Sir Vince Cable, the Lib Dem leader, gave a speech this morning about regulating internet giants. This is one of the big issues of her time and many politicians have spoken out on this - for example, Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, last month, and Matthew Hancock, the culture secretary almost all the time - but Cable’s speech is by some distance the best I’ve read on the subject, mainly because he seems to have thought through the economics of the issue in more detail than any of his political peers.

One of my rules of politics is that the most interesting speeches are often those that attract no publicity and, true to form, Cable is not exactly leading the news bulletins. But, if you’re interested in this stuff, do read it in full - assuming the Lib Dems ever get round to putting it on their website. In the meantime, here are the main points.

• Cable called for the big internet companies to be broken up.

National government and, even more so, supranational bodies like the EU can and should look to break up enterprises where size is detrimental to the economic well-being of the country, its citizens and its capacity for innovation.

There is a case for splitting Amazon into three separate businesses – one offering cloud computing, one acting as a general retailer and one offering a third-party marketplace. Other examples would be Facebook being forced to divest itself of Instagram and WhatsApp as a condition for operating in the EU, creating two new social media networks. Divesting Google of YouTube would be another.

• He said the European commission was probably the only body with the clout to take on the internet giants. And he said the UK would have less influence in this area after Brexit.

What is striking is that the most effective compeition authority in the capitalist world- the European Commission- is probably the only body with the clout to take these decisions. The UK could quite obviously never do it alone.

As the world grows closer together, Britain commits an act of serious self-harm by doggedly setting itself apart from the power of shared sovereignty with our neighbours.

When it comes to regulating the growth industry of this century - data - Brexit will be like giving up shared influence over where, when and whether it rains, in return for absolute power over a tiny umbrella.

• He said the tech giants were now so powerful that they posed a threat to democracy.

While taxation remains stubbornly national, the tech companies’ business is inexorably global.

Since that business is largely concerned with the dissemination of information, even long-held conventional concerns about the arrogance of monopoly do not get to the heart of the growing worries about the data giants.

They have the capacity to filter the information we receive as consumers, turning the taps on and off to their own advantage. And they sell information about us to clients with not just business but political agendas. They can influence not just the goods and services we consume but how we vote and, indeed, what we think. Their algorithms can be used to disseminate information – true or false – to selected groups of people.

The power this gives Facebook, for example, over its two billion users is immense. And even if today’s owners of such platforms are benign and well-intentioned individuals, the systems they have created and now monopolise may threaten democracy as we know it.

• He said that unless the tech giants could be brought under control, Chinese-style nationalisation might start to look like an attractive alternative.

I am assuming that this audience would discount Chinese-style nationalisation – and control over the Internet. I do too. But the Chinese will argue that their model is superior to the Wild West system in our non-Communist world. Unless that Wild West is tamed the authoritarian model will grow in appeal.

• He compared the tech giants to the corporate monopolies of the early 20th century - while stressing the differences as well as the similarities.

Just as Standard Oil once cornered 85% of the refined oil market, today Google drives 89% of internet searches, 95% of young adults on the internet use a Facebook product, Amazon accounts for 75% of E-book sales, while Google and Apple combined provide 99% of mobile operating systems.

The challenge, is fundamentally different from the exercise of power by traditional monopolies or oligopolies – by oil majors, railway barons, electricity generators, diamond miners, steel cartels, auto and aerospace giants, and hardware and software manufacturers.

All of these were able to exercise control over pricing and earn profits beyond what was obtainable in competitive markets. Most obviously these involved finite resources, whereas the supply of data is potentially infinite.

And the new internet giants mostly provide a ‘free’ service to the public, albeit paid for indirectly by the sale of advertising space and the bundling and sale to commercial clients of ‘free’ user data. Whatever these companies do, they are not price ‘gouging’ – since their headline price is always ‘zero’. It is the forces underlying this apparently ‘free’ bounty that politicians must address.

• He explained why internet companies had progressed “from heroes to villains” very quickly.

The internet giants have progressed from heroes to villains very quickly for several overlapping reasons.

The first is that they have been used as a conduit for content which society regards as unacceptable: the promotion of terrorism, depictions of child sex abuse, and hate speech. Google (and YouTube, part of its empire) and Facebook in particular stand accused of complicity or incompetence.

The second reason is that one particular type of content – online news – is no longer simply competing with established news providers but has been used systematically – by state and non-state actors – to spread false information and to corrupt democratic elections, as in the USA in 2016 and the ‘Brexit’ referendum.

The inability or unwillingness of digital platforms, Facebook in particular, to curb the misuse of the data it collects has led to its being seen as the problem rather than the solution.

Third, the new internet giants operate in a largely borderless world where their main source of profit is intangible intellectual property rather than measurable ‘things’. This is difficult to track and quantify and has turned national tax authorities into largely powerless bystanders.

Fourth, as I’m sure many of you here in the audience today can attest to, there are real concerns that while the tech giants may have begun as innovative upstarts, they have by virtue of their sheer size become a barrier rather than a boon to entrepreneurship.

• He called for a new watchdog to regulate internet content.

I believe there is a case for setting up an independent standards body to act as watchdog for the digital platforms in moderating content. Platforms above a certain size would be compelled to join.

This body would uphold common policies governing the identification, monitoring and deletion of content which offended an ‘offline criminality test’. That is where statements made online would breach incitement or harassment laws if made offline, the companies should act. The body could be funded by Government directly or by the tech platforms themselves through a compulsory levy, as in the case of the Pension Protection Fund.

He also said the regulators should have access to the algorithms used by data companies.

• He floated the idea of ensuring that consumers are paid when their data is used.

We should also look carefully at the fundamental economic issue of whether any company which uses data from individuals to make money should pay the owner of that data for its use. A group of economists from Microsoft and the Universities of Columbia and Stanford have convincingly argued that data should be seen as a form of labour, and more specifically, regarded solely as the property of those that generate it, unless they agree to sell it.

Looked at in another way, it is astounding that people have been so happy to give up something so valuable without charge. If individuals were paid every time their data is used anywhere in the world, in a mirror of the worldwide copyright structure, there would be a mechanism for redistributing the profits of those with most to gain from technological advances, into the pockets of those who are most likely, in the short term at least, to lose.

Arlene Foster, the DUP leader, has said the ill-fated renewable heat Iincentive (RHI) scheme was not a “personal priority” for her and she wishes she had asked more questions about it. As the Press Association reports, Northern Ireland’s former first minister and former enterprise minister told the public inquiry into Stormont’s botched green energy scheme that she had a “false sense of security” due to the scheme “working” in Great Britain. She also said she was “surprised” that her special adviser, Dr Andrew Crawford, had shared government documents about the scheme with his farmer cousin, and defended the part-time role he currently has with the party.

Foster was in charge of the planning of the scheme in 2012 before a series of fatal design flaws in the green subsidy project exposed Stormont to a huge overspend, paying out more than it cost to buy wood fuel. She told the inquiry: “It’s very difficult for me to go rooting about in a department to find out what isn’t being brought up to me.”

Asked whether she felt she should have done more “rooting around”, Foster said:

Through hindsight, of course one wishes that I had asked more questions in relation to the renewable heat incentive scheme.

But putting myself back at that period of time, as I think I’ve indicated on a number of occasions, it wasn’t a personal priority of mine within the department.

I had other personal priorities. It doesn’t mean I wasn’t interested - before somebody writes that tomorrow.

More on Michael Gove and whether or not the UK is the most immigration-friendly country in the UK - if you are still interested.

Gove’s office has finally got back to me. I quoted some figures earlier (see 11.18am) which broadly back up Gove’s claim. His adviser, however, has directed me to another chart, in this Ipsos MORI report (pdf) looking at international attitudes to immigration. The UK comes out better than any of the other EU countries in the table - although there are only eight other EU countries in the table, meaning that 19 are not included.

The table lists countries according to how people respond to a question about whether immigration has had a positive effect on their economy. Saudi Arabia comes top, which highlights how data like this can be potentially misleading. Saudi Arabians may feel very positive about the contribution made to their economy by immigrant labour, but most people would not view the country as a beacon of tolerance and liberalism.

And that takes us to the crux of the problem: when Gove said the UK was “the most immigration-friendly country in the EU”, what did he mean?

As argued earlier, if Gove is referring to immigration-friendly neighbours, then his argument more or less stands up (see 11.18am) - unless the migrants happen to have the misfortune of ending up living next to Nigel Farage.

But if Gove was referring to an immigration-friendly government, then his claim looks a lot more questionable. The Eurobarometer report (pdf) quoted earlier also includes figures on whether people in EU countries think there government is doing enough to foster the integration of immigrants into society. On this measure, the UK comes bottom.

If you judge the UK government by asylum applications (a very narrow measure of immigration, but an important one), it also looks very unwelcoming by EU standards.

And if you were to judge the UK by the immigration-friendliness of its press, then, again, the UK’s record is dire. Here is another chart from the Eurobarometer report (pdf). It shows how people in EU countries feel immigrants are presented in the media. The UK is the country where fewest people think they are portrayed objectively.

Senior backbenchers are going to force a Commons vote on staying in the customs union next week.

It will be a vote on a backbench motion, which means that it will not be binding on the government and - if precedent is anything to go by - Tory MPs will just be encouraged to take the afternoon off instead of voting in the the division.

But the debate will allow pro-Europeans in the Commons to mount a show of strength. And, crucially, it will establish whether there are seven or more Tories willing to vote for staying in the customs union - enough to defeat the government customs union amendments to legislation get put to a vote later in the spring.

The motion has been tabled by 10 select committee chairs. Two of them, Labour’s Yvette Cooper and the Conservative Nicky Morgan, have written a joint blog for HuffPost explaining why they back staying in the customs union. They write:

With just six months to go before the Brexit deal needs to be concluded, we are running out of time for Parliament to help to shape the negotiations.

Yet many of our backbench committees have forensically gathered evidence on different Brexit options and the practical implications.

That is why committee chairs at the Liaison Committee – including those who voted leave and who voted remain, supporters and opponents of a customs union – concluded that backbench MPs should get the chance of an early constructive debate and vote on this crucial issue, not bound by the party whips, but informed by committee evidence instead.

As two of those chairs, we both believe the case for a customs union is overwhelming - for the sake of British manufacturing, international trade, smooth borders and Northern Ireland peace.

Cooper has posted a text of the motion on Twitter.

Here is the key passage.

[This House] therefore calls on the government to include as an objective in negotiations on the future relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union the establishment of an effective customs union between the two territories.

This goes further than the customs union amendment passed by the House of Lords last night, which just urged the government to explore the option of staying in the customs union in the Brexit talks. (That amendment seemed to leave open the possibility of the government coming back and saying, having looked at it, it concluded customs union membership was a bad idea.) This motion doesn’t say the UK would definitely remain in the customs union; it just sets that as an objective.

This is very similar to the wording of amendments to the trade bill and to the customs bill (officially known as the taxation [cross-border trade] bill) which have been tabled by the Conservative MP Anna Soubry. These are the votes the government is worried about losing. Next Thursday will show us how likely that prospect is.

Nick Timothy, who worked as Theresa May’s policy adviser when she was home secretary and then in Number 10 until after the general election, has used his Telegraph column (paywall) to write about the Windrush generation crisis and to defend (mostly) May’s record. Here are the key points.

• Timothy said the Home Office had been “slow” to realise there was a systemic problem facing Windrush generation migrants. He said:

In the case of the Windrush generation – the people who came to Britain between 1948 and 1971 on their parents’ passports – the department has been slow to realise there was a systemic problem, rather than a handful of tough cases.

This reads like a mild dig at Amber Rudd, who replaced May as home secretary in 2016.

• He defended the policy of creating a hostile environment for illegal immigrants. he said:

So ministers are right to make Britain a harder country to live in for people who are here illegally. In recent years, they have made it more difficult for illegal immigrants to rent property, get a job, claim benefits and obtain bank accounts and driving licences. Even sceptical studies find that this increases the number leaving the country voluntarily: ministers should not reverse the policy, but extend it to include other services.

• He said the policy of creating a hostile environment for illegal immigrants started under Labour. He said:

Labour want to blame Tory “callousness”.The trouble with this explanation is that the approach began under Labour home secretaries. In 2007, John Reid said “living and working here illegally” should become “ever more uncomfortable and constrained”. Under Alan Johnson, the Border Agency said it would “make the UK a hostile environment” for illegal immigrants.

• He said May opposed the decision to deploy “go home” advertising plans encouraging illegal immigrants to leave the country when she was home secretary.

As home secretary, Theresa May was criticised for the notorious “go home or face arrest” vans that were deployed in 2013. In fact, she blocked the proposal, but it was revived and approved in a communications plan while she was on holiday. She killed off the scheme later that year, but by then the damage had been done.

My colleague Heather Stewart previewed the Labour housing announcement overnight. Here is the text of Jeremy Corbyn’s speech at the launch this morning. Here is a Guardian article about the plans by John Healey, Labour’s housing spokesman. And here are the main points from Corbyn’s speech.

• Corbyn said Labour wanted councils to again become major builders of new homes. Fifty years ago they were responsible for nearly half of all new housing completions, he said. Now it is just 2%.

Over the coming months we will go even further, throwing everything we can into building council capacity so that once again they can build on the scale that’s needed.

It will mean a new era of social housing, in which councils are once again the major deliverers of social and genuinely affordable housing and set the benchmark for the highest size and environmental standards.

When the post-war Labour government built hundreds of thousands of council houses in a single term in office, they transformed the lives of millions of people.

People emerged from six years of brutal war to be lifted out of over-crowded and unhygienic slums into high quality new homes and introduced to hitherto unknown luxuries such as indoor toilets and their own gardens.

Setting new benchmarks in size and energy efficiency, something that old council stock still does to this day council housing was not a last resort but a place where people were proud to live.

Today’s challenges are different but the ambition needed is the same.

• He said Labour’s housing plans involved “two simple steps”.

Today, Labour set out our plan to turn this around and it involves two simple steps: build enough housing and make sure that housing is affordable to those who need it.

That’s why we have promised today that the next Labour government will deliver one million genuinely affordable homes over ten years, the majority of which will be for social rent.

• He said relying on the private sector to build more homes did not work.

Housebuilding has been in steady decline for decades, from over 350,000 a year at the beginning of the 1970s to well below 200,000 today. The only times we have built enough affordable housing is when councils have stepped up.

We know by now that we cannot rely on arms-length incentives for private housebuilders, building for profit to solve the crisis.

As they themselves openly acknowledge, it is simply not profitable for them to build houses for the less well-off. We need to do it ourselves.

• He said a key problem was that houses were now seen as investments, not homes.

At the heart of the housing crisis we face today, is that housing has become a means of speculation for a wealthy few, leaving many unable to access a decent, secure home.

As a country, we have lost the principle that a decent home is not a privilege for the few but a right owed to all, regardless of income. Let today mark a turning point, from which we start to get it back.

The only way to do it is through social housing. And that’s what a Labour government will deliver.

Sunder Katwala, who runs the British Future thinktank, which focuses on migration and identity, says Michael Gove was right to say that British attitudes towards immigration have become more tolerant since the referendum.

On his Twitter feed Katwala flags up various bits of research that back up this view.

Rob Ford, an academic specialising in this topic, looks at the evidence in this Medium article. He cites various sets of data, but the key figures are probably the ones in this chart.

Ford explains:

Here’s the impacts data. This comes from the British Election Study panel fielded by YouGov on a regular basis to a very large representative sample of respondents. The panel regularly asks people whether they think immigration is good or bad for the economy, and whether they think it enriches or undermines cultural life.

There is a big, sustained jump in the share of positive responses on both of these measures after the Brexit vote (shown by the red dashed line). Immigration optimists now significantly outnumber pessimists on the economic measure, while on the cultural measure optimists and pessimists are now balanced. Before Brexit, pessimists were the larger group on both measures.

And he questions why this might be.

Why has this change happened? Immigration policy hasn’t changed, and while migration levels have dropped somewhat, they remain high by historical standards and a long way above the government’s “tens of thousands” net migration target. The vote to leave the EU didn’t change anything on its own. Yet voters across the political spectrum seem to have taken it as a cue to worry about immigration less, and appreciate it more. Why?

Michael Gove had an answer on Today - although, as I pointed out earlier, hate crime figures tell a different story. (See 10.19am.)

Katwala also refers to this Ipsos MORI report (pdf) from last year looking at attitudes to immigration. It includes this chart showing how attitudes have become more positive since the referendum.

When Gove said on Today that the UK was now the most immigration-friendly country in the EU, he seemed to be referring to this Eurobarometer study published recently. The full report (pdf) runs to 271 pages, and it is not entirely clear on what metric Gove thinks the UK comes out top (I’ve tried his office, but they have not got back to me), but the UK is third best out of the 28 EU countries on the measure of whether people are happy having an immigrant as a neighbour - which is close enough to justify Gove’s claim.

Here is the chart from page 41.

And this is what the report says about these findings.

Among those who feel totally comfortable [having an immigrant as a neighbour], the highest proportions are found in Sweden (82%) and the Netherlands (76%), followed by the United Kingdom (72%) and Ireland (70%). In 11 countries, less than three in ten (30%) give this answer, with the lowest proportion found in Hungary (9%), and less than a fifth giving this answer in Bulgaria (14%) and the Czech Republic (16%).

UPDATE: See my post at 1.50pm for more on how Gove’s claim can and cannot be justified.

Here is a full summary of the main points from Michael Gove’s interview with Today.

• Gove, the environment secretary, said Brexit had helped to make the UK most immigration-friendly country in the EU. (See 9.16am.)

• He said the government’s approach to immigration was positive, welcoming and liberal. Asked what the government’s attitude to immigration was, he replied:

Positive, welcoming, liberal, forward-looking.

That is not the way the views of Conservative ministers on immigration have always been characterised. To cite just two example: Theresa May’s speech to the 2015 Conservative party conference, proposing “a tough new plan for asylum”, was roundly condemned as hostile and anti-immigrant. And Gove himself was accused of “stoking the fires of prejudice” when he was running Vote Leave campaign and it put alarmist claims about Turkish criminals and the threat they would pose to the UK if Turkey joined the EU at the centre of its campaign.

• He rejected claims that the Brexit voted had worsened communal relations. He said:

The striking thing is that, however people want to characterise the Brexit vote, and I do respect the reasons why people were so passionately attached to remaining within the European Union, the characterisation of it as somehow having led to worse communal relations or a more hostile attitude to migration - that just isn’t borne out by the facts.

The British people have a robust and pragmatic and liberal approach. They want to welcome people here who want to work. They want to make sure that people who come here contribute fully. But they also want to temper that with compassion towards those who are fleeing persecution.

The striking thing is that Britain, like other countries - Canada, Australia - which have control of their borders, is a country which, because we have control, is capable therefore of exercising generosity.

However, an official Home Office report says the opposite. A statistical bulletin published last year called Hate Crime, England and Wales, 2016/17 (pdf) said:

The EU referendum campaign began on Friday 15 April 2016, with the result announced on Friday 24 June, the day after the referendum. Around this time there was a clear spike in hate crime. As stated in the introduction, offences with a xenophobic element (such as graffiti targeting certain nationalities) can be recorded as race hate crimes by the police. Anecdotal evidence suggests that there was an increase in these types of offences around the time of the EU referendum.

The increase in hate crime can be seen by using racially or religiously aggravated offence data. As mentioned in the Introduction, the police can record offences as being racially or religiously aggravated. While not covering all hate crime offences, these offences make up over 70 per cent of race and religion hate crime ...

There was an increase in these offences from April 2016, which reached a peak in July 2016. The number of aggravated offences recorded then declined in August 2016, but remained at a higher level than prior to the EU Referendum. These increases fit the widely reported pattern of an increase in hate crime following the EU referendum, with the level of these offences being 44 per cent higher in July 2016 compared with the previous July.

• He rejected the suggestion that the government wanted to create a “hostile environment” for immigrants. The phrase was used to describe a policy directed at illegal immigration, but Gove was just asked about the term generally. He replied:

That phrase has been paraded around as though it were somehow emblematic of Britain. It’s not ...

My view is that what is emblematic of Britain is the welcome that we gave the Windrush generation, the welcome that we gave the people fleeing Idi Amin in the 1970s, the welcome that we continue to give those fleeing persecution.

And also the fact that now, outside the European Union, we can have a truly colour-blind migration policy that, if the British people want to, treats people from the Bahamas in the same way we treat people from Bulgaria.

• He said that he never heard anyone describe immigration policy in the coalition government as reminiscent of Nazi Germany. Lord Kerslake, the former head of the civil service, said this was what some ministers thought of the 2014 Immigration Act. But when this was put to Gove, he replied:

I have never heard anyone make that comparison before Lord Kerslake did. It is not for me to criticise a distinguished former public servant like Lord Kerslake, but I respectfully disagree.

• Gove praised the way Amber Rudd, the home secretary, was dealing with the Windrush generation crisis. He said:

I think Amber Rudd has taken a grip of this issue. I think she has done exceptionally well to focus Home Office attention on it. I think the gracious way in which she apologised to those affected was a model of how a politician should react to a situation like this.

• He said the government would act by the end of the year to ban the sale of disposable plastic products in England.

We are perfectly clear that we are going to ban these plastic items. The purpose of this consultation is to make sure that when we do bring in that ban - and we want to bring it in at pace - that we have it properly.

Good morning. Theresa May is attending the formal opening of the Commonwealth heads of government meeting today. But the controversy about the government’s treatment of Windrush generation immigrants continues to dominate the headlines. Here are the latest overnight developments.

• Lord Kerslake, the former head of the civil service, told Newsnight last night that some coalition ministers saw the 2014 Immigration Act as “almost reminiscent of Nazi Germany” in the way that it set out to create a hostile environment for immigrants. He told the programme:

This was a very contested piece of legislation across government departments ... There were some how saw it - I shan’t name them - as almost reminiscent of Nazi Germany and the way it’s working ... Some ministers were deeply unhappy.

Kerslake was probably referring predominantly to Lib Dem ministers.

The peer, who now advises the Labour party, also called for an investigation into who authorised the destruction of the Windrush landing cards.

• Michael Gove, the environment secretary, said Brexit had helped to make the UK most immigration-friendly country in the EU. He said a survey earlier this year showed that Britain was the most pro-immigration country in the EU. And he argued that the Brexit vote had contributed to this, saying people were more comfortable with immigration knowing they could now control it. In an interview on the Today programme he said:

Something very striking was reported by the European Union, actually, a little earlier this year, which is that of all the countries in the EU, Britain is the country with the warmest attitude to migration from outside the EU. We’re the most immigration-friendly country in the EU ...

In the aftermath of the Brexit vote, there were all sorts of people who said that it was motivated by darker feelings. The truth is that the Brexit vote allowed the British people to say ‘Look, we’ve taken back control, we can now determine what migration policy is in our interests and we can combine both what’s in our economic interests with proper humanity.’ And the really striking thing now is that Britain has the most liberal attitude towards migration of any European country. And that follows the Brexit vote.

And I think the characterisation of this country and its people by some as somehow - all sorts of language has been used that I won’t dignify by repeating - I think that is wrong, and I think we can see in the national conversation that we have had about the Windrush generation that people are so glad that this country has had a tradition of welcoming people from abroad.

• Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, has taken a swipe at another aspect of Theresa May’s record as home secretary by talking up the importance of stop and search. In an interview with the Daily Telegraph (paywall) Johnson did not directly criticise the action May took as home secretary to reduce stop and search. But he implicitly questioned its impact.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.15am: John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, gives a speech at a Labour half-day conference on the future of the finance sector.

10am: Jeremy Corbyn speaks at the launch of a Labour green paper on housing. As my colleague Heather Stewart reports, he will say that a Labour government would rip up the government’s definition of affordable housing and instead bring in a measure linked to people’s incomes.

11am: Sir Vince Cable, the Lib Dem leader, gives a speech on “taming the tech titans”.

And the Queen will formally open the Commonwealth heads of government meeting, where Theresa May has announced that cotton buds, plastic drinking straws and other single-use plastics could be banned from sale in England next year in the next phase of the campaign to try to halt the pollution of the world’s rivers and oceans.

As usual, I will be covering breaking political news as it happens, as well as bringing you the best reaction, comment and analysis from the web. I plan to post a summary at lunchtime and another at the end of the day.

You can read all today’s Guardian politics stories here.

Here is the Politico Europe round-up of this morning’s political news from Jack Blanchard. And here is the PoliticsHome list of today’ top 10 must reads.

If you want to follow me or contact me on Twitter, I’m on @AndrewSparrow.

I try to monitor the comments BTL but normally I find it impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, do include “Andrew” in it somewhere and I’m more likely to find it. I do try to answer direct questions, although sometimes I miss them or don’t have time.

If you want to attract my attention quickly, it is probably better to use Twitter.