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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

EU referendum: David Cameron grilled on Sky News – as it happened

Cameron: leaving the EU would be ‘self inflicted wound’ on UK – video

Summary

Here are the the main points from David Cameron’s appearance on Sky.

  • David Cameron has insisted that his hopes of getting net migration below 100,000 remain credible in his first major TV appearance during the EU referendum campaign. For an hour he faced tough questions from members of the audience and Sky’s Faisal Islam, in an encounter that saw many of the members of the public asking questions show considerable scepticism regarding his EU claims, and his record generally. On immigration, he defended his decision to set a target of getting annual net migration below 100,000 - a target the government is missing by more than 200,000. At the time he first proposed it, it was realistic, he claimed. He also suggested that in future economic growth in Europe would lead to the numbers coming down.

When I made that ambition for Britain, at that time net migration between people leaving and people coming from Europe was broadly in balance. It was about trying to reduce migration from outside. But we have been living in extraordinary times when the British economy was growing strongly and we’ve created 2m jobs. There was a time when we were creating more jobs that other European countries put together. That won’t continue for ever.

He also said the target “remains the right ambition for Britain”. But trying to cut immigration by leaving the EU and pulling out of the single market would be “madness” he said, because of the economic damage it would cause.

  • Cameron rejected claims that he was “scaremongering” about the economic impact of Brexit. James Dexter, a businessman, asked the prime minister what “personal damage the scaremongering has done to your legacy”. Cameron replied:

I don’t accept it is scaremongering. I am genuinely worried about Britain leaving the single market.

At another point, he said that he would be failing in his job if he did not respond to the economic warnings about leaving the EU.

Frankly, I think the job of the prime minister is to warn about potential dangers as well as to talk about the upsides and the opportunities there are by being a member of this organisation.

But if I didn’t listen to the IMF, to the OECD, to the TUC, to the CBI, to the governor of the Bank of England - if I didn’t listen to any of these people, I would not be doing my job and I would not be serving this country.

  • He urged people to think about their children when deciding how to vote. This is what he said in his short statement at the end.

I would just say to everybody: as we go home and wake up in the morning and look our children and our grandchildren in the eye and we think who we are responsible for through our pay packet, let us not roll the dice on their future.

Britain doesn’t succeed when we quit, we succeed when we get stuck in and we work to improve these organisations and we safeguard the prosperity and the security of this great country. To me, that’s what it’s all about.

  • He had an angry exchange with a student who accused him of waffling. (See 10.11pm.)
  • He defended the Treasury’s decision to say that households could lose £4,300 if the UK leaves the EU. The Commons Treasury committee described this as misleading, because the figure refers to lost national income, not lost disposable household income. But Cameron did not accept he should withdraw the figure.

That figure is the loss to the economy divided by the number of households in our country.

If our country is poorer, then our households are going to be poorer. What this means is fewer jobs, it means lower wages, it means less income.

Those are the things that we would be inflicting on ourselves if we voted to leave.

  • He defended the fact that EU membership means the European court of justice can adjudicate on tax policy and other matters. He said:

I accept we have a single market and you have to have a single set of rules for those countries. Would we be more sovereign if we left? Would we have more control? The only difference is you are not round the table making the rules.

  • He rejected the claim that Britain loses more arguments in the EU’s council of ministers than any other nations. It only looks like that because Britain insists on putting matters to a vote when it is going to lose, so it can get its disagreement on the record, he said. He said other countries that are being outvoted do not do this.
  • He said that if Britain were not a member of the EU, he would recommend joining - but only on the special terms he has negotiated.

If I was offered the terms that Britain has, I would accept them, because our membership is very different from anybody else’s. If I was offered the terms of another country, that would be a different matter, but Britain’s terms are right for Britain.

  • He rejected claims that it was hypocritical to share a platform with Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, on the EU when he criticised him during the mayoral campaign. He said:

We had a lively election campaign in London, I didn’t think it was the right choice some of the people he shared a platform with. The right thing for the PM to do is to work together. Sadiq and I disagree about many things, we’ll try and work together and on this issue of Europe we agree. We buried our disagreements and appeared on a platform.

  • He praised Boris Johnson, saying he was “a very talented politician” who had “plenty of fuel left in the tank”.

That’s all from me for tonight.

Thanks for the comments.

Updated

Here is the Guardian panel with its verdict on Cameron’s performance, with contributions from Hugh Muir, Gaby Hinsliff, Matthew d’Ancona and Giles Fraser.

And here is our splash story.

Updated

Here is the Press Association’s account of David Cameron’s encounter with Soraya Bouazzaoui, the student who accused him of scaremongering.

Turkey will not join the European Union “in decades” and should not be an issue in the upcoming referendum, David Cameron has insisted as he came under attack on live TV over his contacts with Ankara.

Muslim student Soraya Bouazzaoui took the prime minister to task over the “clear risks” she said would be created by the accession of a country whose government she said had been accused of supporting extreme groups, allegedly including Islamic State - also known as Isis.

As the PM took questions from a live audience on Sky News’s EU: In or Out? broadcast, Bouazzaoui accused him of “waffling” over his insistence that accession for Turkey was not on the cards.

She said she had intended to vote Remain in the June 23 referendum, but had been put off by the campaign, which she described as “a complete shambles”.

“I’ve seen nothing but scaremongering, I’ve see no valid facts, I’ve seen no pros and cons,” said Bouazzaoui. “Everything I’ve seen has made voting In to the EU look worse.

“We haven’t even addressed the fact that Turkey want to become in ever-closer union with the EU when they are under such heavy accusation by the entire Middle East for funding Isis. How can you reassure us of staying in the EU and saying there are no risks, when there are clear risks especially when it comes to Isis, especially when you have turned away so many refugees from the fear of having extremists.

“And you are willing to work with the Turkish government who have a brawl in their parliament just two weeks ago.”

As Cameron tried to assure her that his was making a positive case for remaining in the EU, the Southampton University student cut him off, saying: “That’s not answering my question. Let me finish now, because I’ve seen you interrupt many people before. Let me finish.

“I’m an English Literature student, I know waffling when I see it, OK. I’m sorry, but you’re not answering my question - how can you reassure people who want to vote out that we are safe from extremism when we are willing to work with a government like Turkey who want to be part of the EU when they are under heavy accusation?”

Cameron responded: “There is no prospect of Turkey joining the EU in decades. They applied in 1987, they have to complete 35 chapters. One has been completed so far. At this rate they will join in the year 3000.

“There are lots of reasons to vote one way or vote the other way. Turkey is not going to join the EU any time soon, every country, every parliament, has a veto. There are lots of things to worry about in this referendum campaign. I absolutely think that is not a prospect, it’s not going to happen.”

Here is Michael Deacon’s sketch of Cameron’s performance for the Telegraph. And here is an excerpt.

Possibly confused about what the country is voting to decide on June 23, a woman told him that it was “time for this Government to go”. Another woman called him a “hypocrite” for joining forces with Sadiq Khan. A man won applause for accusing him of “scaremongering”. Mr Cameron was rather more polite to these opponents than he had been to Mr Islam, but you could sense his patience becoming strained. The studio audience didn’t think much of him, and he knew it.

It was no disaster. But if you wondered why Mr Cameron didn’t fancy a proper debate: now you know.

Here is some video from Cameron’s performance.

Cameron: leaving the EU would be ‘self inflicted wound’ on UK – video

These are from my colleague Anushka Asthana in the spin room.

Here’s Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, on Cameron’s performance.

Vote Leave says Cameron's scaremongering was 'ridiculed'

Here is Vote Leave chief executive Matthew Elliott on Cameron’s performance.

David Cameron came face-to-face with real voters and tough questions for the first time in the campaign tonight and it wasn’t pretty - his scaremongering was ridiculed by the audience in the studio and at home.

He could not explain how he would meet his promise to reduce immigration below 100,000 while staying in the EU. He refused to say when, if ever, he might meet his target. That is simply not good enough for the voters who elected him on that promise just a year ago. He was skewered by an audience member who accused him of “waffling” on Turkey, given his strong support for early Turkish entry to the EU.

David Cameron could not explain how his deal solved a single problem. All he had was a single bogus argument - that we have to be in the EU to trade with Europe, which is simply untrue.

Cameron blew his credibility when he claimed that Britain becoming a normal democracy would spark World War Three - tonight showed the public doesn’t trust Cameron.

Cameron on Sky - Verdict from the Twitter commentariat

This is what political journalists and commentators are saying about Cameron’s performance on Twitter.

Generally, they are quite favourable.

From the BBC’s Laura Kuennsberg

From ITV’s Robert Peston

From the Sunday Times’s Tim Shipman

From the Daily Mirror

From the Spectator’s Fraser Nelson

From Huffington Post’s Paul Waugh

From the Evening Standard’s Joe Murphy

From the BBC’s Andrew Neil

From Sky’s Adam Boulton

From Bloomberg’s Robert Hutton

From the Daily Express’s David Maddox

From the Times’s Philip Collins

From 5 News’s Andy Bell

From the Mail on Sunday’s Dan Hodges

From STV’s Stephen Daisley

Soraya Bouazzaoui, the student who accused David Cameron of waffling, seems to have won the prize for soundbite of the night.

(She said that, as an English student, she could spot waffling when she saw it. I studied English too, and I can spot a pre-prepared heckle when I see one too, but perhaps that’s being unfair.)

On Sky Iain Duncan Smith, the former work and pensions secretary and a leading Brexit campaigner, said he thought what was most telling about tonight was the hostility of the audience to Cameron and his EU project.

Dominic Cummings, the Vote Leave campaign director, is making a similar point on Twitter.

Cameron on Sky - Snap summary

Cameron on Sky - Snap summary: Cameron seemed relaxed and relieved at the end of that, and that’s understandable; all told, it probably went as well as could be expected. The trickiest part came in the first 10 minutes when Faisal Islam – who had a superb evening, and who will have shot up the broadcasters’ league table on the basis of his performance – tackled Cameron on immigration. Cameron’s claim that net migration could be reduced to below 100,000 is one of the least plausible things he has been saying all campaign, but he did not cede any ground to Islam on this, and he even came out with some relatively new arguments to defend this position: that when he first came up with the pledge, it was more realistic; and that economic growth in Europe will slow the rate of net migration from the EU in the future. No, of course these points aren’t convincing, but Cameron ground Islam to a draw.

And then after that it got much easier. In the rest of the Islam interview Cameron comfortably dealt with the ECJ/sovereignty questions (“markets need rules”), and with the world war three and the Treasury scaremongering questions.

But Cameron is likely to be most pleased with what came next. The audience was fairly hostile, but Cameron was calm, polite and sometimes funny, and, if he did not exactly have them all voting Tory at the end, it did feel as though he had made a relatively positive impression. More importantly, he had the chance to explain some of his EU arguments to people who (unlike Islam) won’t have heard them a zillion times before, and it felt that some of his points were making an impact. The exchange on trade rules was particularly illuminating; when Cameron made his point about America not buying British beef, the questioner actually seemed to be learning something.

I will post some more reaction in a moment.

Updated

Cameron ends with a short speech.

As we wake up, we should think about our pay packets, and who they support.

He says Britain does not succeed when it quits.

And that’s it.

Q 9 - Security

Q: Are you really saying Austria would not warn us of a bomb threat if we left the EU?

Cameron says 10 years ago he would have said the EU did not have much to do with security.

But having been prime minister for six years, he can say that it does make a difference.

Q; But these arrangements could continue?

Cameron says after 7/7 one of the bombers was returned from Italy within days. Previously it could take years and years to get suspects like him returned.

Q 8 - The young

Q: What would you say to my children to persuade them to vote to stay in?

Cameron says he would tell them they would have better opportunities if we stay in.

If we leave, I would worry for their opportunities.

Q: They don’t have any at the moment. My daughter wants to train to be a paediatric nurse. But now you have abolished bursaries she cannot afford it.

Cameron says he wants to train more nurses.

Because of the bursary system, 37,000 people were turned away who wanted to train.

Now we are moving to a loan system, more opportunities are available. And there are good jobs in nursing available.

Q 7 - Scaremongering

Q: Do you accept that your scaremongering campaign has done damage to your reputation?

Cameron says he does not accept that. He is genuinely worried about the possible damage that could be done if the UK left. Think about the car industry. If we leave, those jobs will go elsewhere.

Q: Why do we have to lose those jobs? We don’t have a trade deal with America.

Cameron says that is right. But when the French imposed a ban on British beef, the UK went to court, and got that ban overturned. But we don’t sell any beef or lamb to the US.

Q: Why not?

Because they still have a ban. And when people suggesting lifting it, in congress people oppose that, because they want to protect the interests of their farmers.

Q; But the Germans will still want to sell to us?

Cameron says 44% of what we sell goes to the EU. But only 8% of their stuff comes to us.

Someone mentions the trade deficit.

Cameron says that applies to goods. But not services. What happens if we get a free trade deal, but with no free trade in services. The Canada free trade deal does not cover services. And that is the best deal the EU has ever done.

Q 6 - Boris Johnson

Q: Do you still think Boris Johnson would make a good prime minister?

Cameron says Johnson is a “very talented guy”. He has a lot to offer. He says he does not choose the next prime minister. He will not put the spot on anyone by recommending them.

But on this he disagrees with Johnson, he says.

He says there are profound disagreements. He says there are disagreements within families. That is why we are having a referendum.

Q 5 - Sadiq Khan

Q: You said Sadiq Khan was not to be trusted. Then you appeared on a platform with him. Doesn’t that show your hypocrisy and scaremongering?

Cameron says he does not agree. There was a lively election campaign. He did not agree with some of the people Khan shared a platform with. He said so. But Khan won the election. He needs to work with him. And they shared a platform on Europe. That shows how this issue is bigger than politicians.

Londoners voted for a Labour mayor. Cameron says he accepts that. He says he has been at events with Brendan Barber, the former head of the TUC, and Harriet Harman. On Monday he is appearing with the Green leader. He is making new friends.

Someone asks about Corbyn.

Cameron says he has spoken to Corbyn about this. He does not know if they will share a platform together. But Corbyn gave a speech. You cannot call him a member of the establishment.

Q 4 - Steel

Q: How would the steel industry by better off if we stay?

Cameron says the EU can take joint action to deal with the problem caused by dumping by China.

He says manufacturers could not be clearer. They want the UK to stay in. The TUC and business are at one on this, he says.

Q 3 - The NHS

Q: As a former mental health nurse, I think our services are sinking. How can we cope, with the ever growing tide of people coming here?

Cameron says we are investing in our services ...

Q: We’re not.

Cameron says the worst thing we could do for the NHS would be to leave, because the economy would suffer. That is what Simon Stevens, the head of NHS England has said. And the Royal College of Physicians have said the same today.

A woman in the audience says it is time Cameron and his government went.

Cameron says, if we shrink the economy, we will not have more money for the NHS. Jeremy Corbyn thinks that. He says he has an alliance on his side: Labour, the Green party ...

Someone shouts “the establishment”.

Cameron says you would not say the Greens are establishment. Or Corbyn, to be fair to him, he says.

Updated

Q 2 - Turkey

Q: I come from a family of migrants. I was minded to vote in, but everything I’ve heard has put me off. And the prospect of Turkey joining the EU makes staying in a risk. You are not willing to work with the Turkish government, where they had a brawl in their parliament?

Cameron says he thinks there is a positive case for staying in. Britain will be stronger, safer and better off.

The questioner interrupts. She knows waffling when she sees it. How can you assure people we will be safe when we work with Turkey.

Cameron says there is no prospect of Turkey joining the EU in decades. At the rate they are going, they will not be ready until the year 3000. But should we work with Turkey? Yes, we should, he says.

Someone in the audience asks about the economic problems in Europe.

Cameron says countries are having a tough time because of the euro.

Leaving the single market would be an act of economic self-harm.

David Cameron
David Cameron takes questions from the audience. Photograph: Sky News

Updated

Cameron says people talk about the risks of staying. But, because of a law passed by his government, powers cannot be passed to the EU without a referendum.

Q 1 - Would you recommend joining if we were outside?

Cameron is now responding to questions from the audience.

Q: If we were not in the EU, would you recommend joining?

Yes, says Cameron. He has negotiated a deal that gives the UK a special status. He lists the elements of his deal. But if he were offered the terms that apply to other nations, that would be a different matter.

  • Cameron suggests he would not favour EU membership if Britain did not have the special safeguards he negotiated.

Updated

Cameron's interview - Snap verdict

Cameron’s interview - Snap verdict: A strong performance - from Cameron, and Islam, who until now has not been seen as a premier league aggressive interviewer. Islam gave Cameron possibly the fiercest grilling he has had on immigration, and although Cameron will not have won over any of his critics, he held his own well, although quite how credible people will find his claim that he could still get net migration below 100,000, because immigration from Europe may soon start going down, remains to be seen.

Q: You are worried about losing?

Cameron says he is glad we are having this referendum. If he did not listen to the IMF, the OECD, the TUC and the governor of the Bank of England about the economic risks of Brexit, he would not be doing his job.

Updated

Q: Your scaremongering does not stop at the economy. What comes first, world war three or global recession?

The audience laugh at this.

Cameron says he never said there would be world war three in his British Museum speech.

Islam quotes from the speech, which mentioned tombstones.

Cameron says sitting at EU meetings he is conscious that 70 years ago these countries were fighting each other. He accuses Islam of being glib.

Find me the bit in the speech that mentions world war three.

Q: “Serried rows of headstones”.

Cameron says there are headstones in Europe.

Updated

Cameron refuses to withdraw claim leaving the EU would leave households £4,300 worse off

Q: Will you withdraw the claim families would be £4,300 worse off if we left the EU? The Commons Treasury committee says it is misleading.

Cameron explains why the government came up with that figure.

Q: The Treasury committee says persisting with this claim would be wrong. You are implying that people will lose £4,300.

Cameron says this is the loss to the economy, divided by the number of households. If we leave the EU, we will be poorer.

  • Cameron refuses to withdraw claim leaving the EU would leave households £4,300 worse off. (The Treasury committee last week said using the figure in this way was misleading, because it does not refer to household disposable income, but to national income.)
David Cameron and Faisal Islam
David Cameron and Faisal Islam. Photograph: Sky News

Updated

Cameron says if we leave the EU it would take a decade to negotiate the trade arrangements we have now.

  • Cameron says if we leave the EU it would take a decade to negotiate the trade arrangements we have now.
  • If Britain votes to leave the EU, he says, he will trigger the two-year leaving process immediately. (There is no need for him to do this. Only last week the Commons Treasury committee said it would be more sensible to wait until the UK knew what it wanted.)

Updated

Q: Which nation has been most overruled in the council of ministers?

Cameron says this is a phoney statistic.

Q: 12%

Cameron says, when other countries disagree, they accept a decision. But the UK insists on putting it to a vote and voting against so it can register a protest.

  • Cameron rejects claim that the UK loses more votes in EU’s council of ministers than any other country.

Updated

Q; In your manifesto you promised a VAT lock. Yet the European court of justice said you had to raise the rate of VAT on solar panels.

Cameron says the manifesto was talking about the main rate of VAT. That is not changing. The ECJ refers to VAT on specific items.

Q: You have been overuled by a court with foreign judges.

Cameron says, if you are in a single market, you need single rules. But this means we are part of the single market.

Q: So you accept that this court will be sovereign.

Cameron says, of course, there are frustrations about this.

Q: What is the accountability here? Why should the ECJ decide? How do you fire them?

Through the council of ministers, says Cameron.

He says we are not having a referendum on whether or not we agree with every ECJ decision.

Q: Do you accept that the European court of justice is supreme in UK law?

Cameron says, in a single market, you have to have single rules, so someone selling fan belts in Bolton can sell them in 27 other countries.

If we were outside the single market, we would lose the ability to shape the rules that determine the single market.

Q: You tried to curb freedom of movement. But Angela Merkel said no.

Cameron says freedom of movement is not the right expression, because freedom of movement does not apply to people like criminals.

We are in the single market, he says. That means people can come here to work.

If you want to get out of the single market, that would “fundamentally damage our economy”. Prices would go up.

Q: Why did you not say that in the manifesto? This promise was clearly never achievable.

Cameron says he did make these points in his manifesto.

Getting out of the single market would be a “self-inflicted wound for Britain”, he says.

Cameron says he will not abandon plan to get net migration below 100,000

Q: This promise cannot be fulfilled.

Cameron says he does not accept that.

Q: Can you seriously see this happening, getting net migration below 100,000.

Cameron says that was realistic at the time he made the promise.

  • Cameron says he will not abandon plan to get net migration below 100,000.

Cameron hints that migration may slow down as European economies recover

The Sky programme is starting.

Faisal Islam is interviewing David Cameron.

Q: What is the net number of EU migrants who have arrived in the EU since you became prime minister?

Cameron says he thinks around 600,000 people have left the UK, and 1.2 million have arrived. These are big numbers, he says.

Q: So that is 667,000, or 120,000 a year. Yet you said you would get net migration below 100,000.

Cameron says at the time he made that promise the numbers were more in balance.

But these are extraordinary times, he says.

He says this will not last forever. European economies are recovering, he says.

Updated

There is a live feed at the top of this blog which will start at 8pm.

Another picture from the spin room.

Here are some more Vote Leave questions for Cameron.

And this is from Dominic Cummings, Vote Leave’s campaign director.

This is from Sky’s Tom Boadle.

Vote Leave has some questions for David Cameron.

Updated

It wouldn’t be a proper event without a spin room. This is from the BBC’s Alex Forsyth.

Here is some YouGov polling suggesting that David Cameron is less trusted on the the EU than Boris Johnson, Jeremy Corbyn, Iain Duncan Smith and Nigel Farage.

Johnson comes top of this list, making him - supposedly - the most trusted politician on Europe. (I say “supposedly” because, to people who have followed Johnson’s EU comments closely, this may come as a surprise.)

If you’re interested, here’s a full guide to all the EU referendum programmes and debates coming up before the vote three weeks today.

David Cameron is in the building, as they say.

Tonight we’re getting the first big TV event of the EU referendum campaign.

It would make headline-writing a lot simpler if we could call it the first debate, but it’s not actually a debate. David Cameron does not want Conservative cabinet ministers debating each other and so some of the EU programmes have become solo outings, with politicians being grilled on their own. That’s what will happen tonight at Sky News, where Cameron will first be interviewed by Sky’s political editor, Faisal Islam, before taking questions from an audience, with Kay Burley chairing. It is just about true to say that Cameron going up against Michael Gove, his justice secretary, close family friend and now fierce rival (Gove is a leader of the Vote Leave campaign) - but only in the sense that Gove is getting the same treatment tomorrow night, which means we will able to compare performances.

Here’s a short clip from Sky News explaining how tonight will go.

The event starts at 8pm. Islam’s interview is due to run for 22 minutes, and then the Q&A takes place before the show finishes at 9pm.

Afterwards I will be posting a snap verdict, as well as rounding up the best reaction and analysis, and summarising the key news lines.

If you’re interested in today’s EU referendum campaign event, here’s our live blog from earlier.

And if you want to follow me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

Updated

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