Mr Neil Hamilton: Diolch, Lywydd. I’m most grateful to you for your statement.
Mr Neil Hamilton: 2. Will the Minister provide an update on the challenges facing the newly built Tenby Church in Wales Primary School? OAQ(5)0058(EDU)
Mr Neil Hamilton: I’m grateful to the Cabinet Secretary for that response. Mr Palmer, the headteacher, also said, in addition to welcoming the state-of-the-art school that he heads, that he is trying to build on a blank canvas and that there are insufficient funds for outdoor play equipment and for furniture, that several rooms remain unfurnished, including the meeting room, IT suite, foyer and additional...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Since yesterday, I’ve had the advantage of reading the Government’s printed case, which will be presented to the Supreme Court next week. Rather bizarrely, it seems to ignore the one crucial and fundamental point in this whole saga, which is that the Government seeks to trigger article 50 consequent upon a decision of the whole British people in a referendum. In all the long history of...
Mr Neil Hamilton: I’m very pleased to take part in this debate and I commend Plaid Cymru for bringing this motion before the Assembly. Adam Price can always be relied upon to be an attractive face of his party—[Laughter.]—and is a fund of good and interesting ideas. And there are some of them in this motion. [Interruption.] You want me to withdraw that remark. [Laughter.] Edmund Burke said that ‘To tax...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Diolch yn fawr iawn, Lywydd. Since last Tuesday, I’ve had the advantage of reading the Government’s printed case in the Supreme Court case, which is being heard today. And apart from what it says at the beginning that the result of the referendum to leave the EU should be respected, it completely ignores the fact that the British people, by majority, gave the Government a mandate to...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Well, the First Minister is misinformed, because I am a member of the Bar, as is he. But that’s not the first time that the First Minister has displayed his ignorance in this Chamber. [Interruption.] But in the last 10 years, the Parliament at Westminster—[Interruption.] The Parliament at Westminster—
Mr Neil Hamilton: In the last 10 years, the Parliament at Westminster has passed two very important Acts to restrict the Government’s powers in respect of the prerogative in relation to European Union legislation—the 2008 European Union (Amendment) Act, and the 2011 European Union Act, which provides, in certain circumstances, that the Government should not take any decisions without a resolution or an Act...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Yes, I entirely agree. But the Welsh Government has intervened in this Supreme Court case in order to attempt to frustrate the wishes of the British people as freely expressed in a referendum. Otherwise, there would be no point in intervening in the case in the first place. The First Minister has said many times that Labour will respect the result of the referendum, and therefore Labour MPs...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Will the First Minister agree with me that leaving the European Union gives us a great opportunity in Wales to fashion agricultural policy according to our own needs? UKIP will play its full part in helping the Welsh Government to develop such a policy, which makes it all the more incomprehensible that the Government should be pursuing the line in the Supreme Court today that the powers of...
Mr Neil Hamilton: I totally agree with what Simon Thomas said, but from a totally different platform, of course, when I ask you: what was the point of this statement today? Was there anything new in it at all? Was there anything that had not been announced previously? It seems to me a perfect example of what Rhun ap Iorwerth was complaining about only this week: time taken up in this Assembly for endless...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Can I acknowledge the interest the Cabinet Secretary is taking in this project, and the assistance he’s given to bringing it to the stage where it’s at now, and to re-emphasise the point, which Lynne Neagle made, that there is support right across this Chamber—certainly includes my own party—for this project? Will he also acknowledge that the guarantee that is being sought is a...
Mr Neil Hamilton: I appreciate the optimistic tone of the previous speech. We can support the Conservative motion today, but I want to concentrate, actually, upon the Labour amendments, in particular amendment 3, because this is a mantra that we hear in many debates in this place, about this so-called damaging policy of austerity. Well, what is austerity in current circumstances? The dictionary defines the...
Mr Neil Hamilton: That’s one of the reasons for UKIP’s relative success, I would say, actually—the realisation of that. It’s certainly one of the reasons, I think, why Donald Trump is going to be the next President of the United States—the feeling of people who’ve been left behind by globalisation—and that’s not something that is going to be very easy to deal with. But I want to just...
Mr Neil Hamilton: This isn’t a miraculous realisation on my part. Many other Governments have found themselves in a position where they had no choice but to impose austerity. I’m old enough to remember the Labour Government in the 1970s, and I remember Jim Callaghan, the former Member for Cardiff South East, who, making a speech at a Labour Party conference in 1976, said, ‘We used to think that you could...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Diolch yn fawr iawn, Lywydd. Well, this has been one of those agreeable occasions where everybody is broadly in agreement, although I have known many such occasions in the past where everybody has been wrong. But I don’t think that this is likely to be one of them. I’m grateful for the support that has been offered by the Conservative Party and by Plaid Cymru. I can say that we, for our...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Diolch, Lywydd. At the end of the year, it’s a time when we can look back on the last 12 months on what we’ve achieved, or not, as the case may be. And I wonder if the First Minister can, in all candour, tell us today what he thinks the greatest failure of his Government has been. Would it be in schools, where the PISA results have shown that Wales is ranked worst in the UK yet again;...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Well, I’m grateful for the compliment, even though it’s only implied. But, as regards education, the PISA report says that 21 per cent of students at the age of 15 can’t read well enough to participate effectively and productively in life, that 23 per cent can’t solve problems routinely faced by adults in their daily lives because they can’t count, and this is the fourth set of PISA...
Mr Neil Hamilton: We’ll return to this no doubt in due course. But without wishing to spoil the genial asperity of our weekly exchanges, can I compliment him on the style and finesse, the skill and dexterity with which he occasionally answers my questions and more often swerves around them? After many years in a similar position in politics, he compares very well with all the opponents that I’ve had across...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Diolch, Lywydd. I think farmers and, indeed, small businesses in general will be very disappointed by the intransigent response that the environment secretary gave to Paul Davies’s question earlier on. The National Farmers Union has done a survey of farmers and the impact that the introduction of nitrate vulnerable zones would have upon them and their industry, and they found that 73 per...
