House of Lords
Parliament

Lib Dem Baroness Featherstone asks if the government will reverse its decision to end the business rate exemption for small solar panels from April 2017.

Minister Baroness Neville-Rolfe says that the government is "aware" of solar industry concerns and that they "continue to engage". But adds that due to changes to the business rate system, three quarters of businesses will see no change or reduced business rates. She says that 600,000 businesses will pay "no business rates at all".

Baroness Featherstone says that the change is potentially the "death" of non-domestic solar panels.

Image source, PA

As previewed here, John McDonnell is making a speech on Brexit. Reflecting on the Labour leadership's referendum campaign, he says he believed the EU was "a flawed institution" but that it had been better to fight for reform than to leave.

As for the outcome of the vote, the shadow chancellor says: "We should not pretend the referendum result can be undone."

On immigration, he says Labour will not make "cynical promises" on reducing numbers.

Select Committee
Parliament

Concentrix has been accused of a string of errors, including incorrectly withdrawing tax credits from claimants.

The firm has apologised for failures that have left some people with no benefits for up to two months.

The Treasury has revealed 120 cases since October 2015 where Concentrix did not "fully" meet performance standards.

More than 500 civil servants have been deployed to help private company Concentrix sort out tax credit problems; and Concentrix has also been accused of paying staff to do nothing for three months because of an IT failure.

Hundreds of people have complained that they have been incorrectly punished by Concentrix.

A teenage mother had her tax credits stopped after she was wrongly accused of being married to a dead 74-year-old man.

The online campaign group Concentrix Mums, which has 5,600 members, says hundreds more people have been affected.

House of Lords
Parliament

Liberal Democrat Baroness Grender asks what discussions the government has had with the publishing industry over the development of the Department for International Trade's creative industries export strategy.

Answering for the Department for International Trade, Baroness Mobarik says the department is holding "regular" meetings with the Publishers Association.

Labour's Lord Harris of Harringey asks for detail on how the department will organise itself, if there will be experts in certain fields or if it will have "generic" cvil servants.

Baroness Mobarik says the government plans to "expand our capability" within the department but will be "tapping in" to expertise in other departments.

Select Committee
Parliament

Helen Goodman asks whether HMRC had any "skin in the game" with the customer service issues over the summer, and ponders whether there was a cash flow advantage for HMRC in not paying people back the full amount at once for people who are owed money.

Jon Thompson says that he "absolutely refutes" the inference that HMRC had approached the problems of service provision with ulterior motives.

"We did not go into this thinking that it is a really good idea to have a complete crisis of confidence with the tax credit system for some marginal cash flow gain for the government," Mr Thompson says.

European Parliament
Strasbourg

Image source, EPA

European Parliament President Martin Schulz announces that this year’s Sakharov human rights prize goes to Yazidi rights activists Nadia Murad Basee and Lamiya Aji Bashar.

The pair were among thousands of Yazidi girls and women in Iraq abducted by so-called Islamic State (IS) and forced into sexual slavery in 2014. 

MEPs have awarded the prize, named after Soviet scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov, to individuals or organisations since 1988 to recognise efforts to promote human rights and democracy.

Last year’s prize was awarded to jailed Saudi blogger Raif Badawi, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 1,000 lashes in Saudi Arabia for "insulting Islam".

Liberal Belgian MEP Guy Verhofstadt, who leads one of the two political groups in the Parliament that nominated them, broke the news on Twitter, external before the announcement.

Image source, Getty Images

Downing Street has released the following statement from the Prime Minister following the news that 7,000 jobs have been secured at the Nissan plant in Sunderland:

Nissan described its Sunderland plant as a "globally competitive powerhouse", announcing its decision to continue to invest in car-making in the UK. 

The move safeguards 7,000 jobs. 

"I am pleased to announce that Nissan will continue to invest in Sunderland," Chairman and CEO Carlos Ghosn said.

"Our employees there continue to make the plant a globally competitive powerhouse, producing high-quality, high-value products." 

He said the company had "the support and assurances of the UK government" but details of what that involved were not revealed.

Select Committee
Parliament

US firm Concentrix was contracted by HMRC to cut tax credit fraud and overpayment.

HMRC is responsible for the collection of taxes and payment of some forms of state support in the UK.

Concentrix won the £75m contract to save the government over £1bn in incorrect or fraudulent tax credit payments.

Concentrix said it had saved £300 million in confirmed tax fraud and error over the course of its contract.

The contract was based on a payment-by-results model meaning it makes more money if it cuts more payments.

HMRC said it will not renew the Concentrix contract when it expires in May 2017.

Concentrix will work out the rest of its contract with HMRC clearing outstanding cases.

The chief Executive of HMRC, said "a collapse in basic customer service" had occurred.

Concentrix said HMRC's decision not to renew its contract "attacks our professional credibility".

In a statement, Concentrix said it had operated "within the guidance set by HMRC" at all times.

House of Commons
Parliament

SNP spokesman Pete Wishart also pays tribute to Jimmy Perry, adding: "I would hate to say that 'we're all doomed' Mr Speaker, but perhaps we are under this particular government."

He also congratulates Great British Bake Off winner Candice Brown and, as if things weren't already surreal enough, asks whether Brexit is "soggy or crispy".

Mr Wishart says Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has advocated a "flexible Brexit, a Flexbrex" in which the nations of the UK can set out their own priorities.

David Lidington says "members from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland" will be able to represent their nations when the House debates Brexit.

Select Committee
Parliament

Labour MP Helen Goodman asks HMRC about the numbers of "high risk" claims that the organisation flagged for Concentrix, asking "how could it possibly be the case" that 1.5 million cases were high risk, when only 4.4 million people get tax credits

"You're surely not suggesting that a third of the people who receive tax credits are potential potential fraudsters?" she asks.

Nick Lodge responds that the high risk figure comes from a detailed annual sample where HMRC analysts look at characteristics of errors in the system.

"Much of it is error and not necessarily fraud," he says, but tells the committee that the high risk figure comes from the fact that these are the types of cases where errors are found.

From that, he says, Concentrix would in turn have undertaken their own analysis. 

Image source, Getty Images

Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, speaking at tonight's City of London Corporation dinner, will warn that Britain’s decision to leave the European Union could have the biggest impact on the City of London since the reforms of the 1980s.  According to pre-released extracts, he will say:

The Mayor will add:

House of Lords
Parliament

After questions at 11am, peers will be taking part in a day of debates.

First, on the "opportunities presented by the UK's vote to leave the European Union for the promotion of global free trade". Then peers will debate social mobility.

Finally, there is a short debate on the chances of a resolution to the situation in Cyprus.

House of Commons
Parliament

David Lidington says he is "happy to join" Valerie Vaz in paying tribute to Jimmy Perry.

He says that, when he looks as the opposition during Prime Minister's Questions, "the phrase that comes to my mind is: they don't like it 'up 'em!"

Select Committee
Parliament

Conservative MPs Stephen Hammond and Steve Baker both ask about the "profound anxiety and despair" that has been caused by the problems with tax credit provision to people across the country.

Mr Baker asks what can be done to end this problem.

Mr Thompson says that one of the main problems was that it took three weeks for complaints about the service to reach him.

Once the problem was understood, Mr Thompson says he deployed extra HMRC staff to improve services on phones and in the administration process.

He says that HMRC took 181,000 incomplete cases from Concentrix and have now completed 178,000 of the cases.

The law could be changed to give greater protection to alleged rape victims following the Ched Evans case, the Attorney General has suggested. 

The Welsh footballer was found not guilty of raping a 19-year-old woman at a retrial after a five-year battle to clear his name.

Unusually, the jury at Cardiff Crown Court heard evidence from two men who had sex with the complainant around the time of the rape allegation. 

The move was seen by some as a backward step and sparked concern women would be put off reporting sex assaults to the police

Jeremy Wright QC told the Commons the subject was of "concern" and suggested the law and guidance around the admission of a complainant's sexual history in criminal trials could be changed.   

He said: 

Lib Dem Treasury spokeswoman Susan Kramer said:

House of Commons
Parliament

MPs move to questions to leader of the House David Lidington.

SNP MP Ian Blackford asks if there are plans to reform the standing orders of the House, protesting against the English votes for English laws (EVEL) procedure.

EVEL requires that legislation applying to England (or England and Wales) has the approval of MPs from England only, or England and Wales.

Mr Lidington says it is "a matter of justice" that England-only legislation should "command the support of a majority of MPs" from English constituencies.

Pete Wishart, the SNP's spokesman on parliamentary business, says: "EVEL has been a bureaucratic, cumbersome, misunderstood nightmare which has divided this House on the basis of nationality and geography."

The leader of the House insists that the procedure is about "ensuring justice is done to members from all parts of the United Kingdom" and concerns "matters that are devolved in Scotland, over which this House has no say".

Nissan has announced that the Qashqai and X-Trail models will be built at Sunderland securing 7,000 jobs with possible new jobs to come after "support and assurances from UK government".

Reality Check

Image source, HM Treasury

There are lots of references on social media to the Treasury forecast of -0.1% growth for the quarter after a vote to leave the European Union.

The Treasury's analysis of the immediate impact, external did indeed predict a figure of -0.1% in its "shock scenario", which clearly has not happened (the shock scenario was the optimistic one, as opposed to the severe shock in which GDP was expected to decline by 1.0%).

There are a couple of points to make about the Treasury forecast. First of all, it assumed that Article 50 would be triggered straight away, because that was what David Cameron said would happen. 

It also did not take into account any actions that would be taken to boost the economy, such as the Bank of England's stimulus package.