G8

Stephen Doughty Excerpts

Wednesday 19th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The point I was making—I hope the hon. Gentleman will quote me in full—is that if Britain were not in the European Union we could reach our own trade agreements with different parts of the world, but I believe we benefit from being part of the single market, and obviously part of bigger negotiations where we have a huge amount of heft in delivering these deals. The EU-Korea deal has been positive, and I think the EU-Canada deal will be positive and completed very shortly. The EU-US deal obviously has more potential than all the others put together.

[Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)]

I have listened with interest to a number of the Prime Minister’s answers on tax. The IF campaign said that although there has been progress, the G8 tax deal left major unfinished business, particularly on information exchange in relation to poor countries. What assurances can the Prime Minister give thousands of campaigners up and down the country about when and how he will finish that business?

[The Prime Minister]

The IF campaign has done an excellent job in raising the profile of that issue and all the other issues around hunger, and in its response to the outcome yesterday it made a number of fair points. We have made good progress and the issue is far higher up the agenda than it has ever been. Lots of tax agreements have been made and lots of revenue recovered for this country. We have done a huge amount to help the poorest countries in the world. At the lunch meeting yesterday the African leaders said that this is absolutely the agenda they want us to focus on, but there is more to do and I am happy to keep on with that work.