25/01/2016 Monday in Parliament

Hello and welcome to Monday in Parliament, our look

The Shadow Chancellor says he's not alone in questioning

The Chancellor has managed to create an unlikely alliance between myself,

The Sun newspaper, the Mayor of London, and according to reports

But the Treasury says there was no special treatment.

A senior Labour MP asks the Government to take

Please will the Government agree before more children

Please let us do our bit again to help child refugees.

And an education minister defends restrictions on the Conservative

manifesto pledge to extend free childcare to 30 hours a week.

Surely she does not believe that Islington parents on ?100,000 a year

should be entitled to free childcare.

But first: Google has no special treatment on tax,

The Shadow Chancellor put down an urgent question following news

the company had agreed to pay ?130 million for taxes owed over

I am proud of the work this Government has done to make tax

competitors but also to make sure that tax is paid. Time and again we

have taken the lead in getting international companies to pay their

fair share of tax. We have competitive tax that is why we have

cut the rate of corporation tax to the lowest in the G7. We are also

making sure that tax is paid, reforming the rules, investing in

capacity. Action taken by this Government, action sadly lacking

from 13 years of Labour rule. Many will feel it is a display of this

respect that this deal was confirmed with a Tweet and he refuses to come

personally today to make a statement. I want to pay tribute to

the former and current cheers of the Public Accounts Committee, as well

as all the campaigners for tax Justice, who have forced this issue

onto the agenda. The Chancellor has managed to create an unlikely

alliance between myself, the mere of London, The Sun newspaper, and

according to reports number ten. All of the reports say it is not the

major success claimed at the weekend.

Given the deal over Starbucks, and Fiat, should this deal not be put to

the Commissioner to make sure that it complies with state aid rules?

The UK does not engage in special deals with any taxpayer. When

accusations have been made in the past to that effect, a retired High

Court judge on behalf of the National Audit Office investigated

those claims and concluded that in every case that he had investigated

that the settlement was reasonable and the overall effect of the

arrangements were that they were good. Last year in the budget before

the general election the Chancellor said they would not tolerate this.

Given there was ?24 billion of UK revenues over this period but people

have said Google should have paid a tax Bill of ?2 billion, that's 130

million really meet the test of no tolerance? I want to address this

point and engage seriously with the House in terms of the cartilage is

that we have seen in the press suggesting some of these large

numbers. Those are calculation is that I based as far as I can see on

looking at the prophets attributed to the seals in the UK.

-- profits attributed to seals. What sort of message does the Chancellor

think he is sending to those individuals and businesses by saying

this paltry sum of money from Google can be considered a major success?

Does this not sure I can present ministers are? All businesses have

to pay tax under law. It is under this Government that we have seen

the tax brought in, the process change the behaviour of companies.

We did not see any of this from the last Labour Government.

Charities have been calling on the UK to admit 3,000 child

refugees who have arrived in Europe unaccompanied.

There are fears many of them could be targeted by gangs

The former Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper was keen to press

the issue - putting down an urgent question on the matter.

The Prime Minister has committed to looking again at this issue

Such a serious issue potentially affecting the lives of so many must

be considered thoroughly and no decisions have been taken yet.

The Government is clear that any action to help and assist

unaccompanied minors must be in the best interest of the child

and it is right that that is our primary concern.

We take our responsibilities seriously and this issue

When this work is completed we will update

We hear rumours that the Government will only be looking into helping

child refugees from camps in the region.

In Greece and Italy and in the Balkans the reception

centres and children's homes are full and children

The Italian authorities say they estimate 4,000 children

who were alone in Italy simply disappeared last year.

I met 11 and 12-year-olds in Calais who were there alone with just one

British volunteer looking after them.

That is a similar age to my children and they should not be there alone.

Many of us will this week sign the Holocaust Memorial Day Book

of Commitment and our colleague in the House of Lords,

Lord Alf Dubs, was saved from the Holocaust by the Kindertransport

Now he is asking us through his Lords Amendment to back

Save the Children's campaign to help a new generation of

Please will the Government agree before more children

Please let us do our bit again to help child refugees.

It is important not to stretch the analogy

I think we need to remember that the last train

that was disrupted by the war, only two of those children survived

and many along with their families were killed.

But there are some clear parallels that we need to address and we need

to I think remember the enormous contribution that Kindertransport

made to this country - distinguished doctors,

distinguished surgeons, members of both Houses

I'm pleased that the Prime Minister is re-looking at this

and he is quite right to try to keep children in the region.

There are children out there who are at risk.

This is the biggest humanitarian crisis since the Second World War

but instead of playing our full part the Prime Minister has spent recent

weeks stomping around Europe with his own list of demands.

Does the Minister not accept that to countries trying to deal

with the enormity of this crisis that might make us look a little

By doing more to help our partners in Europe might not

the Prime Minister build goodwill and get a better hearing when it

comes to his own renegotiation demands?

No one doubts the humanity of the right honourable lady.

It is very difficult to argue against it but surely the duty

of Government is to balance natural emotion with hard-headed realism?

That actually net migration in this country has been far bigger

into this country in the last 20 years than any other country

and we are at the limit of what the public will accept.

That also we are spending more than the whole of the rest of Europe

put together on helping people in Syria.

And for every child refugee that we take from a camp in Dover

and Calais you are simply going to have to take on many other

people who will come as part of their family.

So I urge the Government to stick to their present policy,

their humane and correct policy of spending money in the region

and not listening to the the leader of the Opposition with his daft

policy of taking people from Dover and Calais.

Can I ask the Minister not to listen to the member for Gainsborough

with his separation of rationality and emotion in this issue?

The member for Pontefract just laid out the facts and we are merely

The member for Gainsborough has no monopoly on rationality here.

If it is in fact 3000 children that the Government

are considering I hope that they will not suggest