European Council

Jo Swinson Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend has covered a number of issues. He will know that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is indeed consulting on what would replace the common agricultural policy, and it will be consulting the fishing industry and others on what would replace the common fisheries policy. Of course, legislation will be coming forward as necessary to cover all the issues that we need to address before we see the end of the implementation period and have in place the future relationship.

[Jo Swinson (East Dunbartonshire) (LD)]

I thank the Prime Minister for advance sight of her statement. I welcome the joint statement that she has secured from EU leaders on Russia and, indeed, the actions of the 18 countries today. It is exactly that kind of internationalist approach that we need.

The Prime Minister mentions the discussions on taxing digital companies whose behaviour as guardians of our data is of course a subject of increasing concern. Does she agree that Brexit or no Brexit, the UK’s only hope of tackling the massive and damaging monopoly power of the likes of Google, Facebook and Amazon is to work closely with our European partners on a co-ordinated approach not only on tax but on data protection and competition regulation?

[The Prime Minister]

We are looking at the issues around data as part of our negotiations with the European Union. We are bringing the general data protection regulation into UK legislation. This is another area where we want to ensure that we have a good arrangement for data exchange in the future.

Work is in hand at an international level—at the OECD level—on the taxation of digital companies. We believe that the best result is an international result, but we also think it right to look, as the European Union, at whether any interim steps need to be taken to ensure that we are properly taxing these companies.