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PART ONE: INTERVIEW WITH DAVID CAMERON

FAISAL ISLAM: Prime Minister, why don’t we start with some actual facts, what is the net number of EU migrants that have arrived in this country since you became Prime Minister six years ago?

DAVID CAMERON: I think the net number is about 600,000 people have left this country to go and work  or live in other European Union countries and about 1.2 million have come to live or to work  here, so big numbers moving in each direction but of course immigration is a challenge and it is a particular challenge when our economy has been growing strongly, we’ve been creating jobs and people have come to our country to work but I think the way to meet that challenge mustn’t be to leave the single market, harm our economy, hurt jobs and damage our country so we’ve got to find the right ways of dealing with the movement of people, not the wrong ways.

FI: So the number net is 667,000, that’s 121,000 per year.  Now you know this document, your manifesto, and in it you promised to reduce annual net migration to the tens of thousands and not the hundreds of thousands.  It literally has been hundreds of thousands, how is this promise compatible with staying in the European Union?

DAVID CAMERON: Well when I made that ambition for Britain, that we should be seeing net migration come down to under 100,000, at that time the net migration between people leaving the UK to go and live and work in Europe and people coming from Europe to live and work here was broadly in balance so it was about trying to reduce migration from outside the United Kingdom, something where more than half our migration comes from and something we are able to do.  But we have obviously been living in quite extraordinary times when the British economy has been growing very strongly, we have created two million jobs in our country.  There was a time in the last parliament when we were creating more jobs than the rest of Europe put together.  Now I don't think that will continue forever, the European economies are starting to recover, you see that in France and Germany, Ireland grew by 7% last year so you are beginning to see that recovery but I say again, as we tackle that challenge the worst thing we could do is pull out of the single market as those who want us to leave suggest and damage our economy.  I think it is worth stopping for a second to understand why coming out of the single market is so damaging and it is absolutely crucial to this argument.

FI: I just want to focus on migration which is very important in this and I put it to you again that you just cannot control, it is oxymoronic – some might say you lose the oxy – to control freedom of movement, you can’t control freedom of movement so why did you make that pledge in this manifesto?

DAVID CAMERON: Because as I say there have been many years where movement of people out of Britain into Europe, out of Europe into Britain, have been broadly in balance and we have in the single market …

FI: But you knew this a year ago when you restated this promise and you knew the crisis was there and you made the promise again and it’s a promise that cannot be fulfilled whilst we remain in the European Union.

DAVID CAMERON: Well I don’t accept that, I think it remains the right ambition for Britain.

FI: You seriously think it can be fulfilled whilst we stay in the European Union?  How can it be fulfilled?

DAVID CAMERON: Because there have been years and there will be again where people from Britain choose to go and work overseas and …

FI: It hasn’t happened in any single year of your premiership.

DAVID CAMERON: It happened when I first set out the ambition as I said.

FI: Can you see it happening in any period whilst you are still Prime Minister, in the next four years?

DAVID CAMERON: I’m not going to put a date on it but what I’ll say, Faisal, is there are good ways of controlling migration and there are bad ways.  A good way is doing what I did in my renegotiation which of course hasn’t come into effect yet and will if we vote to stay in European Union which is to say to people that if you come to our country first of all you don’t claim unemployment benefit, second of all after six months if you haven’t got a job you have to leave and third of all, if you do come and get a job you have to work for four years paying into the system before you get full access to our welfare system.  

FI: Ah, you know what I’m going to say, that was in the manifesto commitment, you said no access for four years.

DAVID CAMERON: And we got not full access for four years which I think is very important because of course today someone can come from a European country and get an extra £10,000 on top of their wages so I think that is a good way to control immigration and that will make …

FI: How many, what proportion of EU migrants have claimed tax credits?

DAVID CAMERON: It’s over 40% are claiming tax credits.

FI: That number if pretty sketchy, the DWP have said that one in eight …

DAVID CAMERON: That is the number, 40% and for some of them they get as much as £10,000.  Now look, let’s be clear, I think that we should welcome the fact that people want to come to our country, work hard, make a contribution, pay into our system but they ought to pay in before they get out and that’s what I’ve secured through my negotiation, no more something for nothing and I think that is very powerful and very important.

FI: But your deal, if you are serious again about meeting this target, you’d have tried in some way to negotiate, renegotiate freedom of movement. You thought about that for a couple of days but Angela Merkel said no.

DAVID CAMERON: No, what happened was there is a whole series of changes to freedom of movement.  Of course it isn’t freedom of movement if you are a criminal, it isn’t freedom of movement if you are a terrorist, it isn’t freedom of movement if you have conducted a sham marriage and as I say, it isn’t freedom of movement if you cannot support yourself.  If you come to Britain, you can’t find a job, you can’t support yourself, we can make you go home and I think that’s very important but I’ll be absolutely level with you and the audience and everyone back at home, we’re in the single market, it’s a market of 500 million people, it is vital to the success of our businesses.  Part of that single market is British people being able to work and live in other European countries and Europeans being able to come and live and work in our country.  As I say, work – if they can’t sustain themselves they have to go home.  Now if you want to get out of the single market which is what the Leave campaign want to do, you will fundamentally damage our economy.  That cannot be the right way of controlling immigration, it would make our economy smaller, it would cost jobs, we would be poorer as a country and that would have a real effect on people watching the show, fewer jobs, we’d see prices go up because the pound would go down, the cost of the weekly shop would go up …

FI: Why did you not say that in your manifesto a year ago when you knew you were having this referendum and you made the same claim, we already had  had the eurozone crisis.  You understand there is this important matter of trust and credibility and this promise was never achievable.

DAVID CAMERON: No, I don’t accept that.  What I am saying is I said very clearly in the manifesto Britain benefits from being in a reformed European Union and we are going to conduct that reform, which we’ve done and we’re going to hold that referendum.  Yes, we do need to do things to control immigration like restricting in work welfare but it would be madness to try to do that by trashing our economy and pulling out of the single market.  I think this is … let’s just take an example so that people can understand what I mean.  If you take our car industry, hugely successful, 150,000 people employed in it.  We can sell our cars all over Europe with no taxes, no tariff, no trouble.  If we were outside the single market and we had a deal like say America does which is what the head of the Leave campaign has recommended, that would be a 10% tax on our cars.  I think of the car workers at Nissan on that production line, their jobs, their salaries, their livelihoods.  If we were to get out of the single market we would see fewer jobs in the car industry, we’d see less investment in our country, that would be a self-inflicted wound for Britain.

FI: I know you want to talk about the single market but on immigration it strikes me that you failed to hit your target, you failed to get a deal that would allow you to reach that target and you’ve also failed really on sovereignty.  You talk about the single market, you said in terms of control over laws, the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, a necessary part of the single market, is supreme in UK law.  Do you accept that?

DAVID CAMERON: Well I accept that we have a single market and you have to have a single set of rules for that market so someone making fan belts in Bolton can sell them to all 28 countries of the European Union rather than having to meet 27 rules but what I achieved in my negotiations for the first time ever was targets for cutting regulation, targets for cutting bureaucracy, let’s make this a single market with necessary regulation not unnecessary regulation.  But again the point is this, would we be more sovereign if we left?  Would we have more control?  Just picture the scene: we’re out of the single market, out of the European Union, you’re a car manufacturer and you want to sell your cars into Europe.  You’ve still got to meet all the specifications, all the rules of the single market, the only difference is you are no longer round the table writing the rules so how does that make us …

FI: We’d still have a car industry.

DAVID CAMERON: But the crucial thing is, Faisal, it doesn’t make you more sovereign because suddenly what you have done is you’ve given up the ability to help make the rules that govern the market which takes almost half of the goods and services that we sell, that isn’t more power it’s less power.

FI: Well let’s take an example, last year in your manifesto again you promised a VAT lock, in your Queen’s Speech you got Her Majesty to say that there will be no, to ensure there will be no rises in VAT rates for the next five years but eight days later this court in Luxembourg, this European Court of Justice, told you that it was not allowed, that you had to raise the VAT on solar panels and on wind turbines.  How can you accept that interference with the VAT rules?

DAVID CAMERON: Well the main rate of VAT is within our control, we’ve said in our manifesto we are not going to increase it and we’re not going to increase it.  The European Court …

FI: But VAT is going up on solar panels, that’s not what you said.

DAVID CAMERON: What we said in our manifesto was about the main rate of VAT and the lower rates of VAT, we are not changing them.  The European Court from time to time does make judgements about individual projects because there is a single set of rules in Europe governing some of these things but our promise on VAT absolutely stands good as does our promise on income tax.  We said we wouldn’t increase the rates and we haven’t, as does our pledge on other taxes.

FI: This was a Cypriot, a Portuguese, a Spanish and a Bulgarian judge overruling the sense of one of your promises in a Queen’s Speech to decide what British VAT was.

DAVID CAMERON: I don’t accept that.  In our manifesto we talked about the principle rates of VAT and we haven’t moved those but if you are saying, Faisal, that you have a court in Europe that sets rules for a single market, yes you do and if you didn’t have a set of rules you wouldn’t have a single market and if we didn’t have a single market – it’s 500 million people, it’s the biggest market in the world, it’s something Britain worked incredibly hard to create and it makes us effectively part of the biggest economy in the world so when we go and negotiate a trade deal with China we’re bigger than them so we can get a better deal.

FI: That’s the deal you’ve done, you get access to the market but this court is supreme.

DAVID CAMERON: There is a set of rules for the single market.

FI: It’s not just the single market, they have been opining on headscarves, they’ve been opining on deportation of foreign criminals, on child benefit …

DAVID CAMERON: If you are saying are there frustrations with the European Union, is it imperfect, do I find it frustrating as someone who is sceptical about these grand schemes, yes of course there are frustrations and that’s what my negotiation was designed to address and we did address lots of those things.

FI: Not all of it.

DAVID CAMERON: We did, we got Britain …

FI: This Portuguese and Bulgarian judge speaking in French, it’s a beautiful language but what is the accountability for a voter, for someone in the audience to tell the European Court of Justice I don’t want you talking about headscarves in Britain or the VAT rate on solar panels.  How do you fire these people?

DAVID CAMERON: Well you fire them through the Council of Ministers which is the responsible body on which I sit.

FI: The Council of Ministers …

DAVID CAMERON:  Faisal, this is very important because if you are saying there are frustrations, of course there are …

FI: But we are not sovereign in this regard, that’s what I’m saying.

DAVID CAMERON:  But we are not having a referendum on do we approve of every decision of the European Court, we’re having a referendum on should we stay in this organisation which is good for our economy, that strengthens Britain’s role in the world or should we leave?  I’m not sitting here for one minute saying this organisation is perfect, if I’d thought that then I wouldn’t have done a renegotiation that got us out of ever closer unit, that set targets for burden reduction, that safeguarded the pound, that said we’d never have to bail out eurozone countries, that stopped discrimination against our currency and said that we could make sure people have to work here before they got full access to our welfare system.  Those were all dealing with frustrations that we have about the European Union.

FI: So you mentioned the Council of Ministers, which nation has been most overruled in the Council of Ministers since you became Prime Minister?

DAVID CAMERON:  This is a totally phony statistic which you are about to deliver because I’ve read about this and I’ll tell you exactly why it is a phony statistic.  We insist that where we disagree with a judgement and we’re on the winning side on about 80% of occasions …

FI: It’s about 20%.

DAVID CAMERON: Hang on, where we disagree  … let me answer your question.

FI: You said it was phony, it’s not phony.

DAVID CAMERON:  Where we disagree, lots of other countries when they disagree they say okay, we actually often insist on voting against a register that we don’t approve of a particular regulation but if you are saying to me are there regulations in Europe that annoy you?  Yes!  Are there things about Europe that frustrate you?  Yes!  Look, I’m a Prime Minister that sits round a table with 27 other heads of government and state and sometimes this organisation drives me crazy but do I sit there and think Britain would be better off if we left, are we quitters, do we think we quit the European Union, we quit the single market and somehow we would be better off?  Absolutely not. I’ll tell you what it would be like, we would be outside the room.  The European Union doesn’t stop existing just because we’ve left, the Channel doesn’t get any wider if we decide to leave.  A group of people would be sitting round a table making decisions about our biggest market, about the future of our continent, about things that affect us and we would have our nose pressed to the window trying to find out what decision they were making.  That would be terrible …

FI: We could trade with China and India and all the growing markets and be able to do so without the shackles of EU regulation.

DAVID CAMERON:  Let’s address this getting out into the world and trading which is exactly what we are doing by the way, we have 53 trade deals with other countries and territories because of the European Union.   Just imagine again if we left: you have got the effect by leaving of losing access to the single market hitting your economy, you’ve also got what I would call the uncertainty effect.  Greenland left the European Union, they are mostly …

FI: They have no comparison to the United Kingdom …

DAVID CAMERON: That is my point, that is exactly my point, they mostly produce fish, there are 60,000 people, it took them three years to negotiate their exit.  We would have to negotiate our exit, negotiate our trading arrangements with the European Union and negotiate 53 other trading agreements. In my view this would take a decade.  Do we want a decade of uncertainty?  Do our businesses want a decade of uncertainty?

FI: You could have the same deals for two years, you would activate Article 50, it would take two years and we’d still be in the EU, we’d have some time to negotiate.

DAVID CAMERON: Okay, you activate Article 50 immediately, if British people vote to leave that’s what we should do.

FI: On the 28th June you would activate it at the EU council?

DAVID CAMERON: What would happen next, you have two years to negotiate, at the end of those two years you are out and you have to operate under World Trade Organisation rules.  Now I want people to understand what that means, that means 10% tariffs on the cars that we sell to Europe, it means tariffs on the clothes that we sell, it means potentially tariffs on the food that we sell, it would hammer our farmers, it would hammer jobs.  It is, as the head of the World Trade Organisation himself said, a disastrous outcome for Britain and the reason why these economic arguments are so important is I think if we’ve learnt anything over the last six years, if you don’t have a strong economy you can’t have the health service that you want, you can’t have the schools that you need, you can’t have the public services you want and this would be an act of economic self-harm of the United Kingdom doing it to ourselves.

FI: We will still trade and in your analyses you have assumed the absolute worst possible scenarios and …

DAVID CAMERON: No, I haven’t.

FI: The Treasury Select Committee has said that you the government has misrepresented this £4300 claim about families, will you withdraw it?

DAVID CAMERON: Well I think you’re wrong about that.  The worst outcome is the one we were just discussing, where you go to World Trade Organisation rules and you pay these tariffs and the one that we were putting in that document was the best trade deal that the European Union has done so far with another country, which was with Canada, right, it took seven years to negotiate and it still isn’t complete.  Canada is 3000 miles from the European Union, we are 20 miles from the European continent.  We need a trade deal very badly and we don’t need a Canada trade deal that …

FI: But we will inherit many of the same deals…

DAVID CAMERON: You are sounding a bit like the Brexit campaign who just say look, it’s all going to be fine.  

FI: I need to put these questions to you, Prime Minister.  You have a number that your Treasury Select Committee has said, and I am going to quote this now, “To persist with this claim would be to misrepresent the Treasury’s own work.”  This is really important because the way that you personally have framed the £4300 claim means that many people on average household income of £45,000 think they are going to lose £4000.  They are not going to lose £4000 are they?  Can you clarify that?

DAVID CAMERON: What that figure is, is the loss to the economy divided by the number of households in our country, if our country is poorer then our households are going to be poorer and what this means is fewer jobs, it means lower wages, it means less incomes.  Those are the things that we would be inflicting on ourselves if we were to vote to leave. I’ve talked about the trade effect, that’s because you are no longer part of the single market …

FI: No, no, I want to get on with this economic …

DAVID CAMERON: I want to make one more point, we have talked about the uncertainty effect, there is also of course the shock effect.  Because people expect the country to be poorer by leaving, the shock of leaving according to the Governor of the Bank of England, according to nine out of ten economists, is a severe shock that sees the pound fall, prices rise and a recession in our economy.

FI: It’s extraordinary, Prime Minister, I’ve never heard that and I’ve covered economics for ten, fifteen years.  Why are you comfortable talking about sterling…

DAVID CAMERON: In the course of this campaign when a good poll comes out for Brexit the pound tends to fall.  

FI: They go up and down, we can cope with movements in sterling, we’re a strong nation.

DAVID CAMERON: Again, it all sounds so glib just saying it’s all going to be fine.  If the pound falls, as economists forecast it would, that means that the prices that we pay in our shops will be higher.

FI: It’s fallen before and we’ve stood up as a nation and coped with it.

DAVID CAMERON: But prices will be higher for people to pay in their weekly shop.  That is the point, there is a shock effect, there’s an uncertainty effect and there’s a trade effect.

FI: Well the shock effect is you on the British public.  On grannies you said a vote to leave would threaten dignity in retirement, even Jeremy Corbyn who is on your side is criticising myth making and prophecies of doom.

DAVID CAMERON: Look, even if you don’t want to believe the Treasury, you’ve got the nine out of ten economists, you’ve got the International Monetary Fund, you’ve got the Bank of England …

FI: We know this …

DAVID CAMERON: It would be interesting if it were one or two organisations that were worried about leaving but the fact is that every international organisation of any standing all say the same thing about the economic …

FI: But it doesn’t stop at the economy does it?  What comes first, World War Three or the global Brexit recession?  [Laughter/applause]

DAVID CAMERON: Read my speech, the words World War Three never uttered my lips …

FI: In our continent serried rows of white headstones.  How do you get from a vote for Brexit in three weeks’ time to serried rows of white headstones, can you explain the steps involved?

DAVID CAMERON: Yes, let me tell you exactly.  On our continent in the last century twice we had an enormous bloodbath between our nations …

FI: In the past.

DAVID CAMERON: Hang on, in the past, again can we be so confident that we’ve solved all of Europe’s problems and all of Europe’s tensions …

FI: I can be confident that we’re not going to invade France and France is not going to invade us.

DAVID CAMERON: Again, you are being completely glib about it.  Look, I sit round the European Council table, it can be immensely frustrating but when you’re there you never forget that 70 years ago these countries were fighting each other.  I don't think we should take that for granted.  Now frankly NATO has done the most to keep the peace in Europe but the European Union has been a way of getting countries that used to fight each other, to talk to each other and I think you are being incredibly glib about this.  I think does Europe help to create dialogue in Europe, yes it does …

FI: You have made extraordinary claims, perhaps you are the one that should be fighting back at the party management …

DAVID CAMERON: Find me the bit of the speech that mentions World War Three, you won’t find it. Come on.

FI: You said serried rows of white headstones.  

DAVID CAMERON: Well there are serried rows of white headstones in Europe because twice in a century Europe went to war and on both occasions Britain had to go and be part of that conflict and we paid a very, very heavy price.  

FI: I’ve heard you this evening, let me make a suggestion.  You have failed to hit that migration target, you failed to get a deal that would allow you to meet that migration target, you failed in your party management too so you have reached for a classic Cameron fear campaign.  It worked in the Scottish referendum, it worked in the general election campaign when you used the Scots to scare the English and you are trying it again but this time it’s not working.

DAVID CAMERON: I just don’t accept that because it’s not simply what I’m saying. You’ve got the Governor of the Bank of England, someone who came from Canada to do this very important job, who has impeccable independence and who has said he is very concerned about the economic consequences of Brexit.  You’ve got the International Monetary Fund, their job is to tell Prime Minister’s about risks to their economy.  You’ve got the Institute for Fiscal Studies…

FI: They often get that wrong.  

DAVID CAMERON: Yes, of course, individuals …

FI: You are worried about losing aren’t you?

DAVID CAMERON: No, I’m delighted we are holding this referendum, it was a promise I made, it’s a promise I’m proud to keep.  I will carry out the instructions of the British people but frankly I think the job of the Prime Minister is to warn about potential dangers as well as to talk – as I hope we will when we do questions with the audience tonight – about the upsides and the opportunities that there are by being a member of this organisation but if I didn’t listen frankly to the IMF, to the OECD, to the Trade Union Congress, to the CBI, to the Governor of the Bank of England, if I didn’t listen to any of these people I would not be doing my job and I would not be serving this country I am so proud to lead.

FI: Thank you very much Prime Minister.

DAVID CAMERON: Thank you.