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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Andrew Sparrow

Murdoch criticises Cameron for being too easily swayed by Google – Politics live

Rupert Murdoch (pictured) has complained about David Cameron being too easily influenced by Google.
Rupert Murdoch (pictured) has complained about David Cameron being too easily influenced by Google. Photograph: Mike Blake/Reuters

Afternoon summary

  • Rupert Murdoch has used his Twitter feed to criticise David Cameron for being too easily swayed by lobbying from Google. He intervened only a few hours after Steve Hilton, Cameron’s former head of strategy, also spoke out about the need for the lobbying activities of companies like Google to be subject to more scrutiny (despite the fact that Hilton’s wife, Rachel Whetstone, used to be a senior communications executive for Google). (See 9.44am.) The irony of Murdoch complaining about a billionaire tycoon exerting undue influence over Number 10 appears to have been lost on him.
  • Neil Kinnock, the former Labour leader, has said that it is “difficult” to see Jeremy Corbyn as electable. In an interview with the New Statesman, he said that Corbyn should be given time to prove himself, but that if he fails to “connect” with the electorate or make advances, then “conclusions must be drawn”. That meant Corbyn should resign or be replaced, Kinnock suggested.

But a senior Number 10 source said it was the Labour candidate for City Hall who was showing desperation.

I’m shocked at how desperate Sadiq Khan is. What the prime minister said is he didn’t want Londoners to be treated as lab rats in a Corbyn experiment. It would be helpful if Sadiq Khan actually looked at what the PM said and didn’t issue hysterical tweets.

  • Cameron has cancelled a trip to Sweden and Denmark at the end of the week so that he can go to Brussels for talks with Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, about his EU renegotiation.

That’s all from me for today.

Thanks for the comments.

Updated

Field says Corbyn needs to be replaced before 2020

The New Statesman also quotes Frank Field, the former Labour minister, saying he hopes Labour MPs will chose someone from the 2010 intake to replace Jeremy Corbyn before the 2020 election. Field said:

At some stage, the parliamentary Labour party will need to elect an alternative prime minister. It can come quite late in the parliament. I, and others, tried to get Alan Johnson to stand against Gordon Brown. A change of leadership only weeks before the election was called could have delivered us victory in 2010. Not having a leader in the country, which Jeremy is, is not our weakness. It is in having no alternative prime minister. Finding that person will, I hope, come from the 2010 intake who are not stigmatised by previous Labour regimes. Then, please God, Labour backbenchers will have the courage to act decisively.

Frank Field
Frank Field Photograph: Mark Pinder

George Eaton has more from his New Statesman Neil Kinnock interview here.

Kinnock says that Corbyn needs to show that Labour is advancing under his leadership of move aside. But he also says that he is opposed to any “disruptive action in the short-term” (ie, a leadership challenge any time soon.) Kinnock says:

I take the view that a lot of people, left, right and centre, in parliament and in the unions take, that Jeremy Corbyn won, he’s got to have some space and he must be judged on performance in terms of Labour’s advance or movement in the other direction. That’s the political reality that people must really grasp and work on, the idea of trying to take disruptive action in the short-term will simply be fruitless, that’s the reality.

Kinnock says it is 'difficult' to see Corbyn as electable

Neil Kinnock, the former Labour leader, has said that it is “difficult” to see Jeremy Corbyn as electable. His comments are in this week’s New Statesman, which has a cover story on the issue: Should Labour split. Kinnock says that if Corbyn cannot show that he is taking the party closer to power then “conclusions must be drawn”. And he speculates that Corbyn could decide to resign himself.

Here is the extract that the New Statesman has sent out in a news release.

It’s difficult to see that [Jeremy Corbyn is electable]. Many of the people who voted for Jeremy are outstanding party members who said that they were frustrated - indeed, infuriated - by the failure of Labour to connect with the electorate. I know exactly what they mean, but that’s the test.

If Jeremy is seen to be failing to connect to the electorate after a reasonable space of time then he may come to his own conclusions. People who join the party in order to uphold the interests of care and justice and opportunity and security will then make their own judgement regardless of who they voted for in 2015.

Jeremy’s commitment to the party has never been in doubt [although] his commitment to various party leaderships has frequently been in doubt. That comes up in every conversation . . . It’s difficult for him and those closest to him in the circumstances to acquire loyalty and to uphold unity when there’s that record stretching back thirty years. It isn’t impossible provided that he can show evidence that Labour is making advances.

There’s a fundamental question here and it is whether people want to secure power in the party or to win power for the party. Those people who want to win power, whether they’re left, right or centre, will be watching the evidence and will make their decision on the basis of that evidence. Not because of some spasm of emotion, or the fact that their candidate didn’t get elected: they’ll want to know they have a party that is being led in its advance with the electorate.

If that isn’t the case then conclusions must be drawn.

Neil Kinnock
Neil Kinnock Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Here is the news release from Number 10 about the national memorial to the Holocaust that will be erected in Victoria Tower Gardens, next to parliament.

And here is a comment from the Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis. He said:

The historic announcement today, of the establishment of a permanent memorial to the Holocaust, next to Parliament, at the very heart of British democracy, will be warmly received by the Jewish community. Indeed, it sends the strongest possible message on behalf of the whole country, that the lessons of the Holocaust will forever form a part of our national consciousness and that the legacy of survivors will be secured for posterity.

Cameron cancels trip to Sweden/Denmark for talks in Brussels on his EU renegotiation

David Cameron was due to travel to Sweden and Denmark later this week to discuss his EU renegotiation. But Number 10 has announced that that trip has been cancelled because he is going to Brussels instead on Friday for talks with Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission.

As the Press Association reports, Downing Street denied that Cameron’s hastily rearranged plans were a sign of panic over whether he will be able to secure a deal on his reform agenda at the EU summit on February 18-19, paving the way for his referendum.

A senior Number 10 source declined to say whether Cameron or Juncker had requested Friday’s meeting, saying only:

As you would expect, as we get closer to the February Council, there are meetings to be held with some of the people most closely involved in the process, such as President Juncker. The opportunity for a meeting on Friday has come up, so we are taking that opportunity.

The source insisted the last-minute addition of a meeting with the EC president was “absolutely” a positive development.

Corbyn considering publishing his own tax returns

And, commenting on Google, Jeremy Corbyn’s spokesman said after PMQs:

It’s quite clear that the majority of Britain feels that this is a bad deal for the tax payer. Not only does there need to be proper tax paid by corporations, but there needs to be openness and transparency, which is what Jeremy is calling for.

The spokesman also said the Labour leader was considering publishing his own tax returns to put extra pressure on the prime minister to do the same. Cameron has previously said he would be “extremely relaxed” about disclosing his tax arrangements, but has not yet done so.

After PMQs a Number 10 source accused Labour of “breathtaking hypocrisy” over Google.

Asked whether David Cameron was satisfied that Google was set to pay more tax to France and Italy than it had in the UK, even though its turn-over in those countries was lower, the source said:

My understanding is that the French and Italians have said how much tex they would like Google to pay. Let’s see how much is actually paid.

The prime minister’s view is that HMRC’s role is to ensure that companies pay tax. Now, we had a situation under Labour where some companies were paying no tax. We have made a series of changes – over 40 changes – to tax laws to try and close some of these loop holes.

It is, to be frank, breathtaking hypocrisy from Labour to be complaining when they did absolutely nothing. They had 13 years in government. They allowed these loopholes to carry on. We are now collecting tax that should have been collected under Labour.

Updated

On the World at One Anna Soubry, the minister for small business, defended David Cameron’s use of the term “bunch of migrants”. She said that she would “not necessarily” have used the phrase herself, but that politicians should not be criticised for talking in colloquial terms.

What everyone forgets is in the heat of things one says things that you might say in a conversation, by way of example, which you wouldn’t necessarily say when it’s analysed and picked apart. I have very strong views on this because on the one hand people say ‘oh god, all politicians, they sound the same, they sound like they’ve been schooled and they’re trotting out the lines’. And when they don’t and actually use the language of ordinary people, then they get slammed and criticised so you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

And I will not criticise the PM on this one because I know, when you are standing at the despatch box – and I’ve never done his job, of course – you’ve got all the row and the noise around you, it’s very easy to use a word which, on reflection, may not be the best way. So I’m sure he meant to say ‘a group’ but we all use slang.

She also insisted that the phrase was not scripted in advance.

I would be amazed if that was a scripted line. I don’t believe that for one moment. If anybody says that they’re being silly and playing cheap politics.

I’ve taken the quotes from PoliticsHome.

Not everyone is convinced. This is from Huffington Post’s Paul Waugh.

Anna Soubry attending cabinet last week
Anna Soubry attending cabinet last week Photograph: Mark Thomas/REX/Shutterstock

Here are four more verdicts on PMQs.

At first many assumed Cameron had misspoken. But read in context the line looks pre-scripted (“The Prime Minister was making a point about Labour’s immigration policy,” a No.10 spokesman said afterwards). Indeed, it looks like another “dead cat” to distract from a more troublesome political issue. During the general election, Michael Fallon’s attack on Ed Miliband for “stabbing his own brother in the back” got the Tories off the hook on non-doms. Today, Cameron’s remark, which he knows most of the public will sympathise with, offered him relief on Google.

The Prime Minister’s attack may be crude, but it will work. His jibe will draw attention to his wider critique of Jeremy Corbyn, forcing voters to consider who he cares about more - foreigners in Calais or the British public. This echoes the dividing lineMr Cameron advanced earlier this month at PMQs over “sink estates”, declaring that his Labour rival “doesn’t believe in Britain”. If people focus on the politeness (or not) of how the Prime Minister talks about immigrants that Mr Corbyn meets, it might as well have been the only thing said in the chamber. And Mr Cameron’s team would love nothing more than for the spotlight to be on the Labour leader’s qualities.

Today’s PMQs was an opportunity for Jeremy Corbyn to embarrass the government and align himself with public anger over how little tax some multinationals pay. But he missed this opportunity. By going on HMRC’s deal with Google in isolation, he allowed Cameron to point the finger of blame at the last Labour government. Indeed, Cameron even dragged Corbyn into defending the record of the Blair and Brown governments on corporate taxation. A far more effective tactic would have been to contrast the British deal with the French and Italian ones. Why have these governments managed to get more tax out of Google than our own?

That’s more like it.

Jeremy Corbyn put himself firmly in the side of the general public, asking straightforward questions which the prime minister had to use his fanciest footwork to avoid.

You know Cameron is on the back foot when he is trying to suggest Corbyn is mates with Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling.

A useful reminder from the Telegraph’s Michael Deacon ...

My colleague Jonathan Freedland has written a good article on David Cameron’s use of the term “bunch of migrants”. Here’s an extract.

For a matter of moments earlier, Cameron had led the House of Commons in sombre recognition of Holocaust Memorial Day, timed for the 71st anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Several of his Tory colleagues – and indeed the leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn – were wearing HMD badges to mark the occasion.

The connection is not direct. No one is suggesting that the plight of those at Calais is comparable to the Nazis’ murder of six million Jews. But the common thread is this. One of the lessons of the Shoah – one tirelessly urged by, for example, the Holocaust Education Trust, an organisation praised today by Cameron – is that it is all too easy to dehumanise other people, to turn them from human beings with lives and needs and hopes into a problem to be repelled.

Some of those Corbyn met at Calais were unaccompanied children. Some had fled the cruellest places on earth. To dismiss them as “a bunch of migrants” is to rob them of their individuality and humanity, to write them off as unwanted rabble. It is language we might use about thugs or criminals, not people who have crossed a continent in the desperate search for safety or a better life.

And here is the full piece.

Cooper's point of order about 'bunch of migrants'

This is what was said when Yvette Cooper, the former shadow home secretary and now chair of Labour’s refugee taskforce, raised a point of order about David Cameron’s “bunch of migrants” comments.

Cooper said:

The House will have heard many tributes made to Holocaust Memorial Day today and the Holocaust Educational Trust campaign doesn’t stand by. In that light and in that spirit, don’t you think that it was inappropriate for the prime minister to use language referring to the refugee crisis in Europe and talk about ‘a bunch of migrants’?

Do you think it’d be appropriate for the House to ask the prime minister to withdraw that language, to use much more statesmanship-like language about the need to build a cross-party consensus on such a complex and sensitive issue?

John Bercow, the Speaker, replied:

You speak with enormous experience in this House and I respect what you say. I completely identify and empathise with your observations about Holocaust Memorial Day, which you and I on other occasions have marked at events together - so I take what you say extremely seriously.

I do have to say to you and the House that the observation in question was not disorderly, it was not unparliamentary.

Everybody must take responsibility for the remarks he or she makes in this House and it is very clear that you would not have used that term.

It is open to the prime minister to comment on it if he wishes but I am not entitled to try to oblige him to say anything on the matter.

But you have made your point very clearly and it’s on the record and people will make their own assessments of this matter.

Updated

Brandwatch, a company that does social media analytics, has sent me its figures from PMQs. It monitored more than 7,000 tweets posted about PMQs with the #PMQs hashtag, and it says these were the most popular.

From Labour’s Chuka Umunna

From the commentator Ellie Mae O’Hagan

From Natalie Bennett, the Green party leader

And here are the positive/negative sentiment figures (excluding tweets deemed neutral).

Cameron: 18.8% positive, 81.3% negative

Corbyn: 26.5% positive, 73.5% negative

A spokesperson for Jeremy Corbyn said the prime minister’s comments were evidence of a “wholly contemptible” attitude.

The people that we saw in Calais and Dunkirk at the weekend – families, kids, babies – I don’t think it’s right to refer to them as a bunch of migrants.

It’s also not right to say that Labour would just open the doors. Labour has made it very clear that we’ve said that where people have connections with Britain, family in Britain, and where specifically children have family in Britain – especially unaccompanied children – then Britain needs to process the applications properly and more quickly.

No 10 dismisses criticism of Cameron's use of the phrase 'a bunch of migrants'

A spokesperson for the prime minister has defended his use of the term “a bunch of migrants”. The spokesman told journalists:

The point the PM was making was that he very strongly disagrees with the approach that Labour are now taking which is to allow people from Calais into Britain, to open the doors to migrants. That will only make the situation in Calais much worse. It will produce a huge draw to Calais.

No country in Europe has done more to help migrants affected by the conflict in Syria. We’ve given nearly £1.2bn [to the crisis] and that going to food, shelter and education for hundreds of thousands of people in refugee camps.

Asked whether the prime minister thought he had used appropriate language, his spokesperson said: “The prime minister thinks that the key thing here is to get the policies right. Thats what the people of Britain are really concerned about.”

Updated

Cameron denounced as 'odious' by Labour over 'bunch of migrants' comment

Here are some tweets from Labour MPs condemning David Cameron over his “bunch of migrants” remark.

From Andy Burnham, the shadow home secretary

From Chris Bryant, the shadow leader of the Commons

From Yvette Cooper, chair of Labour’s refugee taskforce

From Imran Hussain

PMQs - Verdict

PMQs - Verdict: Immediate PMQs reaction is focusing on David Cameron’s decision to dismiss refugees in Calais as “a bunch of migrants”. I will post a round-up of reaction shortly, but Labour MPs are condemning him strongly. It was a callous and unpleasant thing to say, and many commentators are assuming that it was an error, indicative of Cameron’s “Flashman” characteristics that come out when he is under pressure.

This is from the Guardian’s Rafael Behr.

This is from the Spectator’s Isabel Hardman.

And this is from Huffington Post’s Paul Waugh.

But are we sure? This is from the Telegraph’s Asa Bennett.

Personally, I’m with Bennett on this one. This is unlikely to have been an unscripted error, because riffs like this are scripted. Cameron and his team spent Wednesday morning preparing material like this for PMQs and the trick - which Cameron is rather good at - is to deploy these lines in such a way as to make them as natural as possible.

If it wasn’t unscripted, was it an error? Certainly, if Cameron is worried about maintaining his standing in polite, liberal society (as he should be). But not everyone reads the Guardian, and there large numbers of people who only vaguely follow politics and PMQs who are not at all sympathetic to the plight of the refugees in Calais. (Like other political correspondents, I work in the hermetically-sealed Westminster bubble, but whenever I’m let out to cover a byelection and talk to real people, I tend to come back horrified by how anti-immigrant some of them are.) In truth, as the New Statesman’s George Eaton suggests, this may be another example of Lynton Crosby’s dead cat. It might not be an intentional feline corpse, but it is certainly generating a row, probably at no great political cost, with the advantage of distracting attention from an area of weakness.

Because, as I argued earlier (see 12.21pm), Jeremy Corbyn was quite effective on Google, and, while running the “We’re better than Labour on corporate taxation” might have worked against Andy Burnham, or Yvette Cooper or Liz Kendall, it is a hopeless attack line against Corbyn, who has been more critical of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown than anyone.

Updated

Tim Farron, the Lib Dem leader, says the predicted 3m refugees are the biggest crisis facing the UK. Does Cameron agree that we should work with EU colleague on this. And will he agree to take in 3,000 unaccompanied refugee children.

Cameron say no country has been more generous in helping refugees in the refugee camps outside Syria.

But he does not agree that Britain should take part in the EU-wide relocation scheme.

He says Britain has taken 1,000 refugees from camps. That is more than all the other countries in the EU have taken, he says.

(Cameron is ignoring the 1m-plus refugees who are in other EU states because they got their under their own steam.)

Judith Cummins, a Labour MP, asks about the lack of availability of NHS dentists.

Cameron says before 2010 people were queuing around the block to get to see an NHS dentist. There has been a big increase in provision since then.

John Glen, a Conservative, asks about the Maldives.

Cameron says it was an honour to meet the former president at the weekend. He wants to see a change in behaviour from the Maldives government.

Labour’s Caroline Flint asks if Cameon agrees that Google should publish its tax returns.

Cameron says he wonders whether Flint ever raised this issue when she sat in a Labour cabinet.

Here is some Twitter comment on David Cameron’s use of the term “bunch of migrants”.

From Jonathan Ashworth, the Labour shadow minister without portfolio

From Stewart Wood, a Labour peer

From ITV’s Robert Peston

From the Guardian’s Patrick Wintour

Here is the quote from David Cameron attacking Jeremy Corbyn over the unions, Falklands and migrants at Calais. He is likely to get criticised for the phrase “a bunch of migrants”. Pointing to Corbyn and McDonnell, he said:

The idea that those two right honourable gentlemen would stand up to anyone in this regard is laughable. Look at their record over the last week. They met with the unions and gave them flying pickets. They met with the Argentinians, they gave them the Falkland Islands. They met with a bunch of migrants in Calais they said they could all come to Britain. The only people they never stand up for are the British people and hardworking taxpayers.

Updated

PMQs - Snap verdict:

PMQs - Snap verdict: One of the most sparky exchanges for some time. As often happens, Cameron had the best lines. His riff on Blair, Brown and Alistair Darling and their new careers in banking was very good, and he had an effective pre-cooked soundbite on Corbyn and the unions, the Falklands, migrants etc. But, while in normal circumstances a prime minister can make headway by attacking the opposition, trying to blame Corbyn for the failings of New Labour is a total lost cause. Implying that Corbyn and John McDonnell would be soft on banks was also particularly unconvincing. Public anger over Google is real, and today Corbyn articulated it very well.

Corbyn turns to the bedroom tax. The court of appeal said it was discriminatory. Will Cameron read the judgment and abandon this policy.

Cameron says he will read the judgement, but he thinks it is unfair to subsidise spare rooms in the social sector but not the private sector. Who will pay the cost of getting rid of this policy. It will be Geoff.

Corbyn says he has just become aware of the UN report on Yemen, obtained by the Guardian, which details the targeting of civilians by Saudi-led coalition forces. He asks, in the light of this, whether Cameron will launch an inquiry into arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

Cameron says the UK has the strictest rules for arms exports of any country in the world. He says the UK is not involved in the military operation in the Yemen. But Britain supports the government of Yemen. He will not run foreign policy be press release.

Updated

Corbyn says the inquiries into Google started under Labour. And corporate tax receipts are lower now, as a percentage of GDP, than under Labour. Geoff has a question. Is there a scheme he can join paying the same rate of tax as Google?

Cameron says Geoff’s taxes are going down under this government, and Google’s are going up. And he says Corbyn was wrong: corporation tax receipts have gone up 20%. If Corbyn wants to blame anyone, he can call Tony Blair at JP Morgan, or Gordon Brown at Pimco.

Corbyn says Cameron is the prime minister. Millions of people this week are filling in their tax returns to get them. They do not get the optionof 25 meetings with 17 ministers to decide their tax rates. Many people will ask why there is one rule for companies, and other for ordinary people.

Cameron says people are paying lower tax. Corbyn can criticise HMRC. But HMRC is investigated by the National Audit Office. He says Corbyn and John McDonnell would never stand up to banks. They met the unions, and gave them flying pickets. They met Argentina, and gave them the Falklands. They only people they will not stand up for are the British people.

Jeremy Corbyn welcomes what Cameron said about Holocaust Memorial Day. We need to educate another generation to avoid this happening again.]

Experts say Google is paying an effective tax rate of 3%. Does Cameron dispute that?

Cameron says this is tax that should have been collected by Labour. He does not accept the 3% figure. These are independent assessments from HMRC. No government has done more.

Corbyn says Cameron did not answer the question. George Osborne described this as a major success, but No 10 said it was just a step forward. What is the government’s position?

Cameron says the diverted profits tax means companies like Google will pay more. Under Labour they had a tax rate of 0%. He says the government has closed various loopholes on corporate tax allowed by Labour. The government has done more than Labour ever did.

Peter Aldous, a Conservative, says the North Sea oil industry is facing serious challenges. The government needs to do more to help it. Does Cameron recognise the seriousness of this?

Cameron says he does recognise the seriousness of this. The oil price decline is the longest for 20 years, and almost the steepest. The government is going to help the industry. Tomorrow he will be in Aberdeen to say more.

David Cameron starts by saying MPs will want to mark Holocaust Memorial Day. Today he can announce a Holocaust memorial will be built in Victoria Tower gardens, beside parliament.

Cameron at PMQs

Draft plans for Cameron's EU renegotiation deal to be sent out soon, MEPs told

Here are the key points from Jonathan Faull’s sessions with the Ukip MEPs. Faull is the European Commission official in charge of the UK’s renegotiation.

  • Faull said that the EU was “not very far away” from the moment when draft plans setting out the terms of the renegotiation would be sent out. David Cameron hopes to settle the renegotiation at next month’s summit, and Faull said this meant the paperwork would have to go out soon.

We are very busy now in trying to finalise a set of papers which can be sent out to the heads of state and government so that they can prepare for their meeting on the 18 and 19 February. If you do the reverse engineering from the date of that meeting, they need papers sometime in advance for all the consultations they have to carry out at home in their capitals, so we are not very far away from a day when a set of documents from the European Council could be issued, if the item is maintained on the agenda of the European Council on the 18th and 19th.

  • He said the European Commission would not take part in the UK’s referendum campaign. Asked if it would spend money on “propaganda”, he said it would not spend “a penny”. He conceded that the commission would still continue to spend money on communications on the UK. But this was part of its normal work, he said. He said that it did not get involved in referendum campaigns, and that he did not think it would have to register with the Electoral Commission as a a campaigning organisation.

Updated

Q: Will the commission’s spending on information rise during the period of the UK referendum? And, if so, will it register with the Electoral Commission?

Faull says the commission will apply with any rules that apply to it. But he does not think it will be under any obligation to register because it is not a campaigning organisation.

Will its expenditure rise, Faull asks. It may find itself having to answer more questions. That could lead to costs rising. But there is no intention to get involved in the campaign, he says.

Q: Can you confirm that the commission will not be giving up power in relation to negotiating trade deals?

Faull says the prime minister’s letter is clear. (This means the commission will not be giving up power over trade deals.)

Q: What progress is being made to end the loophole that allows spouses of EU nationals from outside the EU to enter the UK more easily than spouses of UK citizens from outside the EU?

Faull says this issue is being discussed.

And that’s it. Nigel Farage wraps up by thanking Faull for being “a terrific support”. He is referring to the fact that Faull, an arch Eurocrat, was willing to take questions from MEPs who are all deeply hostile to the Brussels bureaucracy.

I will post a summary shortly.

Updated

Q: Is there a plan to produce a new definition of worker?

Faull says he has seen speculation to that effect. But there is a definition of worker in the EU treaties. When proposals are published, other member states may produce alternative ideas.

Patrick O’Flynn, the Ukip MEP, goes next.

Q: Is there anything that David Cameron is asking for that applies to the UK alone? Or do all his requests apply to all EU countries?

Faull says that because the UK is out of the euro, and out of the Schengen agreement, some of the proposals will apply to the UK but not to other EU countries.

But much of the deal will apply to the whole EU, he says.

Nigel Farage, the Ukip leader, says he thinks the EU renegotiation will lead to David Cameron claiming that we have some sort of “associate” membership of the EU. But in practice the situation will be much the same, he says.

Q: What concessions will be offered to the UK? And what happens if Britain votes to leave the EU?

Faull says he cannot speculate on what would happen if Britain voted to leave. This has not be done before. Any speculation would not be helpful.

Roger Helmer, the Ukip MEP, says he did not believe Faull when he said the European Commission would not participate in the UK referendum on EU membership.

Steven Woolfe, the MEP, goes next.

Q: Has David Cameron asked for an emergency brake covering EU migration to the UK?

Faull says Cameron, in his letter to Donald Tusk, asks for the UK to get the power to stop benefits for EU migrants for four years.

But Cameron has also said he would be open to other ideas, he says.

Faull says he has read reports about the “emergency brake” idea. This principle operates in other aspects of EU decision making, he says.

Faull says European Commission will not participate in the UK’s referendum

Roger Helmer, another Ukip MEP, goes next.

Q: Is it true that there is no limit on how much the European Commission can spend influencing the referendum? How much will it spend in the campaign? And do you agree this is “an affront to democracy”?

Faull says the European Commission will not spend “a penny” on propaganda. It never spends money on propaganda anyway, he says. And it never gets involved in referendum campaigns in member states.

Q: Don’t you just call this providing information? In the Irish referendum, there were posters up in Ireland from the European Commission. Are you saying the European Commission will pay for no adverts in the UK?

Faull says the European Commission will continue to inform people about its activities. But the question was about propaganda. The European Commission will not participate actively in the referendum. It never does, he says.

  • Faull says European Commission will not participate in the UK’s referendum.
Jonathan Faull being questioned by MEPs
Jonathan Faull being questioned by MEPs Photograph: YouTube

Updated

Paul Nuttall, the Ukip MEP, is questioning Jonathan Faull now.

Q: If Britain votes to leave the EU, can you assure us that the EU will not insist on a second referendum to get Britain to change its mind?

Faull says it was the UK that decided to hold a referendum.

He cannot speculate on what might happen after the referendum.

Jonathan Faull, the European Commission official who is in charge of the UK renegotiation, is being questioned now by MEPs from Ukip and other parties in the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) group in the European parliament.

There is a live feed of the meeting here.

Jonathan Faull being questioned by MEPs

Paul Rutherford, who has won a case at the court of appeal against the bedroom tax (see 10.17am), was on the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire show a few minutes ago talking about the case.

He said that he and his wife lived in a bungalow that was specifically built to help accommodate his disabled grandson, Warren. He said they had carers coming to the house every day and that sometimes they stayed the night to give him and his wife some respite. But because that room counted as a spare room, they were affected by the bedroom tax.

He said that the council had made up for the amount of housing benefit they were losing through discretionary housing payments, but that he could never be sure how long that would continue.

We were always worried that that would stop, so we never felt secure being here anymore. And that put a big strain on Sue and I as people - just the uncertainty of not know what was going to happen in the future all the time. Looking back, it has been very, very stressful. I’m a bit lost for words. I could almost cry with happiness, and I hope that other people in this situation are going to benefit from the court’s decision.

Paul Rutherford and his grandson Warren
Paul Rutherford and his grandson Warren Photograph: BBC News/BBC

This is from the Press Association on the bedroom tax court cases.

A victim of domestic violence and the grandparents of a severely disabled teenager have won the latest round of their challenges against the lawfulness of the so-called “bedroom tax”.

Three judges at the Court of Appeal in London ruled in their favour on Wednesday following a hearing in November.

One case, brought by A - a single mother living in a three-bedroom council house fitted with a secure panic room to protect her from a violent ex-partner - concerns the effect of the policy on women living in Sanctuary Scheme homes.

The other, brought by grandparents Paul and Sue Rutherford, of Clunderwen, Pembrokeshire, involves its impact on seriously disabled children who need overnight care.

In both cases it was argued that the policy, which came into force in April 2013, unlawfully discriminates against women and domestic violence victims and against children in the situation of the Rutherfords’ grandson, Warren.

The Government rejects the term “bedroom tax” and says the regulations remove what is in fact a “spare room subsidy”, with the aim of encouraging people to move to smaller properties and save around 480 million a year from the housing benefit bill.

Lord Chief Justice Lord Thomas, Lord Justice Tomlinson and Lord Justice Vos announced that they were allowing the appeals in both cases on the ground that the “admitted discrimination in each case ... has not been justified by the Secretary of State”.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) was given permission to challenge the Court of Appeal’s ruling at the Supreme Court.

Government loses court challenge over bedroom tax

The Press Association has just snapped this.

A victim of domestic violence and the grandparents of a severely disabled teenager have won Court of Appeal challenges over the lawfulness of the so-called “bedroom tax”.

I will post more details when I get them.

Steve Hilton has been tweeting since his interview. Douglas Carswell, the Ukip MP whose grassroots radicalism is not unlike Hilton’s, questioned his sincerity at one point, but Hilton insisted he really does want more independent-minded people in positions of power.

Although Steve Hilton worked for the Conservative party for many years, he is not a conventional party figure and in many respects he is not particularly Conservative at all. As he revealed in a book More Human last year (reviewed perceptively here and here), much of his thinking is utopian and quasi-anarchist, and would be dismissed as too radical even in Jeremy Corbyn’s office. Quite how he ended up as director of strategy in Number 10 for two years is one of the mysteries of modern politics.

In his Today interview, having set out the problem with big corporations like Google being too powerful (see 9.22am), Hilton proposed two solutions.

  • Hilton said competition laws were still too restrictive, and that they should make it easier for new entrants to challenge dominant companies like Google.

The crucial idea here is that of competition and of barriers to entry. What policy has to do is to really work hard to dismantle those barriers to entry, and to stop companies from building up the kind of dominant positions in a marketplace that keep competitors out and act against the public interest. I think that the threshold for competition in the UK and elsewhere is much too high and much too narrow, because at the moment the competition authorities really only look at one thing when they’re deciding whether a marketplace is sufficiently competitive. And that is quite a narrow calculation about the consumer benefits and actually there is a whole range of other things that we should care about and that people care about; the impact on local communities of the way businesses behave, the impact on employment, on the supply chain.

So I think the first thing is to really have a competition policy regime that takes account of more things and is a much, much lower threshold, so you can’t have so many dominant companies in a market.

  • He said there should be more transparency around corporate lobbying.

Secondly, I do think we’ve got to shine a much stronger spotlight on the behind the scenes lobbying that businesses do for government and civil servants, and organisations like the European Union to get their way.

I’ve taken the quotes from PoliticsHome.

It’s PMQs, and it would be surprising if Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t at some point mention Google, and its apparently remarkably generous tax settlement with HMRC. George Osborne famously described this as a “major success” at the weekend, but rarely has he misjudged the public mood so badly [see update below] and since then the government has recalibrated its language, shed the triumphalism and struck a more ambivalent note. But ministers are still on the defensive, with even the Daily Mail blasting Osborne in an editorial today.

This morning Steve Hilton, David Cameron’s former director of strategy, has joined the fray. In an interview with the Today programme Hilton, who is now based in California, said that people were angry because they felt companies like Google were “above the law”. He told the programme:

Do I appreciate the anger? Yes I very much do, I think that there is a growing sense that companies that are so big and so dominant, not just in the marketplace but in the way they relate to government and their lobbying efforts and so on, that they really are above the law. And I think that though in this particular case I think they’ve made clear that they were abiding by the law then, when the arrangement caused anger, and now when they have got the new arrangements.

The truth is that those of us that really believe in the power of business and capitalism to do good things for society, and I’m definitely one of those people, we’ve really got to make clear to businesses that they have a responsibility to behave in a way that earns public trust. Because otherwise what you’re going to see happen is a growing call for policies that actually damage the capacity of business to grow and create jobs and do all the things we want them to do. So I think it’s really important for them to be aware of that and to respond to that.

As he admitted, his wife Rachel Whetstone (another former Conservative adviser) used to have a senior job at Google.

I will post more from his interview shortly.

Here is the agenda for the day.

10.30am: Jonathan Faull, the European Commission official in charge of the UK’s renegotiation, is questioned by Ukip MEPs and others from the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) group in the European parliament.

12pm: David Cameron faces Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs.

1pm: Theresa May, the home secretary, gives a speech to IT suppliers to the police.

2.15pm: Christopher Graham, the information commissioner, gives evidence to the Commons culture committee about cybersecurity.

2.30pm: Cameron hosts a reception for Holocaust survivors at Downing Street

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 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.

UPDATE: In the comments Vintagebeauty points out, quite rightly, that it is not hard to think of other moments when Osborne misjudged the public mood.

Updated

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