Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen, including Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn at PMQs and Ivan Rogers, the former British ambassador to the EU, giving evidence to the Brexit committee
Ivan Rogers’ evidence to Commons Brexit committee - Summary
PMQs - Snap summary
Afternoon summary
5.32pm GMT
5.04pm GMT
I posted a summary of Sir Ivan Rogers’ evidence to the Brexit committee earlier, but I have now beefed it up with a few extra quotes. You can read it here, at 12pm. You may need to refresh the page to get the updates to appear.
4.23pm GMT
And this is what Javid said about the new measures coming in the budget to help firms affected by the business rates revaluation.
We have put in place a £3.6bn package of transitional relief to help more than 140,000 smaller businesses.
But, as colleagues and the media have highlighted in recent days, there are clearly some individual businesses facing particular difficulties. For example, businesses that are coming off rate relief can be faced with an alarming cliff edge. Independent retailers in some high-value areas are also struggling.
4.14pm GMT
This is what Sajid Javid said about the government’s plans to review the business rates system.
Property-based business taxes have been around in one form or another for many decades, centuries even. Nobody would argue that the current system is perfect. And it is right now to ask whether the time has come for some kind of reform.
Now, the Treasury’s 2015 consultation showed little appetite for replacing the whole business rates system. It remains a vital element of the local government finance settlement and its importance will only rise with the introduction of business rates retention.
4.08pm GMT
Gareth Thomas, the shadow local government minister, is replying for Labour.
He says after PMQs the prime minister’s spokesperson said there would be no new money to help firms affected by the business rates revaluation. He says Javid should confirm that the new money being announced is not just the result of money that would have helped other businesses being re-allocated.
4.03pm GMT
Javid says there is no appetite for replacing the business rates system with a new system.
But he says that the government will review how the system can be improved in the short and medium term.
3.59pm GMT
Sajid Javid is now talking about business rates. He says, as someone how grew up above a corner shop, he knows exactly how important this issue is. His father knew how damaging competition from out-of-town supermarkets can be. He says if his father was live today, he would be lobbying him on this.
He says the business rates revaluation is revenue neutral.
3.29pm GMT
In the Commons Sajid Javid, the communities secretary, is opening a debate on local government financial reports.
We are expecting him to say something about the controversy about the business rates revaluation at some point.
3.18pm GMT
At PMQs Theresa May quoted Andy Burnham, the Labour former health secretary and then later shadow health secretary, saying before the last election that he would cut hospital beds. (May actually said it was before the 2015 election, not before the 2010 election as I wrongly said earlier. See 12.07pm.)
Business Insider’s Adam Bienkov has the Burnham quote.
Here's the Andy Burnham comments Theresa May just mentioned in #PMQS. They're from this 2013 interview. https://t.co/9wmazNIPpQ pic.twitter.com/f5ugQbfHSD
The major point the PM seems not to have grasped is you can only reduce beds if you INVEST in social care, not cut it. That was my plan! https://t.co/RcPOlD6duY
2.30pm GMT
Jack Straw, the Labour former home secretary and former justice secretary, has been speaking to BBC News about the Ronald Fiddler/Jamal al-Harith case. Here are the key points.
I don’t feel that we made a mistake here. The truth is there’s no way anybody could have guaranteed that 13 years later this man was not enticed by a way in Syria.
I never regarded him as innocent, and neither [Tony] Blair nor I ever said that he was innocent. We judged that the risk was not so great as to prevent his release. Just that.
Let me also say that whenever you are making decisions about the release of prisoners you have to make a judgement and sometimes those judgements are not borne out by events ...
John Major once said that the only people who never make mistakes are the people who never make decisions. And that was I think very accurate.
2.17pm GMT
My colleague Anushka Asthana is doing a Guardian Facebook live video now, talking to the Labour MP Jess Phillips about the abuse MPs face online.
2.09pm GMT
Tony Blair’s statement about Fiddler/al-Harith case and the Daily Mail includes a sentence accusing the paper of running a story titled: “Still Think He Wasn’t A Danger, Mr Blair? Fury at Labour government’s £1m compensation for innocent Brit.” (See 12.52pm.)
Blair was wrong about that. That headline is from the Sun.
1.47pm GMT
My younger colleagues tell me that the deputy Labour leader Tom Watson seemed to be doing a dab at PMQs.
1.40pm GMT
This is what political journalists and commentators are saying about PMQs on Twitter.
Generally, people were not impressed by either Jeremy Corbyn or Theresa May, although there is a view that keeping the NHS in the news helps Labour is Copeland.
#PMQs review: Jeremy Corbyn bids for the NHS to rescue Labour, writes @georgeeaton. https://t.co/Ghq0pC47tM pic.twitter.com/kJxv8EmvtG
Comment JC got NHS issue up TM parried and evaded - I doubt many minds will be changed.
Who won #PMQs ? @MirrorPolitics verdict here: https://t.co/yCyVIBxoqO *** dons tin hat ***
Corbyn questions rather rambling, but he's targeting the issue he wants to be in the news ahead of by-election voting #PMQs
Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn bore everyone to tears with another repetitive PMQs squabble on the NHS https://t.co/Omc7aSW4Vx
That was a really uninspiring #PMQs exchange. May needs a new gag-writer. Corbyn needs more focus. Lots of fury, little really achieved.
Find #PMQs particularly unenlightening at the moment - Corbyn wants righteous fury to share on social media; May responses scripted, clunky.
I feel like I'd seen those #PMQs exchanges a dozen times before. Woeful
Corbyn's questions aren't particularly incisive, but if they push the NHS up the agenda for 36 hours it will be job done for Labour
A sterile exchange on #NHS with neither leader distinguishing themselves #PMQs
1.25pm GMT
Neville-Jones says it is clear that the authorities got the threat level posed by Fiddler wrong.
But the fact that Fiddler was first detained in Kandahar in Afghanistan does not necessarily prove he was a seriously bad person, because many people were swept up there, she says.
1.24pm GMT
Pauline Neville-Jones, a security minister under the coalition government, is being interviewed on the World at One now.
She says the possibility that Fiddler would continue to be a threat does not seem to have been taken as seriously as it should have been.
1.21pm GMT
Jack Straw, the Labour former home secretary and justice secretary, is on the World at One now speaking about the Ronald Fiddler/Jamal al-Harith case.
Straw says that he and Tony Blair never argued that people being released from Guantanamo Bay did not pose a risk.
1.09pm GMT
During PMQs I missed the questions from Angus Robertson, the SNP leader at Westminster, because I was writing the snap verdict. So here they are.
Robertson asked if the government would ratify the Istanbul convention on domestic violence. He said:
The prime minister has said it is a key personal commitment to transform the way domestic violence is tackled. It’s hugely welcome that she has called for ideas about how the treatment of victims can be improved and convictions secured against abusers.
There were still an estimated 1.3m female victims of domestic abuse over the last year. We are fully committed to ratifying it and that’s why we supported [SNP MP Eilidh Whiteford’s] private member’ bill. We need to maintain this momentum, that’s why I’m setting up a ministerial working group to look at the legislation, at how we provide support for victims and the possibility of a Domestic Violence Act.
Will she join me in encouraging members to support the bill and discourage any attempts to use parliamentary wrecking tactics to stop it?
The government has tabled some mutually agreed amendments, which the government will be voting for on Friday and I hope all [Conservative MPs] here on Friday will be supporting those measures.
12.54pm GMT
Here is the Guardian’s story from earlier today about Ronald Fiddler, who changed his name to Jamal al-Harith, the Manchester-born jihadi who blew himself up in Iraq.
Related: British suicide bomber: UK security services 'guilty of failings'
12.52pm GMT
Here is the full text of the statement Tony Blair has issued about the Daily Mail and Ronald Fiddler.
And here are further extracts.
I would not normally respond to daily stories about events which happened during my time in office but on this occasion I will do so, given the utter hypocrisy with which this story is being covered. The Daily Mail is running a story entitled “Still Think He Wasn’t A Danger, Mr Blair? Fury at Labour government’s £1m compensation for innocent Brit”, regarding news a former Guantanamo Bay detainee launched a suicide attack on behalf of ISIS this week ...
[Fiddler] was not paid compensation by my government. The compensation was agreed in 2010 by the Conservative government.
12.44pm GMT
Tony Blair denied that a Labour government had paid compensation to the former Guantanamo Bay detainee who went on to blow himself up in Iraq, in a strongly worded statement in which accused the Daily Mail’s of hypocritical coverage over his death.
The former prime minister said that compensation - though to amount to £1m - was paid out under the Conservative-led Coalition in 2010 - and criticised the tabloid for blaming himself and Labour instead.
MAIL: IS Suicide bomber you paid £1m #tomorrowspaperstoday pic.twitter.com/mafw9kVzjU
12.40pm GMT
Andy Burnham, the Labour MP, says May said when she became prime minister that she wanted to end the injustice of so few working class boys going to university. How is that consistent with all the schools in Leigh, his constituency, losing money.
May says the government is looking at a new funding formula. But the government wants an education policy that allows all pupils to fulfil their potential.
12.38pm GMT
Caroline Lucas, the Green MP, says the business rates hike could have a devastating impact in Brighton. Will she set up a discretionary fund and review the whole system?
May says business rates are based on property values, which go up and down. The government wants to support businesses. Transitional relief will be in place. But she recognises that some firms will have problems, and that is why she has asked ministers to ensure that those particularly badly affected get “appropriate relief”.
12.34pm GMT
Neil Parish, a Conservative, asks about the killing of Barry Pring in Ukraine. It is not being properly investigated. Will May take it up with the Ukrainian authorities?
May says the police have liaised with the Ukrainian authorities, and information from the inquest is being passed on to Ukraine.
12.32pm GMT
Labour’s Nic Dakin asks if May supports giving more support for research into pancreatic cancer.
May says this is a very difficult cancer to treat. She agrees that more attention should be given to cancers like pancreatic cancer.
12.31pm GMT
Crispin Blunt, a Conservative, asks if the government will allow humanists to conduct marriages in England, as they can do in Scotland.
May says this is a difficult area of law, and that the government is looking at it carefully.
12.30pm GMT
Labour’s Phil Wilson says May has said no deal with the EU is better than a bad deal. Does the same apply to any proposed trade deal with the US.
May says any trade deal the UK concludes will be good for the UK.
12.29pm GMT
Chris Davies, a Conservative, asks about constituents whose daughter was killed in Thailand. The killer has not been found. Will the government intervene to help ensure her effects are returned.
May says this is a terrible case. She says the Foreign Office has been providing support.
12.28pm GMT
Labour’s Kerry McCarthy asks May if she will meet the mayor of Bristol to discuss the budget cuts he faces.
May says Sajid Javid, the communities secretary, has already had a meeting with the mayor.
12.27pm GMT
May says the government needs to be able to increase vaccine production in the event of a pandemic. There are contingency plans for this, she says. She says the government also has a £10m competition to promote vaccine productions.
12.24pm GMT
PMQs - Snap verdict: Health should be a winning topic for Labour, and giving the importance of the West Cumbria hospital downgrade plans in the Copeland byelection it is particularly topical this week, but Corbyn never quite got the upper hand in those exchanges. He was just too scattergun, and too vague; there was no single, tightly-focused question that caused difficulties for May. He was probably unwise to raise Surrey again, without any arguments to rebut the predictable claim from May that his allegations from two weeks ago had not been sustained, and, having raised the issue of the abolition of nurseries of bursaries, he did not have the convincing arguments he needed to press his case. May seems notably more combative and more confident than she was at PMQs towards the end of last year and you could tell she emerged unscathed because she managed to get through a whole session on the NHS without having to go on about Wales.
12.16pm GMT
Corbyn says in reality 10,000 fewer nursing training places are being filled, because fewer people are applying now that bursaries have gone. Will May reinstate those bursaries.
May says she answered the question about nurse training places. Let’s look at what is happening in the NHS, she says. More people are being seen, and more operations are taking place. NHS staff are working hard. What they do not need is a Labour policy that would bankrupt the economy.
12.11pm GMT
Corbyn says May did not answer the question about why units are closing. One problem is social care. Lord Porter, the Conservative LGA leader, says the council tax precept increase will not give councils what they need. When will other councils get what Surrey is getting.
May says Corbyn asked about Surrey two weeks ago. His claims were demolished. Corbyn should apologise.
12.08pm GMT
Corbyn says waiting times are getting worse. Why are one in six A&E units set for closure or downgrading.
May says there are more emergency care doctors, and more people being seen in A&E. Corbyn asks what the NHS needs. More doctors? It is getting more doctors. More funding? It is getting that. But it does not need a bankrupt economy.
12.07pm GMT
Jeremy Corbyn says when hospitals are struggling to provide essential care, why is the NHS cutting the number of hospital beds?
May says thanks to new technology, the average amount of time spent in a hospital bed has halved. And under Labour 25,000 hospital beds were cut. She says before the 2010 election Andy Burnham, the then Labour health secretary, said he would cut the number of hospital beds.
12.05pm GMT
May says the current school funding system does not work properly. Labour did not address it properly, she says. There is a consultation underway.
12.04pm GMT
Labour’s Yasmin Qureshi asks about the campaign fighting the cuts at West Cumbria hospital. They were due to deliver a petition at Number 10 yesterday. But they were told to come back after the byelection.
Theresa May says the petition was delivered yesterday. She says the very good Conservative candidate in the Copeland byelection has told May herself how opposed people are to the cuts.
12.00pm GMT
PMQs is about to start.
Today's running order for #pmqs - some Tory names could be interesting there pic.twitter.com/rz8uhxhbDD
12.00pm GMT
Here are the key points from Sir Ivan Rogers’ evidence to the Brexit committee.
Well, with Merkel, if she’s still there, the unity, the unity of the 27, will win out and I think she and others will agree that there will be no sectoral deals in either the single market or the customs union, and I expect that to appear in either the guidelines or the negotiating mandate.
If you had an abrupt cliff edge with real world consequences, you’ve seen what Mark Carney [governor of the Bank of England] has said about the financial stability risks to the eurozone of an abrupt cliff edge. There are other consequences in other sectors which would make it an insane thing to do. All I was pointing out was that this is a very legalistic body that we are dealing with and they will say you have transformed yourselves overnight from having been a member of this body to a third country outside the body and in the absence of a new legal agreement everything falls away. We all know that that’s nuts in the real world, because why would you want to stop UK planes flying into European airports on day [one]. We know that this is insanity, but that doesn’t mean - we know that stopping carcasses and consignments and saying ‘your slaughterhouses are no longer approved’, we may know that that is a nonsense in the real world. Sadly, that does not stop it necessarily happening.
No other major player trades with the EU on pure WTO-only terms. It is not true that the Americans do, or the Australians or the Canadians or the Israelis or the Swiss. They strike preferential trade deals where they can. But they also strike more minor equivalence agreements, financial services equivalence agreements, veterinary equivalence agreements, mutual conformity of assessment agreements. The EU has mutual conformity of assessment agreements with the US, with Canada, with Israel, with Switzerland, with Australia, with New Zealand, and more I think.
Maybe I could give you some examples of what’s the difference between being in a single market and a free trade area. Because there are some. It is not true you get everything you want from an FTA [free trade agreemeent] and it’s just the same as the single market. This is the crucial difference between access to the market and membership of it.
So, for example, on planes, access to the single market means planes can land in EU airports and return from EU airports. Membership of the single market means you get slots and gate and land allocation on the same terms as local airlines, ie not 3am slots a mile away from the terminal. And airlines can fly within the EU, not just to and from the EU.
If I think back to our renegotiation last February, nomenclature was a huge issue for people. They genuinely don’t understand the UK debate in which the two are conflated at all. They don’t understand why a government would have a migration target covering both migration within the European Union - which for other people is not migration, they don’t call it migration, they don’t call it immigration, they call it free movement. The amount of time I spent with my opposite numbers over many years trying to explain why our nomenclature and why our whole debate was different, and why we called both these things essentially the same - for all my other colleagues, they say, ‘But one’s migration, which is external from the European Union, the other is free movement of people, which is not at all the same thing.’
From all the [EU27 [countries], albeit in different ways, depending on whether they are net recipients or net contributors, the budgetary issue now comes to the fore.
And I think we can expect a number of them to think - well, if the British want a future trade deal, and they want some form of transitional arrangement before a future trade deal, all big ifs, then this will come together at some gory European council in the autumn of 2018 and it will come together with the money equation.
We have an enormously valuable and competitive services sector with a huge surplus where we risk being screwed if we don’t get this right.
This is a very serious problem unless we get a bespoke financial services deal with equivalence which really works for us. This would be something the EU 27 has not done for any other member state and what it hasn’t been prepared to do for any other partner.
11.41am GMT
The committee hearing has just finished. This exchange came towards the end.
Rogers: "There's quite a lot of sunshine in my view."
Raab: "I missed the sunshine."
11.13am GMT
Rogers says the UK cannot know at this stage whether countries like South Korea will offer the UK the same trade terms as it has had as part of the EU after Brexit, or whether they will insist on changes because the UK is smaller.
11.09am GMT
The SNP MP Joanna Cherry goes next. She asks about the article 50 process.
Rogers says he does not want to say this is a “rigged process”. But the article 50 process is determined by the other 27 countries in their interests. It is something that is “done to you”.
11.04am GMT
The Conservative Craig Mackinlay goes next.
Q: Shouldn’t these liabilities have been included in EU accounts? Or have the EU accounts been deficient for years?
It is not a great accounting system.
11.00am GMT
Rogers says other EU countries are in principle in favour of a free trade deal with the UK.
But whether it can be concluded on terms that suit the UK, and whether it can be concluded by next October, is another matter.
10.58am GMT
Q: This €60bn figure from the EU: does this mean the UK has been understating its contribution to the EU. Was £350m a week an understatement?
Rogers says, following that logic, Lilley would be right.
10.55am GMT
Rogers says we have a surplus with services and “we risk being screwed” if we do no get the new trade terms right.
He says the UK needs a bespoke financial deal that really works for us.
10.53am GMT
Peter Lilley, the pro-leave Conservative and a former trade secretary, goes next. He says he is one of those people who thinks that it is quite likely that the UK will leave without a trade deal.
Q: If you start from zero tariffs, and want a trade deal with no tariffs, why should it take more than 10 minutes to negotiate a trade deal?
10.47am GMT
Rogers says that trying to stop the UK trading with the EU after Brexit, or to stop British planes landing in EU airports, would be “nuts” or “insanity”.
But that does not mean these things could not happen, he says.
10.46am GMT
Q: Michel Barnier has said that, until the money issue is settled, there cannot be any agremeent on anything else. Do you accept that?
Rogers says he does not think the UK will accept that. That was not the position when he was working for the government.
10.43am GMT
Rogers says the UK has always done its accounts on the basis of what it pays, not on the basis of what commitments it has made.
(The argument that the UK owes the EU €60bn is based on looking at EU commitments, not at how much the EU has actually spent.)
10.40am GMT
The DUP’s Sammy Wilson goes next.
Q: How seriously can we take the various figures given for how much the UK might have to pay to leave the EU?
10.32am GMT
Q: What is your assessment now of how the department for exiting the EU (or the Brexit department as we call it) is operating now?
Rogers says it is growing. There is always a tension between what the centre and the departments, he says.
10.29am GMT
Bloomberg’s Robert Hutton thinks Michael Gove has not been listening to Rogers’ evidence.
Michael Gove asks Rogers to explain what about the govt's plans represents muddled thinking. He's just spent an hour doing that.
10.28am GMT
Michael Gove, the Conservative former justice secretary and leading Vote Leave campaigner, goes next. He asks about Rogers’ resignation email. What “muddled thinking” was he talking about?
Rogers says he was making the point to his staff that they need to challenge people who are wrong. He included himself in this, he said, because there were times when he might be talking rubbish, and he wanted to be told that.
10.25am GMT
Rogers says, although the EU and the US do not have a free trade agreements, they do have agreements covering trade. There are 20-plus agreements, he says.
Q: So having no deal would not put the UK in the same position as the US?
10.19am GMT
Q: Why would no deal be worse than a what Theresa May describes as a bad deal?
Rogers says EU countries think that not having a trade deal would be so bad for the UK that the UK would not accept it.
10.14am GMT
The Labour MP Pat McFadden, who campaigned for remain, goes next.
Rogers says he thinks EU countries will shy away from doing sectoral deals either on free trade or in relation to the customs union.
10.12am GMT
Rogers says the UK could in principle get a free trade agreement covering goods and services. But the danger is that the EU would just offer a goods-only one, because the UK has a surplus in services.
10.10am GMT
John Whittingdale, the pro-leave Conservative former culture secretary, is asking the questions now.
Rogers says a free trade agreement is a “perfectly viable” destination for the UK. It is not like single market membership. It does involve control of borders, and gets Britain out of the jurisdiction of the European court of justice.
10.06am GMT
Rogers says the issue with regulatory compliance between the UK and the EU will not be what it is like on day one. The problem arises after day one, when the UK starts to change its regulations.
He says no other major country trades with the EU just on WTO terms. They strike preferential agreements where they can. And they strike mutual conformity agreements.
10.02am GMT
Q: What do you think of the argument that Germany’s stance will be influenced by the demands of German car manufacturers?
Rogers says clearly Germany’s self-interest is in doing a preferential trade deal.
9.56am GMT
Q: Is there any chance that Brexit could lead to the EU making reforms it has resisted until now?
Rogers says it is probably too early to tell.
9.53am GMT
Rogers says the British will have to understand what are the “neuralgic points” in every capital that might stop them signing up to a final Brexit deal.
9.51am GMT
Alistair Burt, the Conservative MP who campaigned for remain, goes next.
Q: What is the balance of power between the commission and the member states?
9.45am GMT
Rogers says other EU countries do not understand why Britain has a migration target covering migration from the EU.
They do not see that as migration, he says. They see that as the free movement of people. They argue that is not the same thing.
9.42am GMT
Q: And was Cameron too reliant on Germany?
Rogers says Cameron always thought, correctly, that the most powerful player in Europe was Berlin.
9.39am GMT
Q: Would David Cameron have got further if he had spent longer on the EU renegotiation? And what do you say to the claim that he was too dependent on Germany to help him out?
Rogers says we will never know what would have happened if Cameron has walked away from the table in February last year.
9.33am GMT
The Labour MP Stephen Timms is asking questions now.
Rogers says the phrase single market does not appear in the EU treaties. Instead it is referred to as the internal market.
9.29am GMT
Rogers says that, in his letter to Number 10 that was reported by the BBC in December, he did not say it would take 10 years to get a trade deal. But he did say getting a full trade deal, and getting it ratified, would take “several years”.
The conventional wisdom in the EU is that, even if the UK and the EU moved very quickly, it would take until summer 2020 to negotiate a trade deal. And then another two years to ratify it.
9.25am GMT
Rogers says the UK will want a trade deal, and a transitional deal.
He says he expects this to come together with the money issue at an EU summit in the autumn of 2018.
9.23am GMT
Rogers says he thinks there are substantial differences between the other 27 member states.
That is why they are so keen not to open negotiations until article 50 is triggered, he thinks. They don’t want the British to pick them apart.
9.18am GMT
Sir Ivan Rogers is giving evidence now.
He says it is not clear how the Brexit negotiations will be carried out.
9.07am GMT
Which Briton on the planet knows the most about the possible problems the government will face as it negotiates Brexit? Obviously anyone who has read the whole of the Guardian’s three-day series on “the Brexit gamble” will be doing well, but the ultimate Brexit expert is probably Sir Ivan Rogers, who resigned as Britain’s ambassador to the EU in January.
Rogers caused a row when he quit, and infuriated pro-leave supporters with his resignation email. Three weeks ago he gave evidence to the Commons European scrutiny committee. It was a fascinating hearing (summarised on my blog here, and written up by Patrick Wintour here), but today Rogers is back for an encore with the Commons Brexit committee, a more high-powered body that also includes Michael Gove, scourge of all experts, not just Brexit ones. It should be a revealing hearing, and I will be covering it in full.
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