Mr Neil Hamilton: Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. As a strong and reasonably stable Member of this Assembly, I’m delighted to take part in this debate. It was fair enough for the leader of the Welsh Conservatives to focus upon the Labour Party’s proposal to increase borrowing by £500 billion. Of course, the shadow Chancellor is an avowed Marxist, but I think this policy owes more to Groucho than to...
Mr Neil Hamilton: I’m delighted to hear that, but whether that means that the First Minister accepts that raising rates doesn’t necessarily lead to increasing revenue offers Wales a great opportunity to make our country into a kind of tax haven within the United Kingdom, which would help us to reverse the economic trends of many, many decades in Wales and give us a significant advantage, in the same way as...
Mr Neil Hamilton: So, am I to take it from that response that it is now the policy of the Welsh Government, when tax powers are devolved to us in this Assembly, to follow the Labour Party’s manifesto nationally of increase top rates of tax in Wales, because the evidence from the last time that this happened in 2013 was that reducing the tax rate from 50p to the current 45p actually led to an enormous...
Mr Neil Hamilton: The First Minister will know that the Cabinet Secretary for Education’s party is standing in this Westminster election on a policy of increasing income tax for people earning as low as £11,000 a year, and the Labour Party nationally is apparently going to stand on a policy of increasing the top rate of income tax from 45p to 50p. Does he agree with the Shadow Chancellor that we have a...
Mr Neil Hamilton: I personally have no objection to fracking in principle. It is actually a low-carbon way of producing power. But, of course, there are fears in local communities about the disruption caused, and those must be taken fully into account, in the same way as we are saying in this motion about the objections of people in communities like Manmoel—an area that I know, because, in my very early...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Well, I would rather not, because I want to develop this argument on another point, and there will be plenty of other opportunities, I’m sure, for us to spar on this point. But, regardless of what one believes is happening in climate change, our argument is that the costs imposed by the Climate Change Act are disproportionately great for this country to bear in the context of what’s...
Mr Neil Hamilton: I’m pleased to shed a little light on things that have been said already in this debate today. I didn’t want this debate to be turned into an argument about global warming in itself. It was supposed to be about how you respond to that, regardless of what you believe is happening in the wider world. But I will say this in response to something that Simon Thomas said earlier on: if we just...
Mr Neil Hamilton: The point I was making to the First Minister was that, as a result of raising the rate of capital gains tax, the revenue raised from the tax fell, not increased. So, consequently, the tax base was reduced because people can postpone realising capital gains. In fact, the people most likely to want to realise capital gains are pensioners who can’t afford to live on their incomes. So, this is...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Well, the First Minister is obviously not aware of what happened last time capital gains tax was increased, in 2010. Because, in 2010, the rate of capital gains tax was raised from 18 per cent to 28 per cent. And, whereas, before 23 June 2010, it raised £8.23 billion a year, after 23 June 2010, it raised £3.3 billion a year. So, actually, there was a cut in the revenue of capital gains tax...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. Diane Abbott, the shadow Home Secretary, has announced that Labour plans to recruit another 10,000 police officers in England and Wales, which would mean an extra nearly 1,000 in Wales. But, she was rather sketchy about the cost of this proposal, first of all announcing that it was going to cost £300,000, which would be an average salary of £30 for a policeman....
Mr Neil Hamilton: Perhaps unrelated to the consultation that is going on at the moment, can I draw attention to a problem with the testing regime as it is at the minute? A strict liability regime is applied to the testing of cattle. If you fail to test within the 60-day window, then you automatically are fined, in effect. But very often we find cases—it’s possible that the leader of the house may have had...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Indeed. I was wondering though whether we could have any idea of how long the Cabinet Secretary is likely to take before she’s able to announce what proposals the Government might have. There are a number of relatively uncontroversial things that it would be helpful to have some advance indication on. For example, many farmers are worried that, whatever testing regime emerges from this, it...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Thank you, Llywydd. I’m sure the leader of the house is aware that the biggest headache for many farmers in Wales at the minute is the vexed issue of bovine TB. This is a vitally important issue in the context of the Brexit negotiations because it’s possible that the EU might use the TB situation in Wales as some kind of justification for banning exports of beef and other meats. I wonder...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Well, that assumes rationality on the part of the European Union negotiators. I very much hope that we will not have. I have to say that the evidence over the last week is not encouraging, with Chancellor Merkel wanting to detach negotiations on trade from other issues that divide us, which is not sensible given we have only a two-year timeframe within which to reach a trade deal. The...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Yes, sure.
Mr Neil Hamilton: Diolch, Llywydd. I formally move the amendments down in my name. There is little that one could disagree with in what the First Minister has just said. Clearly, we are going to be in a very different world administratively and legislatively outside the EU than within it, and I will say this right at the outset: that there must be no going back on the devolution settlement, and the powers...
Mr Neil Hamilton: The First Minister will be aware of the limitations on paediatric care at Withybush hospital and I have a particularly distressing constituency case that has arisen, where a child was taken out of hours to Withybush in June 2016, in pain that was diagnosed wrongly as a urine infection, treatable by antibiotics. Next morning, the child was taken to A&E with something that was suspected to be...
Mr Neil Hamilton: I agree with the First Minister. He’s absolutely right: the border is of critical importance to Gibraltar. But it’s not as though we have no bargaining chips in our hand in this respect. If indeed it is the case that Spain has put its claim to Gibraltar’s sovereignty on ice and is prepared to live with Gibraltar, that’s well and good. But the idea that the European Commission suddenly...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Well, it’s certainly true that it’s in the interests of both countries—Spain and Gibraltar—for that border to remain open because 40 per cent of the jobs in Gibraltar are filled by people who live in Spain. Given that the rate of unemployment in Andalusia is 30 per cent and in Gibraltar is 1 per cent then it’s massively in Spain’s interest to respect the existing status of...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. It's inevitable, I suppose, a certain amount of posturing takes place at the beginning of any negotiation and the current Brexit negotiations with the EU is no exception to that. The First Minister wants to play a direct role in these negotiations and there is, in fact, a useful role that he can play. He could write to Chancellor Merkel, for example, to say it’s a...
