17/06/2016 The Week in Parliament

Hello and welcome to The Week In Parliament.

The big personalities are coming to face MPs' questions.

Describing me as a Nazi apologist is a lie and I could have sted him,

MPs slug out the arguments one final time.

We will be caught in a whirlwind, an economic whirlwind,

which these people irresponsibly want to inflict on millions

And when you phone a Whiteh`ll department, what music do

you want to hear when your call is placed on hold?

But first, it was standing room only when Sir Philip Green finally

consented to facing the questions of MPs at Westminster.

For weeks, the billionaire retailer had been under

the cosh of accusations, following the collapse

of the company he used to own, British Home Stores,

whose 160 shops are closing down, with the loss of 11,000 jobs.

Sir Philip Green had bought BHS in 2000.

By the time he sold it in 2015, for a pound, to the racing

driver Dominic Chappell, the company had debts

of ?1.25 billion and its pension fund had a black

Nothing is more sad than how this has ended and I hope

during the morning you will hear there is certainly no

intent at all on my part for anything to be like this,

and it didn't need to be like this, and I just want to apologisd

to all the BHS people who h`ve been involved in this and are involved,

and I hope that by the end of the morning they will he`r

everything and we can find some sensible solutions

There were some tetchy exch`nges as Sir Philip defended the way

I think we've got a pretty good track record as a company.

Our existing business, the average stay in our head

Do you mind not looking at le like that all the time?

No, but do you just want to stare at me?

I wasn't quite just staring at you but I don't want

I don't wish to make you uncomfortable.

It isn't somebody else but ht's just uncomfortable staring at me.

We want to find a solution for the 20,000 pensioners.

We still believe that money into the PPF

Without getting into it and I don't want to get into the specifhcs,

the schemes are quite compldx but from what I've seen

I would say it is resolvabld, sortable, we will sort it,

we will find the solution, and I want to give an assur`nce

that the 20,000 pensioners, I'm there to sort this.

Look, whether we got misled, whether we got duped,

unfortunately there seems to be a lot of people that acceptdd this

Lawyers, accountants, all sorts of other people,

happy to take shares in his company, banks prepared to write letters

whether they're good or not, right?

Now, unfortunately, sadly, it was the wrong one.

You said you don't want to be here all day.

You could be here for the rest of your life.

One of the things I'm reallx interested in governance

is it is very clear, I've never met you before,

at 3.5 hours in you seem a very dominant personality

Believe me, Sir Philip, you are holding your own.

But you seem extraordinarilx thin-skinned to quite courtdous

questions, as if you don't want to be challenged

In terms of that wider corporate governance point,

in respect of the selling of BHS, did anybody, particularly

a nonexecutive director say, "Phil, I'm not entirely certain

That doesn't seem to be the culture of the organisation.

Could Sports Direct have bought the ailing BHS?

You did nothing to stop the process to ensure that Sports Direct

could be given more time to consider this.

Let me just ask a sensible puestion to the whole committee.

Based on everything we've spent five or six hours, on what possible basis

would I want to stop somebody buying it if they were rescuing it?

Well, I do apologise because I don't mean to be rude

..and you didn't want anothdr retail billionaire to do the same.

I think that's disgusting and it's a sad way to end.

We haven't finished yet, Sir Philip, if that's OK.

Here is a business where if there is a bona fide buyer,

I have offered to add to his purchase price for free,

to put X million pounds in on top of what he wanted to pay.

And I think you should owe le an apology for that.

I have sat here six hours and I haven't been rude to xou and I

I thought about, and you can ask my executives, they're not here,

on the deal the administrator offered on the Thursday, I thought,

But I thought there would bd so much uproar I thought I'd better not

But it was so cheap in terms of the deal that was offered,

or opportunist at that moment, if it hadn't have been

for all the drama, I don't know how the response would have been,

I don't know that any of it would have been any worse.

Well, I can assure you, and I give a guarantee,

a personal guarantee, I wanted that deal to happen.

Sir Philip, if you get the pensions issue

Sir Philip Green facing the questions.

It was back in April that L`bour suspended Ken Livingstone "for

It followed the former London Mayor's statement th`t

Adolf Hitler had supported Zionism in the 1930s.

Mr Livingstone was trying to defend the Bradford MP Naz Shah who had

herself been suspended by the Labour Party.

On Tuesday, Ken Livingstone faced the questions of the Home Affairs

Your persistence and absolute refusal to apologise for offence

you caused to Jewish people compounds the initial offence that

Let's be absolutely clear about this.

I mean, this last few months, I can't get down the street

without people stopping me and saying, "We know

Of course a lot of Jewish pdople in the community are offenddd

They've been told that I was a Nazi apologist.

What appalls me is that a h`ndful of Labour MPs used this isste,

deliberately lied about what I'd said, and smeared me

because they wished to undermine the leader of the Labour Party.

You did help reduce poverty, you did help reduce inequalhty,

you did improve the housing situation in our capital city,

but you're not a historian, you are a politician,

and by needlessly and repeatedly offending Jewish people in this way,

you not only betrayed our L`bour values but you betrayed your legacy

as Mayor because all you ard now going to be remembered

for is becoming a pin-up for the kind of prejudice

that our party was built to fight against.

That is a huge shame and it is an embarrassment.

I will get trolled incessantly after this exchange - I don't care.

Please put your question if you are putting one.

This is not an opportunity to make statements.

I'm just making a comment since he won't answer

All I say is, if you look b`ck, many of the things I have

When I defended lesbian and gay rights in 1982, 1981,

When we said we needed to ndgotiate with the IRA, we were denounced

The simple fact is, show me what I got wrong in those thmes

I was just prepared to challenge the bigotry of the day and H'm

Anyone who has been upset by what I say, I am sorry,

but what I said is true, and I...

I, on one of my interviews, said, if anyone can prove

what I said isn't true, I will take them out to the best

Oddly enough, no one's come up with it.

Any of you, demonstrate what I said isn't true.

I came into politics to tell the truth.

It may be that nobody actually wants to have

Keith Vaz easing the tensions at the Home Affairs Committde.

Now a round-up of some of the other stories

The Government has agreed to do more to prevent police

officers retiring in order to avoid disciplinary action.

Under the Policing and Crimd Bill, police officers could face

proceedings for up to one year after retirement.

But the Shadow Home Secretary called for the new rules

That, for me, seems to be a considerable piece of progress

that I know matters greatly to the Hillsborough families,

who felt very aggrieved as they were continuing

their 27-year struggle when they saw individuals who had retired

on a full pension and who they felt were beyond reach and could not

I believe this should apply retrospectively.

Misconduct is misconduct, whenever it occurred,

Are we getting left behind in the digital revolution?

Some ten million adults are lacking the skills to be able to send

an e-mail or fill in a form online, according to a member of thd House

of Lords, who's worried abott a "growing gulf" in digital skills.

I believe that universal digital literacy is going to be every bit

as important as basic liter`cy was during the Industrial

And as we deal with that digital revolution, and the revoluthon

which is coming rapidly behhnd it, the artificial intelligence

revolution, it is clear we need people with the digital skills

to help the UK plc keep pacd and thrive.

Those Commons divisions conducted according to the rules

of English Votes for English Laws, or Evel.

A Scottish Nationalist tells a Lords committee it's pure evil.

No other parliament in the Western world has done this.

No other parliament has dechded that there must be two classes

of Members of Parliament in its national legislature.

I think we have had two days on the floor of the House

to consider this and maybe this is why we are seeing this -

and I'll use a good word for this - boorich guddle when it comes to how

these things are actually being enacted because...

Could you translate that, please?

A dreadful mess, if that helps the committee.

The hazard of plastic microbeads, used in shower gels,

When the microbeads get into the sea, they're ingested

So, surely if you are taking this seriously, you're not reallx dealing

with it if you introduce a ban just on our manufacturing but yot can't

do anything about all the products flooding in here which are still

The right way to approach this within the EU is to try to get

change at an EU level, and that's why it's our starting

point, but we've been clear that if that doesn't progress

or if something goes wrong on that, then we definitely don't

Ever phoned up Her Majesty's Revenue Customs with a tax inquiry?

In one year, callers spent ` total of four million hours on hold,

listening to streamed music while waiting for an answer.

An MP weighs up what the music selection might be.

We had a little bit of disctssion on the committee on what should be

Or one of my favourites is Debbie Harry's Hanging

I don't know if you've got `ny suggestions for what would be useful

during those four million hours that people, customers are on hold,

what they should be listening to maybe?

The serious point is we don't want anyone to hear much more

of the music than a couple of minutes from now on,

so you'd never hear a whole track I suppose is the key point.

And the House of Lords chooses its next Speaker.

It's Norman Fowler, once the Health Secretary

in Margaret Thatcher's Government, who once famously resigned to spend

The whole House will wish to join me in offering our congratulathons

to the Noble Lord, Lord Fowler, on being elected Lord Speakdr,

and in offering our support to him as he prepares to take

Can I just add, my Lords, that what we have seen todax

This is the first time a man has been elected to the role

of Lord Speaker and I think nowadays there are few positions in public

I'd like to thank the House very sincerely for the exception`l

support that they have given me and to say that I will do mx utmost

Lord Fowler, who'll become Lord Speaker at the end of the stmmer.

Prime Minister's Questions was, very unusually but not surprisingly,

devoted to a single topic for virtually the entire

As 12 noon approached, the European issue was,

literally, the backdrop to the Commons exchanges,

as a flotilla of fishing bo`ts, with Ukip's Nigel Farage on board,

sailed up the Thames alongshde Parliament, with a message trging

Westminster to take back control of British waters.

The so-called Brexit Armada was greeted by a rival

Remain fleet carrying, among other others, Sir Bob Geldof.

Inside the Commons, Jeremy Corbyn said Labour MPs wouldn't be

supporting any emergency budget as proposed by the Chancellor,

in the event of a Leave win in the referendum.

We would oppose any post Brdxit austerity budget just as we have

opposed any posterity budgets put forward by this government.

So, will the Prime Minister take this

opportunity to condemn the opportunism of 57 of his colleagues

If we vote out the experts warn us we will have the

smaller economy, less emploxment, lower wages and therefore ldss tax

And that is why we would have to have measures to address a

Today we have learned from a conservative Chancellor of the

Exchequer and a former Labotr Chancellor of the Exchequer that

there would likely to be ?30 billion in cuts to public services or tax

rises, were there to be a Brexit vote.

What impact would that have on

Please can we learn it now before we vote?

These figures are not based on what the Chancellor

of the Exchequer is saying, they are based on what the

Institute for Fiscal Studies and the National

Institute of Economic and

They are talking about to 40 billion hole in

our public finances if Brexit were to go ahead.

These are organisations often quoted across this

House, many times against the government.

Because they are respected for their independence.

If, as I hope, despite the panic driven negativity from the

Remain camp and Downing Strdet, the British people vote next week to

become a free and independent nation, again,...

Will my right honourable friend join me in

embracing the very optimism and opportunity for our country and our

people that such a momentous decision would bring?

I would like to say to my honourable friend, as I

said at the CBI, of course Britain can survive outside the EU, nobody

The question is how are we going to do best?

How are we going to create the most jobs?

How are we going to create the most investment?

How are we gain to have the most opportunities for our

How are we going to wield the greatest power in the world

And on all those issues, stronger safer,

better off, the arguments are on the Remain side.

I would like to thank my honourable friend for honouring

our manifesto pledge and delivering this historic referendum.

Unfortunately, we have heard some hysterical scaremongering dtring

There are those in this House and in the other place who

believe that if the British people decide to leave the EU, there should

Can he assure the House in the country that

whatever the results on Jund the 24th, his government will carry

the vote is to remain, we remain and if the vote

is to leave, which I hope it is, then we leave.

I am very happy to agree with my honourable

In means we remain in a reformed European Union.

And as the Leave campaigners have said, and others

have said, out means out of the European Union,

out of the European single larket, out of the Council of

Ministers, out of all of those things.

And it means, it then means a process of delivering that which

will take at least two years and then delivering a trade deal which

The arguments over Europe continued in the Commons a few minutes later,

as MPS debated and eventually backed a Labour

motion saying Britain was better off inside the ET.

We've witnessed in the last 72 hours the reaction

just shift in the polls pointing to a possible Brexit.

100 billion has been knocked off the value of shares

and the value of the pound has dropped.

Though Brexit campaign in

four days have done more dalage to capitalism than the Soci`list

The pound will plummet, inflation prices will

We will be caught in an economic whirlwind which these

people irresponsibly want to inflict on millions of our citizens.

All of the gloomy and bogus forecasting we have been getting

from the people who wish to remain in are based on the assumpthon that

the single market is some precious and virtuous body we can belong to

which has fuelled our prospdrity and manufacturing growth so far

and which would no longer be available

And of course, they are wrong on both accounts.

Our membership of the single market has

not helped our manufacturing and when we leave, we will have access

to the single market, just as 165 other countries around

the world have access to th`t market daily

without being members and without having

to accept the freedom of

movement provisions and without having

to accept the taxes and the

laws that are imposed on us on a wide range of issues that have

Inside the single market, we run the monumental trade deficit

and we have and enormous tr`de surplus for the

That is the means whereby we will get jobs.

That is the means whereby we will ensure the future of

And if we get this wrong, we will not be

able to organise and to est`blish a democracy in this country which is

what the people fought and died for not just in ond

There are no economic benefits to the UK

fishermen from membership of

Around 92% of fishermen are calling for the UK to

I say, let's throw them a lifeline and vote leave.

And at the end of that debate Labour's motion calling for Britain

to remain in the EU was passed by 257 votes to zero.

Just in case you don't know, Parliament doesn't

There's a national referendum on Thursday.

So, what would happen to Brhtain's territories overseas,

such as Gibraltar and the F`lklands, if Britain left the EU?

Since Spain joined the European Community in 1886,

Gibraltarians have had the right to move freely to Spain.

Before that, there was a closed border.

So would the border be closdd again if Britain was no longer in the EU?

A matter raised at Lords' Question Time on Tuesday.

My Lords, I declare an interest as a former

Does she not agree that Gibraltar has gained enormously

from an economic point of vhew, as a Spanish neighbourhood, from

unfettered access to the single market over the last few decades?

And secondly, would she bearing mind the current Spanish Foreign Minister

has said that although he would like the United Kingdom to stay hn the

EU, in the event of Brexit, he would plan to close frontier with

Gibraltar and revive the original proposals

to joint sovereignty to

Gibraltar which was overwhelmingly opposed by the people of Gibraltar.

Can she say in what way the British government

The UK has made a commitment to defend and support

Gibraltar's interests, incltding upholding British sovereignty.

My Lords, the men and women of the British Armed Forces have worked

tirelessly to do so prior to the referendum and we will

But the noble Lord rings a warning bell.

And next day there was a general House of Lords debate on thd EU

and whether the UK needs to leave it.

The one-time leader of Ukip Lord Pearson of Rannoch has

for years been deeply critical of the workings of the EU

and has long argued Britain would be better off out.

He took a swipe at the political class which, he said,

Your lordship's House is a very proud place.

Well-stocked with former government ministers, members of

Parliament and servants of the EU, who between them have been

responsible overlong and what they no doubt regard

as successful lives for bringing this country to its

present state of subservience to the corrupt octopus in Brussels.

My Lords, it must be disappointing for them to see so much ingratitude

amongst the British people against the project in which

they have invested so much `nd in which they so fervently belheve

My Lords, that is why during this referendum campaign, we havd seen

project octopus turning into project fear and we are told to be fearful

of leaving the clutch of its tentacles.

Migration, both into Europe and across Europe,

intensifies resentment and generates extremism.

The democratic deficit in the governing structures

of the EU threatens to be as disastrous as the euro.

The system is an aggregation of democracies but it is not itself

It was never intended to be so by its authors, rational

public servants who were horrified at what they had seen weak

Policy initiative continues to rest with the unelected commission.

The Council of Ministers, as such, has no accountability.

But one of the things that we know about divorce hn

the real world is that it is usually expensive and it is very often

So, even if a couple think that they will be happier

apart than together, it is very rare to have a divorce that doesn't

include lawyers who benefit are probably

MPs and peers are away from Parliament this week

as they switch to campaign lode and join either side of the argument

Parliament's back on Monday the 27th.

So, do join us in two weeks' time, for the next Week In Parlialent

Until then, from me, Keith Macdougall, goodbye.

Here in the Saint Stephen 's whole, statues of great parliament`rians

face each other across the chamber.