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: Yes, sure.
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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: It is certainly true that it’s taking a long time to clear the deficit, and the current Chancellor has just extended the date at which he claims we will return to surplus to 2025, or possibly beyond, so I don’t have a great deal of confidence in Conservative chancellors in that frame of mind to live up to their rhetoric. But I have to say that Plaid Cymru offers no answer to this problem...
Mr Neil Hamilton: I agree, of course, obviously, that if a capital project is commercially viable, then it is worth undertaking. The trouble with so many Government capital projects is that they’re not. We’ve seen so many fiascos in so many areas that I don’t think that that’s going to be a very credible policy for spending £500 billion. As a result of leaving the European Union, we shall, of course,...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit Secretary, was in Wales a few days ago and I see from a Welsh Labour press release that he said that Conservative Brexit negotiations pose a danger to the hugely successful campaign to recruit more doctors in Wales. Can the First Secretary tell us how many extra doctors from the EU this campaign has managed to recruit?
Mr Neil Hamilton: I agree with that. The actual figure is seven extra doctors have been recruited this year, compared with the same figure last year—not all of whom, or indeed perhaps none of whom, will have come from the EU. Therefore, this seems to be rather irrelevant to the whole question of the Brexit negotiations. But what Sir Keir Starmer seemed to be trying to do was to instil some sort of fear in...
