The former chair of the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee has said there many questions for Facebook and HMRC after the company agreed of a major overhaul of its tax structure.

Speaking to Mark Mardell on BBC Radio 4's World at One programme Margaret Hodge said there are "so many unanswered questions" about the deal.

The BBC has revealed that the profits from the majority of Facebook's advertising revenue initiated in Britain will now be taxed in the UK. It will no longer route sales through Ireland for its largest advertisers.

(Image: Margaret Hodge. Credit: BBC)

Andrew Neil spoke to the SNP's Stephen Gethins and Conservative Liam Fox about claims of negative campaigning.

The World at One
BBC Radio 4

Labour MP and former head of the Public Accounts Committee Margaret Hodge says Facebook's tax announcement may be "a small step in the right direction".

But she says it is "shrouded in secrecy" with "so many unanswered questions" it is hard to know whether the company is paying "a proper amount" of tax.

Differing reactions from the government and opposition to the Facebook tax changes that the BBC is reporting. 

Downing Street says: “We are committed to making sure multinationals pay their fair share of tax in the UK. That is why we have taken a wide range of action on this.”

Labour responds, external: "From what we can see this means little or no real substantive change at this time. This government must wake up to the scale of the corporate tax abuse scandal in the UK. The truth is that the chancellor has allowed a situation where some companies feel they can pay what they want when they want."

Reality Check

There was a bit of a howler on the Daily Politics today, when Stephen Bush from the New Statesman said: "The Common Agricultural Policy puts £200bn into the agriculture sector over the course of the next parliament."

After a hard stare from presenter Andrew Neil, he corrected himself to £20bn, a figure he had given earlier.

Is his corrected figure right? If you look at table 3f on page 18 of this government publication, external, you will see figures for EAGF and EAFRD (that's money paid directly to farmers and money received for rural development), which over the five years of the parliament are forecast to add up to £15.9bn.

The Daily Politics

The SNP's foreign affairs spokesman Stephen Gethins says his party leader Nicola Sturgeon is one of the few people so far to have made an upbeat case for the economic, environmental and social benefits of EU membership and urges others on his side of the argument need to follow suit. 

Donald Trump says his hands aren't small - and neither is his penis.

The Daily Politics

Liam Fox rejects suggestions that the Remain in EU campaign are only using tactics which unionists like him deployed during the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. The Tory MP says he and others made a positive case for the union during that campaign, stressing the deep social, cultural, human and economic links between Scotland and the rest of the UK - which he contrasts with the UK's relationship with the "political entity" that is the EU. While he accepts that negative campaigning has been successful in the past, he insists that it has to be credible - claiming that Thursday's warning about the end of French border controls was taken from a very old press release. 

Mayor of London Boris Johnson has said that if the UK votes to stay in the EU in June it would be like "the frog in the boiling saucepan of water".

In an interview with the Evening Standard, external, the Tory MP - who backs EU exit - argued that if the UK was prepared to remain when the change on offer was so small, it would never again be able to push for more fundamental reform. 

The Labour MP who chairs the Commons Public Accounts Committee has urged other multinationals to restructure their tax arrangements after Facebook agreed in principle to changes which will result in it paying millions more in tax to the UK Treasury. Meg Hillier says it is up to companies to "get rid of" schemes and loopholes which minimise their tax contribution rather than waiting to be forced to do so by the authorities. 

The Daily Politics

Andrew Neil is joined by Stephen Bush of the New Statesman and Carole Malone from the Sunday Mirror as his guests of the day on Friday's Daily Politics.And they will talk to Conservative Liam Fox and the SNP's Stephen Gethins about whether Scotland would be better off in or our of the EU.

And talking about the referendum, reporter Giles Dilnot offers voters the unscientific choice of trusting Boris Johnson or George Osborne, You can watch the programme on the Live Coverage tab above.  

Image source, AFP

Details have emerged of David Cameron's phone call earlier with Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande, Vladimir Putin and Matteo Renzi about Syria. 

Downing Street said the main point the European leaders made during the 50-minute conversation was to welcome the fact that the fragile truce appears to be holding.

The PM's spokesman said there was a sense from everybody on the call that this was an opportunity to create momentum behind the peace talks scheduled for next week.

The Russian President, he said, made it clear he wanted to ensure compliance with the cessation of hostilities while Mr Cameron made the point that there was a common interest in defeating Daesh. 

The PM was very clear about the need for the truce to hold and to be properly respected by all sides, and underlined the need for a transition away from President Assad towards an inclusive, representative government.

There was a very clear message from European leaders of the need to make sure civilians are not being targeted. They also spoke about the need to allow humanitarian aid to reach besieged towns.

Suzanne Evans has confirmed she has lost her role as UKIP's welfare spokeswoman. Ms Evans, who helped put together the party's last election manifesto and was talked of briefly as a successor to Nigel Farage, was recently removed as the party's deputy chairwoman.

David Cameron turns his attack on Scottish Labour's plan to raise income tax, which includes a payment scheme for people earning under £20,000. 

It is "classic Labour - dock people's pay, hand some of it back to them and ask them to thank you for it", he says.

He goes on to say the Conservatives are "the only party of defence", arguing that the SNP want to scrap the Trident nuclear missile system, as does Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Opposition to Trident puts defence jobs and national security at risk, the PM says, arguing that he "cannot turn a blind eye to this appalling policy".