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SOPHY RIDGE: It’s been pretty plain sailing on the Brexit Bill for the government in the House of Commons this week but it hit choppy waters in the House of Lords and there are signs of more difficulties to come so is Theresa May’s firm grip over Brexit slipping?  I am joined now by the Leader of the House of Commons, the Conservative MP David Lidington, from his constituency in Buckinghamshire.  Hello, thank you for joining us this morning.  

DAVID LIDINGTON: Morning.   

SR: So the Brexit Committee are echoing the House of Lords and saying that the government should guarantee the rights of EU citizens living in the UK, you seem to be happy to use them as bargaining chips.  

DAVID LIDINGTON: No, we want to have the best possible deal both for EU citizens who are here and for our own citizens in the 27 other countries of the EU and we want that done as rapidly as possible after we get going on the Article 50 negotiating process but I just think it would weaken the position of British citizens overseas if we were to make a unilateral gesture now and I also think that some of the critics of the government don’t do justice to the complexity of the issues involved.  It’s not just a right of residence, it’s about access to healthcare, it’s about arrangements around pensions, it’s about what happens if the work that somebody is here exercising treaty rights to carry out ends and all of those issues have to be dealt with in this negotiation.  I think with goodwill, with rational self-interest prevailing on all sides, it should be possible to get a good generous deal that benefits everybody very early on and that would get the negotiations off to the best possible start.  

SR: Philip Hammond was saying this morning, the Chancellor, that there are some EU countries who are effectively ruling out a reciprocal deal now on the rights of British citizens living in the EU.  As a former Europe Minister you are quite tuned in with this kind of thing, do you know which countries are blocking it?

DAVID LIDINGTON: Well I think the issue as far as I can detect is not at the moment a hostility towards sorting out a reciprocal deal involving each other’s citizens, it’s about the position that there cannot be any kind of pre-negotiation ahead of the Prime Minister actually triggering Article 50 which is the process that’s set down in the EU treaties and that to my mind adds to the case for getting on with the Bill that’s in parliament at the moment, bringing that through and completing its parliamentary process and enabling the Prime Minister to get on with the task that the people want her to carry out which is actually leading those negotiations for the future.  The sooner that we get onto that, then I believe the sooner over each other’s citizens can be ended.

SR: You are quite lucky about that in some way aren’t you because the Brexit Bill has sailed through the House of Commons unamended.  Do you think the state of the opposition is making your job as Leader of the House of Commons rather easier at the moment?

DAVID LIDINGTON: When you are dealing with parliament you never take anything for granted and you never think that anything is easy and I’ve been in the House of Commons for 25 years now and I’ve seen governments even with much larger majorities than the one we do at present that have got into difficulties by taking MPs for granted.  Never do that.  But I think what has made the difference over this Bill in the House of Commons has been the fact that almost all of us in the House of Commons across parties accepted that the referendum should be decisive.  If someone like May who was very strongly in favour of the Remain side in the campaign, went into that campaign on the clear understanding that we would deliver on whatever the people of the United Kingdom decided they wanted to do and I think that is the message that the House of Commons has understood and I hope the House of Lords will understand that as well.  

SR: Let’s move on now to the budget, of course the big political event of next week. I’ve been to Brighton, we’ve just heard from some of the small businesses in Brighton who are really worried about this rise in business rates.  Some of them fear it is going to be so high it’s going to put them under.  Now is your time, now’s your chance to try and allay the worries of some of those businesses in Brighton but also across the country, what are you going to do to try and soften that blow?

DAVID LIDINGTON: Well Philip Hammond has been looking carefully at the concerns that have been expressed by a number of businesses to see whether there is more that can be done, particularly in terms of transitional arrangements.  We have actually got some pretty good transitional arrangements in the scheme as currently proposed, let’s not forget that it is seven years since the rental values of business properties on which their rates are calculated were last looked at and valued so we are overdue a revaluation and the majority of businesses in this country, something like three-quarters of the businesses in this country, should be getting lower rates bills as a result of this revaluation rather than higher ones but there will be some, yes, who stand to pay higher bills and that’s why we have a system of transitional relief to try and make it easier for those companies to adjust.  The Chancellor has said that he’ll be looking at that in the run up to the budget and obviously we’ll hear what he has to say later on this week.

SR: Okay, we’ll have to wait and see.  David Lidington, thank you for your time.