve all our problems.

Generally speaking, the training of civil servants is “appalling”, he says.

Cummings says Tyrie used to support Britain joining the euro.

Tyrie says Cummings is wrong. He accuses Cummings of playing “fast and loose” with the facts, as he has been with “all the other facts” he has come out with.

Tyrie asks about a Vote Leave leaflet saying: “Help protect your local hospital.”

Cummings says it looks like a Vote Leaflet.

Q: Could someone think this is an NHS leaflet, since it has an NHS logo on it?

No, says Cummings. It has a Vote Leave logo on it.

Tyrie says Vote Leave should think twice about putting out literature as “misleading” as this.

Cummings says Vote Leave did not distribute leaflets to a hospital. Vote Leave does not know where it came from.

Andrew Tyrie with a Vote Leave leaflet
Andrew Tyrie with a Vote Leave leaflet Photograph: Parliament TV

Updated

Q: One of your Vote Leave posters says if we left the EU, we could give the NHS an extra £350m a week.

Cummings says we could give the NHS a large proportion of that. And there would be extra savings too.

Q: So you will give the £350m to the NHS, and find money from other sources, “as yet unspecified”, for other causes.

Cummings says the UK could give the money to the NHS, and give money to science and agriculture, and still have billions left over.

Cummings suggests this sounds like “Aladdin’s cave”.

Q: You say the UK’s contribution to the EU is £350m a week. But we are not going to get anything like that back.

Cummings says that is a fair figure, given that we are debited £19bn a year according to the ONS.

He says billions would be saved in the school building programme once the UK is exempt from EU procurement rules.

Q: What would the right figure be for the extra amount the UK might get?

Cummings says at the very least we will end the debit of £19.1bn. Then there are EU procurement rules, and EU energy costs. Being free from those would also save money.

At some point in the campaign Vote Leave will tot up the total savings, he says.

Q: How much of this money would the UK wish to carry on spending in the UK if it left the EU?

Cummings says that would be for the UK government to decide.

It would be “crazy” to have a lot of cliff edges, with fund cut straight away. He is interested in science, he says. He would like to see science funding continue.

He says some funding would continue permanently, and some would just continue on a temporary basis.

In some areas spending could go up, he says.

Tyrie asks Cummings to explain how the rebate process works. He says the money never leaves the UK.

Cummings says the money is debited from the UK. That is what the ONS says.

Cumming says if Tyrie was sitting at home with Mrs Tyrie in his slippers and saw money debited from his account on his bank statement, he would think he had lost the money.

Tyrie says he used to work in the Treasury and that he knows how this works. The money never leaves the UK, he says.

Q: How much does the UK contribute to the EU?

Cummings says it is £19.1bn.

Q: And are you aware of the rebate?

Yes, says Cummings.

Q: How much is it?

About £3bn or £4bn, Cummings says.

Andrew Tyrie says he is wrong. He says it is £6bn.

Vote Leave's Dominic Cummings questioned by MPs

The Commons Treasury committee has just started taking evidence from Dominic Cummings, Vote Leave’s campaign director. Cummings used to work as Michael Gove’s special adviser at the Department for Education.

Andrew Tyrie, the Conservative MP who chairs the committee, started by asking Cummings about the Vote Leave claim that EU regulation costs British business £600m per week. Cummings defended the system, but sidestepped questions about how many of these regulations the UK would want to keep anyway if it voted to leave the EU.

Conservative party admits failing to declare election spending worth £38,000 properly

The Conservative party has admitted failing to properly declare election battlebus -related spending worth almost £40,000 to the Electoral Commission. In a statement to Channel 4 News a party spokesperson said:

CCHQ campaigned across the country for the return of a Conservative government. As is apparent from our national return, the party declared expenditure related to our CCHQ-organised Battlebus.

However, due to administrative error it omitted to declare the accommodation costs of those using the vehicles. This is something we have already brought to the attention of the Electoral Commission in order to amend the return.

The statement was issued in response to an investigation by Channel 4 News.

More seriously, Channel 4 News is also suggesting that this spending should have been declared as constituency spending, not national spending, and that failing to declare it in this way would be an offence. It is going to broadcast its report tonight, but it has just sent out a new release. Here’s an extract.

In an investigation to be broadcast tonight (Wednesday), Channel 4 News has obtained further undeclared receipts which reveal that more than £38,000 was spent accommodating activists at hotels across the country, as part of the BattleBus 2015 campaign. The spending was not declared to the Electoral Commission in accordance with the law.

The Channel 4 News investigation has also obtained evidence that the BattleBus campaign was focussed on local candidates, suggesting the costs incurred should have been declared on their local candidate spending returns. If so this could constitute a criminal offence.

Had that taken place, 24 of the 29 constituencies visited by BattleBus would have exceeded the legal spending limits set out by law. Of these, 22 were won by the Conservatives in the general election.

Although the Conservative party accepts that the battlebus accommodation spending was not declared properly, it does not accept that this was constituency spending, not national spending. A party spokesperson told Channel 4 News:

The party always took the view that our national Battlebus, a highly-publicised campaign activity, was part of the national return - and we would have no reason not to declare it as such, given that the party was some millions below the national spending threshold. Other political parties ran similar vehicles which visited different parliamentary constituencies as part of their national campaigning.

Updated

The Treasury committee’s session with Vote Leave is due to start any minute now.

We’ve just had an email from the committee saying Vote Leave’s chief executive Matthew Elliott will not be appearing, so the MPs will just be questioning Dominic Cummings, Vote Leave’s campaign director.

Two figures from Leave.EU, Arron Banks and Richard Tice, have also pulled out.

The committee says Elliott, Banks and Tice will appear at a later date.

Lunchtime summary

Cameron criticising Sadiq Khan at PMQs

Updated

Rachel Reeves says Cameron's comments about Khan 'beyond contempt'

Rachel Reeves, the Labour MP and former shadow work and pensions secretary, told the World at One a few minutes ago that David Cameron’s comments about Sadiq Khan at PMQs (see 1.13pm.) She was responding to the leader of the Commons, Chris Grayling, who said Khan’s decision to share platforms with extremists raised questions about his judgment. Reeves said:

I would expect better from you, Chris, and I would expect better from the prime minister. This is gutter politics. The insinuation that Sadiq Khan is somehow a friend of Isis [Islamic State] is beyond contempt. I served in the shadow cabinet with Sadiq Khan for many years. He is a man of the utmost integrity. He has taken on extremism in the Islamic community and on many occasions he has fallen out with leaders in the Islamic community, for example on equal marriage. So the idea that he is somehow a friend of extremism, a friend of terrorists, is beyond contempt.

Rachel Reeves
Rachel Reeves Photograph: Richard Gardner/REX/Shutterstock

PMQs - Verdict from the Twitter commentariat

This is what political journalists and commentators are saying about PMQs. They are all agreed that Jeremy Corbyn did best.

From the Sunday Times’s James Lyons

From the i’s Nigel Morris

From the Spectator’s James Forsyth

From the Daily Mirror’s Jason Beattie

From the Daily Express’s David Maddox

From the Independent’s John Rentoul

From the Telegraph’s Michael Wilkinson

From the BBC’s Norman Smith

From the Daily Mail’s Jason Groves

PMQs verdict

PMQs verdict: The EU referendum is dominating political debate to such an extent that you might forget that the government has a domestic agenda that it is trying to implement. Today Jeremy Corbyn took us back to one of the key planks of that agenda, the plan to force all schools in England to become academies, and he rather successfully picked holes in it. It was not a disaster for David Cameron, but it was an uncomfortable exchange for him, and reminder that he should not take Corbyn for granted.

Corbyn did well because he managed to bury Cameron under a mountain of quotes from serious Tory figures raising objections to the academy plans. There was nothing particularly overstated in what he said, and his tactics worked well because this is an issue where Labour is united in its opposition to forced academisation and Cameron is facing significant internal opposition. It is also true that Cameron has not produced a robust evidential case for compelling schools to cut their ties with local authorities, and it was interesting to see how Corbyn suggested that this could turn out to be another version of the Health Act (by describing it as another top-down reorganisation). The Health Act is seen by many in government as one of the biggest mistakes they made in the last parliament.

But Corbyn’s comments on academies will probably be overshadowed by what Cameron said about Sadiq Khan, the Labour candidate for London mayor. For weeks now Tories and Tory-supporting newspapers have been suggesting that Khan is soft on extremists by highlighting some of the people he shared platforms with in the past when he was a human rights lawyer and chair of Liberty, and today Cameron piled in with a vengeance. He told MPs:

If we are going to condemn not just violent extremism but also the extremism that seeks to justify violence it is very important we do not back these people and do not appear on platforms with them.

And I have to say I am concerned about Labour’s candidate for mayor of London, who has appeared again and again and again - the leader of the opposition is saying ‘disgrace’, let me tell him - Sulaiman Ghani, the honourable member Tooting has appeared on a platform with him nine times - this man supports IS [Islamic State]. They are shouting down this point because they don’t want to hear the truth. Anyone can make a mistake about who they appear on a platform with but if you do it time after time after time it is right to question your judgment.

Other prime ministers would leave smear jobs like this to others, but Cameron has got form on this; remember what he said about the Labour candidate John O’Farrell three year ago. It smacks of desperation - Khan is leading in the polls - but sometimes mudslinging and dirty tricks can work, and it is not clear whether or not attacks like this are having any impact in the mayoral contest.

Updated

The DUP’s Nigel Dodds says a “two-sided approach to the past” applies in Northern Ireland. Does Cameron agree the security services should not be persecuted?

Cameron says politics in Northern Ireland is more stable and more productive than it has been for many years. But the justice system is independent, he says. We should hold on to that, he says.

And that’s it.

Rebecca Pow, a Conservative, asks about the need to protect ancient woodland.

Cameron says he will consider this. The government has a good record at planting extra woodland, he says.

Labour’s Meg Hillier asks how the housing bill will help her constituents.

Cameron says it will extend the right to buy to housing association tenants. He says the government has also got help to buy, and a shared buying scheme.

Cameron says the EU decision is a decision for Britain, and Britain alone. But he thinks we should listen to what friendly countries say. He has not found any friendly country in favour of the UK leaving. And we should listen to the US former treasury secretaries, he says.

Labour’s Helen Goodman asks Cameron what’s the worst argument used by Brexit campaigners. She would cite the claim England is an island.

Cameron says the one he would mention is the claim that leaving would take us out of the Eurovision song contest.

Henry Smith, a Conservative, asks Cameron to raise the Chagos Islanders with President Obama this week. They should have the right of return.

Cameron says he will be discussing this issue with Obama.

He says the national security council has been reviewing all the options open to the Chagos Islanders.

Liam Fox, a Conservative, asks why the Treasury’s EU document assumes that the government will not cut net migration.

Cameron says the document used ONS assumptions. But they do not take into acount the impact of the new welfare rules for EU migrants negotiated as part of the EU renegotiation.

Labour’s Imran Hussain asks about the government’s plans to force schools to become academies.

Cameron says some schools have been allowed to fail year after year. Turning them into academies stops this.

Ken Clarke, the Conservative former chancellor, says Margaret Thatcher used to organise seminars for ministers who needed to learn about science. He says Cameron should organise seminars for ministers who need to learn about trade.

Cameron says he will consider this. But he hopes they won’t be as frightening as Thatcher’s seminar. On one of the first times he met her, she asked him what the trade figures were. He was supposed to know but didn’t. He felt as if the ground had opened up.

Cameron says Turks visiting Schengen countries do not have an automatic right to come to the UK.

Snap PMQs verdict:

Snap PMQs verdict: A solid win for Corbyn. Cameron managed to get his usual comic broadside into his final answer (although did you notice how he did not do his usual schtick about the importance of a strong economy - the unemployment figures killed off that today), but Corbyn got the better off him with the sheer weight of evidence he was able to cite about the extent of opposition to the plan to turn all schools into academies. It seemed as if the quotes would never stop. If Labour’s research team did a good job, Cameron’s did too, because he had a sound response to Corbyn’s fifth question, about the school visit. But Corbyn’s quotes were better, and Corbyn successfully questioned both the need for more academies (claims that academisation raises quality are questionable) and how this can be seen as true decentralisation.

Updated

Corbyn says Cameron is heading into some kind of fantasy land. The IFS says school spending will fall by 7% in the next four years - the biggest fall for years. So why is the government spending £1.3bn on a reorganisation that even his MPs do not want.

Cameron says he has protected spending per pupil. And the government is making more spaces available. He says Labour has entered fantasy land. It has given up Trident in Scotland, selected someone who sides with extremists in London. And then they heard Labour had banned McDonald’s. He thought they were banning a job destroyer (John McDonnell). But they were banning McDonald’s. Cameron says: “Frankly, I’m loving it.”

Corbyn quotes the Conservative cabinet member for education at Oxfordshire council who is opposed to diktats from central government. And he quotes the Tory MP Graham Brady saying good schools should be left alone.

Cameron says it is something to get a lecture in diktats from someone with a Stalinist as press secretary (Seumas Milne). He says the academy programme is true devolution. Schools should not be allowed to fail year after year.

Corbyn says he visited Duncan school recently. He quotes from the year six pupils, who wanted to ask Cameron why this was happening. He says Cameron has not even convinced Kenneth Baker, the Tory former education secretary, who said he did not know why the government was doing this.

Cameron says Corbyn told the pupils on his visit that he wanted to see families of schools. That is what the government is doing with its plans to extend academy chains, he says.

Jeremy Corbyn says he is also looking forward to wishing the Queen a happy birthday tomorrow.

Can Cameron explain why he is intend on forcing schools to become academies against the wishes of parents and teachers and governors.

Cameron says it is because he wants schools to become good schools.

If you look at converter academies, 88% are either good or outstanding.

Corbyn says Cameron has not convinced Graham Stuart, the former Tory chair of the education committee, who says the evidence does not show that academies improve performance.

Cameron says the results speak for themselves. There are 1.4m children in good or outstanding schools. He mentions a school in Islington which has become an outstanding school since it became an academy. Why do Labour want to save failing schools?

Corbyn says people are concerned about top-down reorganisation. He quotes another Tory MP, Will Quince, saying good schools should be left alone.

Cameron says schools have a great deal to gain. This was a plan started by Labour. He wants to finish the job.

Cameron at PMQs

The Conservative MP Nigel Adams asks about the Queen, saying she had dedicated herself to the nation and carried our her duties “with dignity and grace”. People will be celebrating her 90th birthday tomorrow. So will the prime minister pass on Adams’ best wishes to her, and those of all MPs, when he next sees her.

David Cameron says he will. Tomorrow is an important landmark for the country, and for the Commonwealth. She has served 64 years on the throne. MPs will pay tribute tomorrow.

The BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg thinks Jeremy Corbyn may go on education today.

Corbyn could ask about overcrowding in primary schools.

Or teacher shortages.

Or the opposition to plans to turn all schools in England into academies.

Cameron at PMQs

PMQs is starting soon.

Here is the order paper.

According to George Parker in the Financial Times (subscription), there is increasing speculation that David Cameron will make Michael Gove deputy prime minister in a summer reshuffle if he wins the EU referendum.

Michael Gove is seen by David Cameron as the key to restoring Conservative party unity after the EU referendum, but it did not sound that way on Tuesday as the justice secretary hit his Eurosceptic stride ...

It is perhaps a sign of the Euro-trauma affecting the Conservative party that Mr Cameron is looking to Mr Gove to help bring the party together — if the prime minister succeeds in keeping Britain in the EU on June 23.

“Gove is the key,” said one cabinet minister. Another said: “There’s a lot of talk about Michael becoming deputy prime minister in a unity reshuffle. That might make a lot of sense” ...

Mr Gove’s status as a genuinely committed Eurosceptic, willing to put his love of country ahead of his friendship with Mr Cameron, makes him a uniquely credible figure in this “unity reshuffle”.

The idea of making him deputy prime minister would be the clearest demonstration of Mr Cameron’s desire to bring the party back together, although what precise responsibilities he might hold are unclear.

Michael Gove leaving Number 10 after cabinet yesterday
Michael Gove leaving Number 10 after cabinet yesterday Photograph: Mark Thomas/REX/Shutterstock

SNP launch election manifesto

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, has been launching the SNP’s election manifesto in Edinburgh.

My colleague Severin Carrell has been tweeting from the event.

More than 200 entrepreneurs have thrown their weight behind the campaign for Britain to stay in the EU, warning that the economic shock of Brexit would be “hugely damaging” to the prospects of start-up businesses, the Press Association reports. Among signatories to an open letter from Entrepreneurs for In are founders of companies that have rapidly become household names in the online economy, like Skype, Ebookers, Zoopla and Net a Porter, as well as some of the names behind brands including Innocent Drinks, Jack Wills, Yo! Sushi and Domino’s Pizza.

According to the Labour MP Helen Goodman, a member of the Treasury committee, Arron Banks has pulled out of giving evidence to the committee later today.

My colleague Graeme Wearden has more coverage of reaction to the news that unemployment is rising on his business live blog.

Liam Fox says Brexit vote could be 'shock therapy' for EU

Liam Fox, the Conservative former defence secretary, was on the Today programme this morning responding to what the American former treasury secretaries were saying in their article. He said they did not appreciate how badly the EU was performing economically.

I respect their authority, but some of them do go back a long way. The most important failure of the analysis is that they have failed to take into account the decline and failure of the European economy itself, with a falling share of world trade, a smaller and less important destination for UK exports, and with chronic unemployment.

If you look at Britain’s unemployment rate of 5.1%, the European Union’s averages 8.9%, and the eurozone is 10.3% - that is a failing European economy, where we are clearly not having the influence we ought to have, or they would be having falling unemployment the way that we have in Britain.

He also said a Brexit vote could serve as “shock therapy” for the EU.

Unless there is fundamental change in that European leadership we will have an imploding continent, and a British exit may give them the shock therapy they require to make the change necessary to stop Europe falling apart.

Liam Fox
Liam Fox Photograph: Amer Ghazzal/REX

Unemployment rises for first time in seven months

Here are the headline unemployment figures.

  • Unemployment increased by 21,000 to 1.7m (5.1%) between December and February. That is is the first rise for seven months.
  • The number of people on the claimant count last month increased by 6,700 to 732,100.
  • Average earnings increased by 1.8% in the year to February, 0.3% down on the
    previous month.

Here is the Office for National Statistics bulletin with the full details.

What the former US treasury secretaries argue

The Times article by the former US treasury secretaries (paywall) is bit turgid, but here is a summary of the arguments.

  • Staying in the EU is good for the UK because leaving would be “a risky bet on the country’s economic future”.
  • Leaving the EU could damage London’s status as a “global financial centre”. London would still be an important financial centre if the UK left the EU, but it might lose “global primacy” if it were “no longer the gateway to Europe”.
  • Leaving would “disrupt and reduce trade flows at least for a while”.
  • The uncertainty generated by Leave vote could “hinder growth even further”.
  • Britain staying in the EU is also good for the US, because the UK has been “a strong voice and partner” and “our collective efforts benefited from having a strong Britain within Europe”.
  • A vote to leave would boost populist, anti-EU movements in the rest of Europe, and could trigger “a major setback to the European project more broadly”.
  • Europe would also lose out from the loss of British leadership.
  • Brexit would also pose “a critical risk to the global economy”.

And here is the list of eight former treasury secretaries who signed the article: George P Shultz (US treasury secretary, 1972-74), W Michael Blumenthal (1977-79), Robert E Rubin (1995-99), Lawrence H Summers (1999-2001), Paul H O’Neill (2001-02), John W Snow (2003-06), Henry M Paulson Jr (2006-09), Timothy F Geithner (2009-13).

President Obama is coming to London later this week partly so that he can stand alongside David Cameron and declare that Washington thinks Britain should remain in the European Union and today, as a warm-up, eight senior American politicians have signed a joint article delivering the same message.

They are all former treasury secretaries (the American equivalent of chancellor) and the article appears in the Times (paywall). One of the eight, Larry Summers (treasury secretary under Bill Clinton) summed up their argument on the Today programme this morning.

[Leaving the EU] would be unfortunate for the British economy, unfortunate for Europe, unfortunate for the United States, and unfortunate for the world. It would do damage to London as a financial centre, it would do damage to Britain as a gateway to Europe, it would remove the very positive influence that Britain has within European debates that strengthen the European economy, and it would reduce Britain’s very positive influence as an ally of the United States and a strong participant in the G7 and in the G20. It would be a step towards a more closed, more protectionist, less effective and less prosperous global economy...

Britain would continue to be involved in global affairs but its role without its anchor to Europe would surely be diminished. I think it would find that the rest of the world, which saw it as a crucial gateway to Europe, would see it as a less relevant and less significant economy when it was on its own. I believe that the pound would very likely come under very substantial pressure in ways that would ultimately lead to contraction in the British economy. So I do not think that words would speak loudly in the face of what would be perhaps the most isolationist deed in the last century for Britain.

He also said the “special relationship” between Britain and America would be undermined if Britain left the EU.

I don’t want to say that the United States and Britain wouldn’t continue to have the close ties that come from history, but I think the special relationship would translate much less into prosperity for both our countries and I think the special relationship would have much less influence on the broad world. Much would be lost by the kind of split in the West that a British withdrawal from Europe would represent.

I will post more on this shortly.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.30am: Unemployment figures are published.

10.30am: James Brokenshire, the immigration minister, gives evidence to a Lords committee about unaccompanied minors.

11am: Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, launches the SNP’s election manifesto in Edinburgh.

12pm: David Cameron faces Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs.

2.15pm: Matthew Elliott and Dominic Cummings from Vote Leave give evidence to the Commons Treasury committee about the EU referendum. And at 3.15pm Arron Banks and Richard Tice from Leave.EU give evidence.

I will be focusing on PMQs and the Treasury commitee hearing but, as usual, I will also be covering other 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 after PMQs 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.

If you think there are any voices that I’m leaving out, particularly political figures or organisations giving alternative views of the stories I’m covering, do please flag them up below the line (include “Andrew” in the post). I can’t promise to include everything, but I do try to be open to as wide a range of perspectives as possible.

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