 Felly, gêmuno'n teimlo'n gweithio ein ffaisol yng Nghymru, Ken McIntosh MSP a'r Deim Margaret Hooge MP.Thank you very much. My name is Ken McIntosh. I'm the Presiding Officer here at the Scottish Parliament and it's my pleasure to welcome you to Holyrood and to the Festival of Politics 2018. This is our 14th year we've been running the festival of politics, and it's all about opening up the Parliament, allowing you not just to be here as spectators or listeners, Maen nhw'r gwaith i'w ffawr i ddechrau'r effeithu, mae'r d echad arno'n eu preffeyddol. Fe oedd unigwil, byddai'n ei gwneud â'r gael ac maen nhw'n ei ddechrau fel日io. Mae'r ddechrau'r ddflug i ni fod yn ymddir, mae'n ddweud. Esfdag Sport 2018, esfdag Sport 2018. Fe oedd ymddir yn ei cyfle iawn o amser o'r edrych FFOLG maen nhw gŵr yn y mewn ychydig. Fyel arwraith. Cŵrwch dw i'n cael rŵp, ac rwy'n gobeithio i'n gwneud i'r ddatblygu bod nhw'n gweithio iawn o'r awddiad i'r margrwedd mewn gwai ymddangol. Felly, yn cymdweithiau cydweithio i ddym ni'n edrych oedd yn iawn i'r holl i Dain-Margeot-Hodge, ac i ddau i ddau chael iawn i'n bach ddr equatoriaeth. Margrwedd wedyn, ond Margrwedd oponhymu in 1944 in Cairo, to Jewish refugee parents, her father a German steel entrepreneur and her mother from Austria. They moved to England in 1950, where she was educated at Oxford High School for Girls and where she went on her first Aldermast in March for CND in 1959. She then studied economics and political science at the London School of Economics. She became an economist at Unilever, but Margaret then left when she'd had two of her four children and became involved in community politics. In 1973, she joined the Icelandian Council in London as a Labour councillor, and by 1982 it became its leader. Margaret remained as a leader at its helm for a decade, weathering media storms over Looney Lefty councils and learning the diplomacy of local government. She was then appointed as a senior public sector consultant for Price Waterhouse between 1992 and 1994 before being elected to the House of Commons as the member for barking. She was appointed by both Prime Minister's Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in office and has been a minister of state in several departments, including education, work and pensions and culture, medians and sport. She pioneered the Shure Start programme for children in deprived areas of Britain. In the 2010 election, she fought off the challenge from Nick Griffin and the British National Party in barking, doubling her majority to more than 16,000. Perhaps the subject of much of her discussion this afternoon, from 2010 to 2015, Margaret became the first woman to chair the Public Accounts Committee and, in fact, the first person to be elected to that chair, not just appointed to the chair. She carved out a reputation for tenaciously tackling corporate giants such as Amazon, Starbucks and Google on tax avoidance, as well as civil servants and members of HMRC on public accountability. Embroiled in a debate on antisemitism within the Labour Party, Margaret has been outspoken in a criticism of the party's stance on the issue. She is a visiting professor at King's College London and, I understand, she also plays the piano to concert level. I'm delighted to introduce Dame Margaret Hodge. Thank you, Margaret. We've got a lot of areas to cover there. The key here is that I'll start the conversation off, but at any point, if you want to just attract my attention, you want to make a little point or ask a question. Just try to catch my eye, wave to me or something like this, and we'll try to bring everybody in. However, if we can, before we get into the politics of it, I wonder if you just give us a little taste of your early life and perhaps how that shaped your views, your values. I know that in your book called to account, you have a great story about how you had to eat fruit cake to prove you were British. This is true. We came here. My parents were from Germany and Austria, and they settled into Egypt just before the war, and I'm one of five. Four of us were born in Egypt. Then, in 1949, my dad, who ran a little stockholding company there, had a brick throne through his window. I think the Holocaust was very immediate for him, and I think he just thought we've got to get out. Interestingly enough, nobody would take us. We were stateless. We tried to get to America. We tried to get to Australia. We tried to get Canada. Nobody would take us. The British accepted us. My parents were forever grateful to Britain for allowing us here, and I think if they were alive today, they would be gobsmacked that I'd become such a ridiculous figure of the establishment. When we arrived in those early days, I have a lot of them. Immigration and equality have been at the heart and kernel of my politics. So, we arrived, and we went into bed and breakfast, and my only memory, and I was not five, my only memory was cabbage and porridge. I'd been used to eating mango and pita bread and all this lovely stuff, and I had overcooked cabbage and tasteless porridge. I sort of obviously adjusted, but I do have the memory of us getting our citizenship, and it's an interesting story. So, this was 1954, and my mother was very, very ill. I was nine, ten, just about that age, so she was actually dying in hospital. But my dad was desperate to get a citizenship because we had no passport, so we couldn't travel. In those days, this is such a long time, an inspector came to tea. My older sister and brother, my sister was at university, my brother was away at school, so there were two of us, me aged nine, ten, and my sister aged six, seven, and we had to have tea with this inspector, and we always, tea for us was boiled egg with fingers, toast, that sort of stuff, but on that day, we had tea in the sitting room, which we never did, and we had cucumber sandwiches and fruitcake, and I couldn't stand fruitcake because it was all that dried fruit, and I was used to all the fresh fruit that I'd grown up with, but I was told by my dad in no uncertain terms that I had to pretend that that's what we had for ever, and actually we were questioned, I was asked who my friends were, what games I played, what books I read, so it was a real, it was a sort of hostile environment, it's sort of a hostile environment, which exists even today against people coming in, but we did get through and we got our British citizenship, but that's always made me feel an outsider, that's why I tell that story, so although I feel deeply British and European, I feel very European and very British, I nevertheless have never felt a part of the British establishment, and when as a terrible teenager I was sent off to, my dad couldn't cope with me, so he sent me off to a boarding school in Oxford because my sister was at the university there, that's where I met the class system, because I went to, well, in those days with direct grant schools, some of you might remember them, so half the girls came from Cowley, from the motor, Morris motors in those days in Cowley, the other half middle class children of the academics, and they just didn't talk to each other, it was quite extraordinary, it's my really, you know, age 13, and there was either sort of outsider that didn't fit into either, but I hated the class system, so the mixture of my background as an immigrant and always that feeling of an outsider, plus this absolutely having the class system in your face as a young girl at school really made me determined to, you know, as a determined socialist, and the interesting is, I'm sure we'll talk about it later, is all that background at that time, the labour party was the natural home for everybody who came in with that sort of immigrant background, because it was the party that promoted equality, equal rights, that it was international, that it fought for minorities, all those values, so when Gordon Brown made his very impassioned speech recently about anti-Semitism and talked about the soul of the Labour party, I felt a real affinity to every single word that he spoke. I should note, by the way, everybody here, suddenly over my age, over the 50s, will identify with your remarks about porridge and cabbage, so that was more than fruitcake, but just going into politics then, so what took you? What made you, because it's quite a step, I mean you had careers as an economist and you bring up a family, what made you decide that politics was for you, elected politics? Well, I've always been active, some of you said I joined CND, I was anti a part, I was anti Vietnam, all those things that people of my generation took part in were part of my teenage years, I was a terrible student at LSE but had a fantastic time, but what happened was I have got four languages, part of my background, so I speak fluent French, German, Italian, from the age of under five, it tells you something about how we should be teaching our children, so my job, my full-time job involved, I was doing international research and when I had my first child it became impossible to do that, this is a terribly funny story as well, but so I couldn't travel in those days, women did work but we didn't sort of, we felt we had to stay at home for the first three of five years of the child's life and I really wanted babies, I really wanted to be a mum but I was six weeks at home with the first one and I have had four and I've got 12 wonderful grandchildren but with the first one I realised that I burst into floods of tears during that, I thought I can't bear this, getting the boo about me just giving milk and no reason to getting dressed in the morning and a friend of mine was Caldor's daughter who was the economist who supported Harold Wilson and we were both in the Labour Party and she said, and she was the councillor on Islington Council and I was pregnant with number two and she said to me, she had to leave, she moved to Birmingham, she said try and get my seat Margaret because it'll keep, going on the council will keep you sane whilst you're changing nappies, so it was a rather ridiculous reason for me and politics but it is a sort of drug, it is a sort of drug, I think you go in because you want to change the world, I think that you know we all want to leave the world a better place than we found it and it's a sort of, I try to give it up, you said I spent two years when Labour lost the election in 1992 which was the fourth general election we'd lost, I thought I've had it, that's enough and so I thought I really wanted to go and run a big, an NGO or something but I thought I'd have, I was seen as very loony left so to establish my credibility I thought I'd do a couple of years as a consultant. You had done things like ban fox hunting on the E1 so that was. Loony left, so I've lived through the 80s so all the people who are now at the top of the Labour Party I have to say I fought in the 1980s which is why there might be a little bit of tension between me and some of the characters that are now in leadership positions of the Labour Party, so the 1980s but it also gives me some empathy to know to what's going on, it's interesting, those of you that remember those two, I mean I remember 79 and coming out and feeling a huge scent of being let down by the Labour Government you know the winter of discontent so I can feel the empathy of all those young people who join momentum and in a way that's the energy of young people coming into politics I think it's a force for good and we should celebrate that it's the old trots who've been around since the night that I could do with that I don't really give the honest truth but and we did we were there and we did in in those early days you know we did sort of dominate the party we I became leader of a council in 82 I was I was young I was still young to do that and we were radical so we did stuff then but we were in London and every journalist in Fleet Street as far as I could tell lived north of Kings Cross in the London borough of Islington and they drink in the pubs and they sort of make up stories about what we did so whilst we did really good radical things that have become conventional so let me give you examples we established the very first workplace nursery in about 1984-85 and that was seen as an absolute appalling waste of taxpayers money and of course it's now completely conventional we established the monitoring of the allocation of council housing because we were sure that there was discrimination against people on the grounds of ethnicity and that again was seen as you know you know got us going at completely mad and lefty stuff to do and again that has completely accepted orthodoxy today but we did do some mad things we did do some mad things so we you know banned nuclear weapons from the London borough of Islington that was a great man and the funniest thing was animal rights was a big issue in those days so we banned fox hunting off the A1 and there weren't any urban foxes in those days but we also because we got that reputation and because in the same way as the media is attacking the left now they were attacking us in those days they invented stories so one of the worst ones they invented was that they invented that we banned bar bar black sheep from our nurseries which is completely rubbish but it was sort of you know political correctness gone mad was what they said but the terrible truth about that is they wrote it up in the sun and I can't remember probably evening standard in the sun and our nursery workers read it and they thought it was true so they then went into work and stopped the children singing bar bar their favourite nursery around bar bar black sheep so it was a difficult time to go through but when I reflect on today the lessons I learned from the 80s were that actually you don't win elections by posturing and passing resolutions in even in beautiful chambers like this you win elections by actually listening to people acting on the things that matter to them and then delivering on their priorities and that's what I'm afraid even in the the Labour Party has now become again very inward looking and rather nasty and nasty not it isn't a new and gentle politics it's a very in my view it's a very intolerant and aggressive and belligerent politics and that's where we are now and we inward looking so control of the party is everything and connection to the people in whose name we say we want power has gone on to the back burner and that's the sad lesson that we haven't learned and I think until we go throughout phase and come back to it I'm a pessimist about whether or not Labour will ever secure power and from my constituency I've got one of the poorest I'm barking in east London my constituents are absolutely desperate for a government that will build those public services which are so essential if we're to provide an equalising opportunity for everybody not based on who they are their wealth or their background just before we move off that I mean you've hinted at this but you were elected you became leader of the council in Islington in 1982 Jeremy Corbyn became the MP for Islington North in 1983 so the battles you're playing out now I imagine you were playing out then as well is that right I mean what relations like between yourself and Jeremy Corbyn no I mean Jeremy Corbyn and I have got to know him in 82 so I'm sort of one of the people who's known him for longest and the honest truth was in the 80s do you do some of you remember Chris Smith who's atchisk he's bought originally come from Scotland he was the other MP so we had to Jeremy was listening to north Chris was listening to south and to be honest in those very troubled years when we were constantly on the front page of the papers and it was it was a difficult time because a lot of it were lies and you were trying to do radical things and there was no no willingness to listen to the sort of rationale for some of the I think good radical things that we did Chris was much more problem to me than Jeremy so if the council got something wrong or we were on the front page being slagged off Chris would be in there attacking us Jeremy to be fair never never did that but his interests I was in the 80s was he was more interested in Nicaragua than he was in Islington and he's always had that foreign policy focus to what he's done and then I have got another it's a bit of a so we've always had a pretty civil relationship and my view of him is a view I've come to very very recently in relation to anti-semitism in fact down the years I've defended him so when people have said to me Jeremy is anti-semitic I said no no no no he's not he's not he's an anti-racist and it's only because what has emerged we might again come to it later over recent times that I've changed my view on that but I will say this to him and it's is I you know people have to judge whether this is a strength or a weakness I stopped being leader in 92 and I became the MP for barking in 94 so I didn't really go back to Islington and then in about 2013 2014 so it was about 20 years afterwards I was asked to go back to Islington north to talk about my time as chair of public accounts committee and my tax justice work and I went and Jeremy this was before he'd been elected as our leader and Jeremy introduced me and I hadn't heard him speak for 20 years and what was so striking was the actual words he used and the values and policies that he he supported were identical to the stuff he'd said 20 years previously now that can either be seen as a strength of consistency of value or it can be seen as a stubbornness and failure to respond to changing circumstances whilst maintaining your basic values that are always the that put you on the left or put you on the right and sadly I don't think it's a strength I think it's a weakness not be able to see that the world has changed and how do you adapt what you say and what you do to the changing circumstances while being true to those basic values that make me a socialist and a member of the Labour Party now I suspect when the audience wants to ask questions we might explore some of these issues particularly in a modern context but you mentioned just there you went back to Islington in 2013 to talk about tax justice so if you just bring us up now to when you joined the public accounts committee so this is 2010 Labour lost the election and you moved from government to opposition and at the same time and I think perhaps just to explain for everybody the role of the public accounts commission committee because it's a it's a committee that's always chaired by the opposition but the cheer is appointed or it had been well let me just say a little bit because people think what on earth is this public accounts committee so it was set up by Gladstone in 1861 when and it was the idea was to oversit it's before all the other select committees which were set up by Norman St. John Stevers in the 1970s it was set up by Gladstone in 1861 at that time public spending by government was 69 million pounds today the public accounts committee oversees about 800 billion pounds billion pounds it's always chaired by a member of the opposition but that used to be an appointment that was in the gift of the party whips and the party leaders and we had this very important I think really transformational change in 2010 where the position became elected so I was the first woman and the first elected chair to the position and the reason that's made such a difference is that it means you are completely independent of the party machinery and that allows you actually to leave your crude tribal politics at the committee door and try and build consensus within the committee and also you know I was as critical of Labour as I was of the Conservatives where I felt it was justified and that I think added strength and credibility to the work that we did the other thing to say is that it's always although the chair is a member of the opposition it reflects Parliament so I had a majority of Conservatives on my committee but during the five years that we sat we produced 247 reports out of those 246 were completely unanimous and only one was contentious and that was on royal the sale of royal mail and that was just in the run up to the 2015 election so it was at a very political moment but apart from that it was consensus the answer is you get this fantastic room that comes with the job on the upper committee corridor in the palace of Westminster looking over the Thames it's a beautiful Pugin room and as you walk in all the photographs of all my predecessors are all up on one wall and there are two or three interesting observations one is Harold Wilson was chair of the public accounts committee and he chaired it on the way up you know before he became Prime Minister and couldn't have lighted me work up what on earth was he doing sharing this committee on the way up and the answer was that in his day back bench opposition MPs didn't have rooms from which to work from they used to work in the corridors in the house of commons with these old fashioned Victorian school desks you know where the chairs attached to the desk and the only person to get a room in the whole of the palace of Westminster was the chair of the public accounts committee so he simply took the job to get the room I also discovered that there were three of my predecessors who'd been to prison and they were all Labour MPs but actually they'd gone to prison for good reasons two of them were pacifists and one had supported the suffragette movement and I also discovered that more people have been murdered who'd been chairs of public accounts committee than ever had been prime ministers so I was really I keep wondering looking on my shoulder to see whether Google's going to have a little pop at me but they've left me alone so far the other thing to say is our powers aren't very much I think it's worth saying all this don't shut me up you think it our powers aren't very great so we just get these reports which are prepared by the national audit office the good thing about that is that it's information that nobody can challenge so again that helps break down the partisan sort of nature you know if you've got the evidence you've got to go where the evidence takes you and I think everybody respected that but we can ask people to come and give evidence to us and then we base our findings on whether or not they do and I so you ask people you write to people saying please should I come come to a session and of course they all look forward to having a session with me shouting at them and I used to get worried what if they turned on your invitation what I would then do is I'd get a bit of paper a full paper like that with my name on the top and I'd send them a rather more instructive letter saying we would really expect you to come and give evidence to us and I was a bit worried about what was my power if they turned that invitation down and the only ultimate power was that I could have taken it to the floor of the house and the offending individual who refused to come could then be put for a period of reflection in a little prison in the tar of Big Ben I never had to use that but what is interesting is I had really and this is my I'll shut up after this the committee was full of people really across the political spectrum so do some of you remember Austin Mitchell the old lefty from Grimsy who I love and who's got a really fantastic sense of humour but by the time he was on the committee he was pretty deaf as well but he still was very very funny I had him on the one slide and Stuart Jackson do you remember him from Peterborough who ran David Davis's private office for a little bit when David Davis was Brexit secretary he lost his seat in Peterborough and he's anti immigration anti Europe anti abortion anti gay marriage anti absolutely everything actually the only thing he and Austin agreed about was Europe they were both both Brexiteers but despite that disparity of political values we managed to build unanimity and I think it's a really interesting reflection and it's about value for money because I think you know if you're on the right you want value for money because you want to cut taxes and you want to cut spending so it's really important that you get best value out of every pound that you spend and if you're on the left as I am I think public expenditure is the key to unlocking human potential and creating equality so I want to prove to all of you as taxpayers that I can be trusted with your money and therefore I want to prove value for money so whether you're on the right or on the left you both seek value for money and it was that common purpose that enabled us to build unanimity on what were often very irritating reports now can I I'll bring in a couple of these if I may and again just signal if you want to come in on any of these points at the moment because tax dominated I think your agenda these five years and you there are several cases in your book that you talk about yeah but I won't go through them all but the HSBC, Goldman Sachs, also the big global multinationalist, Google, Amazon, Starbucks, others and so on, Goldman Sachs for example, why did they attract your attention, why did you end up having dealings with them? Again this is historic because it all started with Goldman Sachs when I became when I was first elected again David Davis had been chair of the public accounts committee when Labour was in government and he was a backbencher at that point and he came up to me and he said I'll help you with everything I can and he did down the years he really did support me when I sort of wasn't quite sure how to tackle it something and then pointed his finger at me and he said vote a phone Margaret you've got to go after a vote a phone in their tax affairs and I sort of looked at him and I couldn't work him out in my brain how the private affairs of a multinational company tax affairs had anything to do with a parliamentary committee that was tasked with looking after public expenditure but it actually didn't take long for me to realise that how good or not we are at collecting taxes goes to the heart of the efficiency of HMRC and the gap between what we should collect and what we do collect is ginormous. HMRC reckon it's about 34 35 36 billion billion pounds that gap and despite everything that they've tried it's still it hovers around that level tax campaign has put it at 120 billion so whether you settle at a figure at the middle let's say you know you will never agree till 70 billion a year that we don't get that is just think what that means in terms of what we could do for our schools and our hospitals and you know elderly people in the community all that stuff so it's massive and that and I and I got that and then what happened is we used to have these regular sessions with HMRC where they'd come to set and we'd hold them to account for how well or badly they'd been doing and we'd get a brief that thick from from the national audit office the night before and I read it before they came but I also happened to be read that day private eye and private eye was running a story about a sweetheart deal that the tax authorities had reached with Goldman Sachs so we get to the session and the head of tax is sitting there and I asked him questions about Goldman Sachs and he avoids answering the question hiding behind the privacy of individual tax affairs you can't you know it's a it's a it's a confidentiality of tax affairs for the individual but he did say and he was also questioned on this because other people read private eye too he was questioned by Jesse Norman in the treasury select committee on the same issue and he actually said to Jesse Norman I had nothing to do with the Goldman Sachs deal it was a very frustrating session we got absolutely nowhere and at the end of it I thought well I haven't done very well here and then I got a big brown envelope and it was really thick and I was really working 24 seven and I thought I'm never going to get through this but my Clarks said have a look at it so I did that weekend and there was one sheet of paper in there and that was the minutes of a meeting that had been held by the head of law in HMRC on the Goldman Sachs deal and the head of law said there were two things in that minute it was literally one sheet one that the head of tax had shaken hands on the deal so he had been economical with the truth to a parliamentary select committee which is really naughty to the thing to do and the head of law thought the deal was quotes unconscionable so it's pretty hard stuff so we decided to call the head of tax back and he obfuscated and he avoided and he had behind um uh confidentiality of taxpayers interest so we then called in the head of law and all we wanted him to do was to confirm the veracity of the minute as all we wanted and he was you know babbling away at the end of the committee telling us nothing and sitting next to me was my ineffect vice chair who is a conservative MP for Norfolk who'd been on the committee for 10 years I'd been doing it for about six months by then and he whispered to me put him on oath mark with that might get something out of him and I said I can't put him on oath he said you should can he was babbling away down the other end so I turned to the clerk and I said can I put him on oath he says you can so I said well go and find a bible and it took him 20 minutes to find a bible in the house of commons and we found he found a bible we put this poor bugger on oath and it absolutely fedrified him didn't get much more out of him but it hit the six o'clock news on the telly and that put us up to the top and actually the good thing out of it is it made the head of tax left the job a few weeks later and they changed the process of how they agreed and had settled their internal procedures but what it also did was it brought a journalist to me who then talked to me about Starbucks and that started me on the road and all the way through this is what's so interesting I'm but probably the only person in the palace of essence who's got a good voice word to say about journalists where you get good investigative journalists they are completely naturally brilliant and you see that in the Panama papers the paradise papers and actually you see what's happened with the malty's journal uh yeah it was more uh yeah I'm right no it wasn't it was the one who got killed recently because she was was more towards them but you can see it all over the place all the guy now who's just the uh uh um the guy the the the Turks are out the Saudi Arabian yeah yeah all that stuff these are where you get investigative committed journalists they're wonderful and the other thing is whistleblowers so on google on on hmrc on actually again the people who have revealed um hsbc and the ones who gave the evidence i'm a huge supporter and we don't do enough we never do enough both to certainly to protect whistleblowers and indeed to protect the backs of investigative journalists what's interesting there is that you well the number of points that are interesting but the so it started off with private eye catching attention then a whistleblower providing you with this brown envelope of the minutes of meetings that the the official had denied happened occurred um and then it was followed up by investigative journalists I would imagine that certainly I would imagine most people who are unfamiliar with parmin would think well why would parmin have to rely on those sources do we not have you know particularly a committee like yours isn't that the isn't that exactly what the national audit office should be doing isn't it isn't it their job to get to the bottom of these matters they're giving you the official report the official audited accounts on which you then investigate these matters and you've got all the resources of parmin at your disposal you know why should someone like you be in that situation all your colleagues be relying on these very unofficial and you know um and in some cases uh slightly dangerous sources of information your whistleblowers will get prosecuted and lose their job if they're not careful yeah I mean do you know what one of the saddest things for me I'm sorry to recall but was that the whistleblower who gave me those papers from Goldman Sachs was a lawyer in HMRC and I really worked hard to protect him but um the head of HMRC went into his computer went into his phone made his life so intolerable that in the end he I couldn't defend him every time she came up say how are you treating him and in the end made his life so intolerable that he left so I feel although we've got a legislative framework once you're a whistleblower the workplace can make your life so intolerable it's very difficult to really properly defend you that's the first thing the second thing is the national audit office um I mean I had a sort of difficult relationship in the end but in the in the beginning but in the end we had a really good relationship their job's different that's why we matter as politicians actually because what I felt very much and it came out of my experience in fighting the BMP embarking it took what that experience taught me was it's so easy to lose connection with the people you know there I was in a safe labour seat Joe Richardson had been my predecessor you know used to wave the votes and you wouldn't even bother to count them and the Labour Party was inward looking I I know this resonates in Scotland because we see what it ended up with in Scotland it you know was inward looking nobody really thought about connecting and and the way we won back for labour in barking and I'm now again one of the safest labour seats was I completely changed the way I do my politics there so everything I do is about how can I reconnect with the with the people who put me there and that knowledge I can babble on about forever but that knowledge was what you know in 2010 when I arrived in that job took I took with me so I said it was always asking the questions that I thought the good people of barking done would want me to ask it was very much based on that and that's a different set of questions to what auditors bless them you know their cotton socks would would be asking so working together worked well so for example on Google if I take that as an example I was inundated with whistleblows from Google but actually what we did is we selected a few of them and then I met them together with the controller and auditor general and we had one guy this was extraordinary one guy who had worked for Google for 10 years and when he left he downloaded all his stuff on all his stuff on a computer so while Google was saying they weren't selling anything in the UK they were just selling into the UK which is how they were avoiding tax we had this massive absolute bundle of evidence which showed them signing contracts even sending out invoices from UK offices and the other guy was also a Google employee who gave us his his wage slips and it was about a quarter of his wage was his basic wage and the rest was money that he earned from the business he brought in by selling Google services so it was a set it was a complete clear and that I said there was a good working together but you know and and the final observant there people who've got their hands up the final observations I had is during our time in the PAC we went to visit America to see how they did it there and the you and the American equivalent to us they have 120 people supporting them 80 people supporting the majority party 40 the minority party and what really strikes you there is their completely utterly totally partisan so they never come out with agreed reports and I think they're weaker and in a way because we were so badly resource so we would you know I mean I had so many whistleblowers on the private sector delivering public services that really enabled us to throw open scandals and lies of many of these private contractors involved in in public service delivery all whistleblowers I think the way we ran it in a way it's sort of muddling through and it was a little bit by the you know we were on thin ice quite often but it actually enabled us to build that consensus and engage in a way that was not contrary it wasn't partisan it just wasn't partisan and that was really our strength I think no I can imagine and just catch my eye if there are hands up oh there's one right there yes just wait a two seconds our microphone will make you sleep down to your back so I can't hear very well can I ask a question while we're waiting on the microphone and that is I mean I would have thought across the political spectrum all politicians want everybody to pay their taxes fairly people the rich the poor big companies small companies and it strikes everybody as unfair that the bigger you are the more you should get away with you could get away with it now I understand that you did achieve consensus most of the time there's a couple of times I think you indicated you didn't that one of the times you got the whistleblowers together to give evidence and then your committee rebelled and you wouldn't allow it and you had to have a private session is that right well that wasn't on tax on tax we did always can receive consensus and one of the things I was I was going to say is I've carried that on since 2015 yes you've been successful and so we've got one of the things I'm really proud of is I now run an all-party group on what we call responsible tax I'll just talk about that a little bit where so we've been campaigning my latest bestest friend is one Andrew Mitchell who's a conservative MP and but he was the I am and he but he's interested he's been really brilliant on overseas development and what one of the things I learnt through all my tax work is that transparency is absolutely key the more you can open things to public account the more you stop wickedness happening and if you look at the Panama papers for example half of the entities that were cited in the Panama papers were companies that have been established in a British overseas territory they are British Virgin Isles so if we can open to public account who owns what and how the money flows in the overseas territories that well it won't it's not a it'd be a thing that can lance a lot of not just tax avoidance but also money laundering and terrible financial crime um you know if we can do that we set out to do it and we achieved that we achieved that last year working with Andrew Mitchell and I saw 40 conservatives on a one-to-one basis and I tell you every time before one came in I'd look at the CV so one of the one of them actually this one came in and he said sat down and I was already working on the anti-semitism stuff then and he sort of had an affinity with me over that and then he said to me Margaret I would like to see open registers of beneficial ownership in the overseas territories but I've got to tell you something I know a very lot of very rich people so I thought what's coming now and he said and the trouble is they don't want to tell their wives about how much money they've got that was terrible and then I had this other guy who came in and I looked at his CV and I'm not blimey well I got in common with him he was very anti immigration really really anti any gay rights and all that horribly anti abortion all these things that I care about but I just spotted one thing he was also virulently opposed to Russia so we had all this stuff on Russian dirty money on the Russians sort of I mean using that they used our overseas territories our tax havens and the financial services sector in the city to get their money not just the Russians I mean it's sort of also places like you saw Azerbaijan this week in the woman yesterday with the being named as somebody who's used that as the woman who spent 15 million harrods 20 million harrods 20 million on my home you know absolutely awful but Nigeria I mean you get it from bits of Africa you get it from the Middle East you get it from everywhere but our I was able to convince him because of the Russian dirty money to support our amendment so again people from completely different political stables building consensus and we won we forced the government it was very funny this the government didn't want this was actually a Boris Johnson bill and we put down our amendment Andrew Mitchell and I and we got we got absolutely Ken Clark supported us Nikki Morgan supported us we had a lot of big big names supporting us on the top and of course everywhere in the Labour side was supporting us although I'm not the Labour's I'm not Labour's favourite person but we had to make sure everybody was there to vote on the day so actually Andrew Mitchell went in to see my chief whip who I'm not that his favourite because I always vote I don't always vote the Labour line on Europe because I'm a very strong European so I'm voting and everything that keeps us as close to Europe as we can so the EA I voted for that against the Labour whip so but he went in and he said to the chief whip you dare have one Labour vote not here on the day we have this amendment and I'll make sure Labour takes the blame for losing it so we had a very strong Labour three line whip and the speaker bless him he's whipping the whip he's whipping the whip he was the chief whip on the Tory side so they knew each other but I had have the Tory persuade the Labour whip that it was a good idea and then chief and then the speaker helped us and he does help back benches he's a really really good chief whip speaker took our amendment but as I walked into the chamber I thought we had 40 votes I thought we had a win but you can never tell you know you can never tell whether people are actually going to go through the lobby with you and as I walked into the chamber the minister Boris was one of Boris Johnson's juniors Alan Duncan I happened to bump into him and he said we're having a fight this afternoon I said yeah I know and went and sat down and then Andrew Mitchell so we're both sides of the chamber Andrew Mitchell was up on the other side of the chamber and so we acknowledged each other and then I saw the Tory chief whip run up to him I thought what the hell is he talking to him about and then he came down again and Alan Duncan at a moment was on his feet saying what a terrible amendment and now if we had transparency in the overseas territories this would completely destroy the economy of the British Virgin Islands I'll come back but it doesn't but and all these all these places and then he came down again and Alan Duncan banged on about what a terrible amendment was then he went back up again and I thought something's happening and then Andrew Mitchell pointed to me put your phone on because you put your phone off when you get into the into the chamber so I did put my phone on and he he texted me and he said I think they're going to cave in and two seconds later having slacked us off about how terrible our amendment is Alan Duncan said but we're going to concede it you won the vote that's a good thing there so something about the microphone the best with the microphone first yes I'm Margaret I'm councillor Tim Brett I chair the scrutiny committee on five council could you give me some advice from your experience of being a councillor as well as the public health committee as to how I should do that um well I think it's what any try and work across the parties are you 100% late what are you I'm right right well I would urge building consensus trying to leave the tribal politics the door so you've got to work hard at that I mean I often people ask say to me how did you do it so I often say running islington council when we had 52 labour councillors taught me lots of lessons about building consensus because you get all your splits within the labour within the labour group so you know I did build concern I think being a woman helped so uh you know I was all I was able to say sorry in a way that sometimes meant you know so every time when they did get cross to me every now and then I said I'm terribly sorry I've got things wrong didn't really matter because I got what I wanted anyway so saying sorry saying sorry so I think that's important I think asking the questions your constituents want and I didn't take the agenda that the that was the other thing I probably should so the national audit office has a program of work but if something came up you know like the tax issue but it wasn't just the tax issue other issues would come up you know we looked at you know something would come up in the press and you just think goodness we ought to be looking at that issue so grab it and go with it so that you're really the work you do relates to the people who elected you and I think do change who you get evidence from so that we used to have people in you know the they tend to I mean I in your council would be departmental heads or whatever so go down a little bit get the voluntary sector in giving evidence get campaigning groups in giving evidence all that sort of stuff I think you know so it's how you do it and all that helps and I didn't set out to do this I honestly didn't but I tell you it's sort of my all my social social media sort of stuff and everything people just really appreciate it they do like it they really like you to do that and it's a really good way of reconnecting where part of politics isn't with your public accounts committee um I read your book and it's amazing to me that HMRC can can be so obfuscating when they're tax they're paid by the taxpayer they're civil servants you're elected surely you're more powerful than they are um and then people come to the committee's private sector people like the facebook guy and they're able to just get away with saying nothing so it seems like our elected representatives don't have any power so is there any push within the house of commons to get more power to these committees you know this it's a very good question it's a very difficult question and I don't think there's an obvious answer what I do think is we ought to have the right to access papers more than we do so we looked at the air I mean it's a different story but we looked at the aircraft carriers now that was a gordon brown initiative and um he it was you know 2006 2007 and it was around the jobs in the in the in the shipyard really it was it was taken for industry the decision to build the aircraft carrier it was an industrial decision it wasn't really a defence decision and it was taken without any um anybody really looking at the defence budget which was completely ridiculously overspent and they signed the contract and of course it was much more than the original thing and they found within six months of signing the contract that they didn't have the money to pay so they paused the contract but they'd employed everybody up here in scotland and down in in uh Plymouth and actually also um in uh um uh in the lake district you know in all the dates so they've got people in the shipyards all over the place they say sign they had to keep the people there so just pausing that contract for 18 months which is what they did because they didn't money cost us all as taxpayers 1.6 billion pounds not you know 1.6 simply for an outrageously bad decision and then the Tories came in the coalition came in and so they again wanted to change their minds complete ridiculous and they wanted to use a different aircraft aeroplane coming off it so instead of using uh they had to I can't remember in other details it was that they had to change the surface the deck to take the different sort of aeroplane and they took that decision without looking at the technical feasibility or the costs they just took it because it was against what Labour had done so both parties bad as each other and we wanted the papers we wanted to look at the papers that had gone before those who had taken that decision to see what information they'd had which had informed had they had the proper technical and financial information before they take the decision and they refused to release the papers and I think that's bad so I would go and it's the same on tax every Google today for the life of me I think the stuff we gave them from our whistleblowers meant that Google should have been in court because I think they lied about their model their financial model I don't think I think they I I know that they sell in the UK however much they say we don't we sell uh we we sell from Ireland they don't they sell in the UK they've never been taken they've never been taken to court we've never seen the papers you know they did this deal this 130 million deal do you remember George Osborne announced it from Switzerland it was a 10-year deal although I have to say in one year the head of Google earned 74 million which is more than half of what they paid the UK in tax over 10 over 10 years are right just we ought to see those papers so you know these are publicly quoted companies I think so I think access to papers would help now the other argument is should we should they should they go on why aren't the MPs pushing for that why aren't they demanding more power power well the other the argument then should you have should you get evidence on oath that's the argument really so that they can't obfuscate and the argument and that's the difficult argument because for me the argument against that is the moment you introduce oath and lawyers you make it a much more formal event and then I think you know one of the advantages of not having them on oath that is advantage you've got to really push out to get stuff out of them the obfuscation but you do have more of a conversation and you might get more out of the conversation than you would if you created a court of law so it's I don't know you know you it's the talent of you know can you get the stuff out of them can you get which is why the whistleblowers and the journalists matter so much so have you got I'm not answering it I'm not giving you a full answer because I haven't got it the difficulty is that the job of committee I mean it's not a court it shines a light and it certainly attracts attention but it must be frustration the frustration that the lady there is expressing this week I'm sure you won't have escaped you noticed that yesterday it was declared that canberries managed to pay no tax on 175 185 million pound profit earlier in the week facebook yet again said that they were paying seven and a half million pounds tax on a turnover of something at 1.2 billion less or it's less than half of 1% it's unbelievable and so I think most of us as citizens never mind as elected representatives are offended by that but surely it's then that's a sign of failure because you know for five years you were shining a light on this and you can you can ask companies to take a moral stance but in the end they have to follow the law so surely we need to change the law to make sure they pay their tax fairly yeah so um which is why I've said I you know I think we started this is what I I think what we achieved was shining a light we didn't achieve the changes we wanted them one of the important changes is the one last year about transparency in the in the tax havens but we have got to change the law and the difficulty is that these are all global companies so and we think companies work in sort of national jurisdictions they don't anymore none of these companies national jurisdictions are irrelevant so you do need to find a global solution and the problem with you know basically cadbury's or facebook or google any of these should have one set of accounts one set of accounts that are verified by one jurisdiction and then the profits are divided up according to uh where they make uh the taxes determined according to the profits which are divided up on could be on turnover it could be on the number of people they employ it could be on capital employed it could be all sorts of criteria to decide your divity up now to get there you need global consensus and that is absolute it'll take us a generation to get there so let's fight for that and keep fighting for that and one of the arguments we had from the tax havens were oh we'll be transparent when everybody else is transparent so we said we got to lead the way but on we could do more in the UK and I'll I'll give you about four I've got loads of ideas but I'll give you four one we could say that the footsie top 100 companies who are publicly quoted companies that we ought to see the workings of how they get to their deals with HMRC and I don't think the world would fall apart and I don't think they'd pull out of the UK because we're far too important important to a market for them and then if the world doesn't fall apart we might think of having greater transparency in wider tax affairs particularly of companies I can see the difference between companies and trusts and not individuals that's one thing you could do if that's completely and totally unpalatable what might be our next campaign in the all party group is we have a a joint committee of both part of both houses at the moment that oversees the security services so they meet in secret but they do get access to all the data so there is some sort of accountability built in there and they do produce reports so why shouldn't we have a joint committee of both houses of parliament that oversees HMRC HMRC is a non ministerial department the minister doesn't even oversee it so there is absolutely no accountability for them doing the sweetheart deals which we all think they do they deny they do but we none of us know the answer and I think that could be another way of trying to of trying to get them then the third thing there are all sorts of things I do I if somebody like I mean Facebook is a bad example but if some of these big companies some of these big IT companies who also pay less than one percent of their tax why aren't earth are we giving them public contracts you know what on earth are we doing using taxpayers money to give contracts to private companies who refuse to pay their fair share of tax on any common sense view of what that should be so I think we should use our power in public procurement to force a more responsible attitude and then my final idea because I don't want to go on is these companies don't dream these schemes up in them by themselves in the middle of the night there are a absolute army of very very very well paid um accountants lawyers banks who spend their time finding loopholes in the tax system but they're never held to account for doing so so even if 15 years down the line HMRC will find that a loophole hasn't worked film tax credit as some of you picked up on that with some of the big you know lots of greedy individuals bought into this film tax credit tax scam and they're now having to pay thousands back footballers PTD personalities everybody went in for that but the guy who invented the scheme is at the moment getting way scot free and I think we should make the advisers accountable for the schemes they devise and I think again that would very quickly smell out those ones that are really not pushing the law I mean if we could we are the lawmakers I'm a lawmaker don't you know and all these schemes all these avoidance we didn't set up a scheme that allowed that intended Google to avoid tax or Facebook or Cadbury or whoever we didn't do that so they're not meeting the intent of parliament but the very people who help us ride the technical rules then become the very people who advise these big companies or these very rich individuals how to avoid the rules how to avoid payment attacks right this number of hands up here gentlemen here first and then yes going back to barking and beating Nick Griffin he talks about connecting back with your lecture obviously now the rise of the far right is quite different and from trump to the disgusting attacks that we see increasing attacks in Edinburgh like the one in leaf seek temple what advice have you got from your campaign against Nick Griffin and and what advice have you got in general for anti fascists and the movement today anti fascists anti fascists well I don't think I mean I think what I think I think I spend my time proselytising about what we did because I think it works and I don't think so what what we've just done is literally everything I do as an mp is about does it help me to reconnect with local people it has to pass so I don't spend my time at Labour party meetings I don't spend my time with Labour party councillors I mean I get on really well it's not like a bad relationship with them it's not that my party is trying to deselect me or anything like that but I just it's not I am into how do you reconnect so you look at and I've got a string of ways in fact if you'll give me five minutes on this you know and I've picked them up from other people and we develop them so perhaps the best you know I do street meetings I do campaigns but I do coffee afternoons and let me describe those to you so in 2006 we had 12 bnb ganslers and if we hadn't took us from 2006 to 2010 to defeat extreme far far right and if we hadn't had that four years of work and we weren't continuing it like I know in 2000 it out of lost and it griffin and I'm absolutely know it my heart so it was the work we did that transformed it so I will ask a thousand people to come and cup of tea with me and they're people who voted so it's pretty targeted stuff so and they'll come probably 50 to 70 show but I've written to a thousand people and we'll sit round the table little tables and I'll offer them a cup of tea and a good chocolate biscuit and then I go table to table and I don't talk about your I don't talk about brexit I don't talk about universal credit or whatever's the latest thing that you know activists and MPs are worrying about I say what's bugging you and people's politics is very local people's politics start from the local so it will be local issues whether it's a bit of antisocial behaviour or a road scheme or whatever whatever whatever it will be those sort of things that um and it'll be national issues that hit them locally so for me immigration you know I moved from when I arrived it was a completely white borough and within a generation it's now become as multicultural as any part of London so it's been a real transformation that's one of the reasons that scapegoating immigrants became a very easy thing for the far right to do so they will talk and then we'll come together after I've done an hour and we'll talk again and I'm going to give you one example at the end but I'll just talk to you a process through and there's always a local issue that comes up so it'll be a wrap run or something so I'll talk about the local issue I'll talk about immigration I'll talk about Europe if that's the issue or I'll talk about benefits whatever it is then I go away and I write to a thousand again saying thank you for coming for my coffee afternoon these are the issues we raised so I'll write about immigration and I'll write about the road issue then I'll sort out the road which I can do and then I'll write a third time and say you all came you raised this issue we've sorted it I hope it's all right now let me know if it's not working so they've heard from me three times I've listened to what they've said I've acted where I can and I've communicated and that builds trust it's very simple it's not rocket science it's very simple but it can also be very powerful and I've got endless stories but I'll give you one so I go into this coffee afternoon in a really strong BMP area get up at the end and I can't remember the issue even I think it was there was this that it was a speed there was a road that cars were using a shortcut so I started talking about that and this woman gets up about 55 60 and she starts screaming at me Margaret you're not talking about what we want to talk about you've ruined this borough you've let all these asylum seekers in and they're jumping the queue in the hospitals and they're all on the benefits scrounge and you've ruined the borough and she sat down and then I do I have a spiel that I gave on migration it didn't work and I I'm in for a heavy afternoon and then a white guy got up in about late 50s and he said I've been on benefits for 25 years I'd love to work and I can't I run out of money at the end of every month don't call me a scrounger and he sat down and then an africarabian guy got up and he said I've been here for he was a a windrush guy I've been here for you know 30 40 years whatever I brought my children up here they've both been through university they um I pay my taxes I'm British and he sat down and then two BMP got up one said my son's just out of the army and you haven't given me hours you go to Lithuanians and I was able to challenge that another one got up and said I've been on the list and you're giving it all to these asylum seekers blah blah and at the end of the afternoon it was quite heavy I thought I'd better go up to the woman who'd started it all off so I went up to say are you all right and she said do you want to talk to you Margaret but I just want to go and apologize to those two guys and she went and apologize to the benefit and the acarabian and that's a sort of powerful exchange it's a powerful exchange that starts sort of it's very slow it's not very intellectually challenging but it is so powerful so it's sort of listening acting communicating and I never ever ever once gave into racism ever how could I I'm an immigrant community politics so the gentleman just here was there not it was there yes there that gentleman there and then in a second I've got one of those gentleman here first is just the microphone will come on if you speak I think okay okay going back to the public accounts committee we we know that our tax system has been developed over decades it's based essentially on profits the profits are elusive in themselves sorry the microphone's on now so try again now okay going back to the raising taxes our tax system is essentially based on profits and we talk about Google paying x million that's based on their profit based but profits are elusive they're elusive in themselves and they're elusive geographically what work is HMRC doing about looking at alternative ways of taxing these companies taxing them on transactions taxing them on clicks taxing them on deliveries within the UK as opposed to profit based if they won't come clean about their profits can we attack them in other ways that may in themselves work or force them to be more open and realistic about the profits you're right that all this stuff is about profit shifting that's what these global companies do they shift their profits and where they make them to a low tax or a no tax jurisdiction and actually I should have said it in answer to I think one of the other questions the government is trying to do a little bit and Europe is actually being much better than us so particularly on the internet based companies they we are now looking to do a tax on turnover I mean I think the ultimate solution has to be that one jurisdiction has to own that total company and then divvy up the profits according to some criteria but because that's going to take forever to get to get the consensus I think actually what this government as long as they do it I mean they talk with thought done you know they pretend to be tough and then they don't actually then they do the deals and they run away scared but I think this idea of doing a tax the Google tax hasn't worked the Google tax has rubbish it doesn't touch Google at all but doing a tax on the revenue that Amazon earn here or that Google earn here or that Facebook earn here must be the way through and I hope they've got the guts to bring that into legislation this time there's a couple more somebody right up there and I think handpack of red arrow gentlemen there one of the main reasons I've come here is to thank you for the dignity and the charm you exercised earlier this year in the antisemitism that is going through the Labour Party I have great admiration like you I also suffered from people who died in the Holocaust however my question is really you explained slightly about how you joined the Labour Party how you came to this country I was actually born here but only just isn't it a more dramatic event in your life that actually fix your political leanings I almost entirely disagree with you politically but it is because of something that specifically happened at a particular important age I was 17 at the time that have made my political beliefs which I've studied since but it was a dramatic event that did it I have the same sort of feeling with you that you also suffered from discrimination in your teenage years and that's what created your political thoughts I'm not asking if you were political answer I'm asking for a social answer thank you just hold them up for a second I'm just taking uh unpack or dirt yes the lady just behind you sorry sir during this week as I understand it the one of the regulators has recommended that the big four accountancy firms should not be permitted to continue both to audit and to advise the same class that seems to me very good in principle the practice may be more difficult because how are they then going to carve up the advisory work is it going to be simply amongst themselves again the big four because the professional services especially in accountancy sizes five to eight and a five to nine don't have the earnings of any one of the big four so unless there's a massive capacity build in those large but still smaller firms how is that going to work out so there's two questions one about your own personal beliefs and one about the accountancy firms um I mean I completely I think it's a really important bit of work that they've just embarked on and I hope again that the government's got the guts to see it through and there are jurisdictions and I'm sort of like I'm not even I'm sure somebody in the audience knows there are people there are other jurisdictions where it is separated so we've got models on which we can we can develop it for us so I hopefully we'll get there hope I mean the big firms when we looked at the big four earn two billion pounds a year from tax advice two in the UK in the UK it's a massive massive industry but it isn't just them it's just the lawyers and it is the banks the banks are very complicit in this you know I mean that was our HSBC inquiry it was extraordinary yet the banks they don't lend money to the little startup company that really could do with it and they shovel money into film tax the film tax scam that people or um you know helping people take their money out of Switzerland and put it into British Virgin Islands I mean it's outrageous so have I got the practical answer to you no we're looking at it ironically in my because it's we think it's something that's going to happen I think it's got to happen but I still think you're going to have to have offences so you make the advisor accountable for the advice they give whether it's within the accountancy form within a firm that does both accountants you know does the figure work and the advice or whether it's separated because the advice goes beyond that so I I think it's a good thing we're doing it I don't I think it's necessary but not sufficient and on was there a was there a I mean there wasn't a particular what made me I don't wasn't any my instinct was all always equality drives my beliefs that's all I can say to you equal and I have to say on the anti sentiment it's the weirdest thing in my life because I have never I never ever ever dreamt that I would that I would be involved in this issue because I've always been a very secular Jew I've never you know my my parents were integrated into into their communities in in both Germany and Austria you know one of the reasons it's so present for me is that two of my sisters are now going through the letters of my grandparents and my aunts and there's really really we've uncovered the letter my grandmother who was killed by the Nazis wrote nine days before she died she didn't leave Austria because she thought nobody would touch her because she thought she was too old she was in the mid 50s and she was killed not even in a concentration camp they killed her in one of those trenches outside the concentration camp and she wrote a letter to my uncle my mum's brother nine days before she died in which she says and that must have been a censored letter in which she says twice don't forget me completely and when you uncover that and you know and all this is horrible stuff is you're getting all this anti-semitic social abuse which I was it just that that's what drove me to it but the other thing to say is the reason I wasn't is I am secular I am not believer I've never followed Jewish traditions ironically it's just not been a part of my life I've I've had two husbands neither of whom were Jewish and I have always been a very very strong critic of successive Israeli governments for their treatment of Palestinians although I do believe it's important to have a state you know the state of Israel is there and I think we should support it but I don't in any way support any of the actions particularly the most recent absolutely outrageous act providing two sort of tears of citizenship for Jews and non-Jews within the state of Israel so it's all weird but I can't tolerate anti-semitism. Do you think that the I mean Jeremy Corbyn's now accepted and the party's accepted the international definition of anti-semitism? Does that draw a line under the matter? Ken Livingston's left the party? No I mean I think it's a you know I don't think we needed this right I think we could have not had the right if the idea that you know I again if I can I do this but you know having said I never got involved in in in in in this this aspect of politics you know identity politics really it is I never got involved in it and in fact down the years I have spoken at synagogues on a Sunday night sometimes on question time and I often get attacked there because of my criticisms of Israel so if anything I wasn't seen as a you know good Jew by the Jewish community but I started getting a lot of anti-semitic stuff on Twitter on email on letters I mean recently you know in the last two months we've sent eight letters eight letters to the police five of which are they classified as crimes so it's pretty horrid stuff and it's I think the reason it's emerged recently in the Labour it was always there I mean I said to you before we came here I used to deal with Ken Livingston in the 80s and I you know he was leader of the GLC I was leading for Labour in London and leader in Aslington and I used to come home from meetings and say to my husband I think he's been anti-semitic and I said I can't be he's such an anti-racist he can't be so I never did anything I thought was my paranoia not what he was actually saying and of course I was wrong and I think the reason it's emerged is that because the extreme left have now taken over control of the Labour Party it's allowed things to happen and the difficulty is that people cannot distinguish there's a sort of more thing coming together of being Jewish believing that there should be a state of Israel and being a supporter of the Netanyahu government and people just think if you're a Jew you must be a Netanyahu fan or you must be you know the the amount of stuff I get saying you're in the pay of Netanyahu or you know you're a Zionist bitch and that sort of stuff which is just not you know what I believe in and then the other thing that I think is a bit difficult with some of these far left groups is that there's a sort of feeling that Jews money you know and that is anti-semitism that the controllers of dirty capitalism and then there's also this thing about the Jews and American this anti-American feeling so all that gets morphed together and it's and and I'm afraid has it gone no I think thank God we've finally accepted the definition we should have done that you know what arrogance to think that we when we had this problem in the party should be the ones to challenge the definition if it's not good enough I think you can in the same way as I built consensus at the PAC build have people in the room together bring the Palestinians together with the mainstream Jewish communities talk about the definition we should all allow legitimate criticism of of the actions of any government including the Israeli government and amend their definition in a consensual way but no that's not what was wanted is it enough no we've not got to see what action they take about against far too many anti-semiates who are still active in the Labour Party who are still in positions of power one of the characters on the national executive committee of any of you listen and I urge you to do so not just what he said but how he said it at the NEC meeting when they discussed the adopting or not of the definition it was so vile in its in in in in the way he delivered it it was anti-semitic so I have to see action and I think saying sorry wouldn't be a bad start sorry for endorsing a mural which again I urge you to look at two seconds of looking at it is anti-semitic sorry for saying that Zionists haven't got a British sense of irony I think that wouldn't go down badly and start talking to the mainstream British Jewish organisations now typically I can see more hands going up just as we're running out of time I'm going to take one I'm sitting this lady here and then we're going to Margaret I'd just like to ask you what your view is of Donald Trump's citing of the new US Embassy in Jerusalem your view of it what do you think his motivation was and the citing of a new Jewish a new American Embassy in Jerusalem terrible absolutely terrible so what do you think it's terrible good what what do you think his motivation was in in doing it and all and I think it was the Jewish vote I think that was terrible because it makes the whole concept of a two country a solution that much more difficult to achieve I've been to Israel a few times I went to Israel as a student I went to work on the kibbutz for six months I thought I was in absolute heaven this was in this before the six day war so it's very very long time ago you know we toiled the soil until from three in the morning till 10 and then we sat around talking socialism around the swimming pool the rest of the day I thought it was bliss I've been back a few times since and it's a it's a very difficult society doesn't mean I don't think it should be there it's got to be there but it's over and I thought that was the most appalling move absolutely terrible terrible can I ask you just before we conclude I'm sorry to the gentleman there who's keen to get in but um first of all I'm going to say thank you because we've managed to get through the whole discussion and no one's used the word Brexit once it's just but if you just conclude in this point though um given everything that's going on at the moment in politics how come the Labour party's not 20 points ahead in the opinion pool I think you know where I stand on that day we should be we should be and I just wish for the sake of my my people you know my barking people who I just care passionately about I'm sure you all those of you here care passionately about but I do care I've represented them for 25 years so and I really love them to bits and it's terrible you know and I look at I mean whether I look at housing whether I look at the benefits and the way the universe of credit's coming in whether I look at jobs whether I look at education whether I look at immigration and all that stuff and I you know this hostile environment has impact everything I love it they're crying out crying out for a Labour Government that will really improve their life not a Labour party that looks inwards and simply thinks posturing is the way to achieve change Margaret, thank you very much. I should also say I took that question from Facebook there was another question about culture we won't go there but can I just say thank you very much and can I ask you ladies and gentlemen for joining us this afternoon I hope you will enjoy more of the festival there are several other guests today Tom Divine, Darren McArvy also known as Loki and lots of other activities today and tomorrow Professor Mary Beard tomorrow but can I ask you to join me in thanking Dame Margaret Hodge?