Mr Neil Hamilton: Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I see from the number of empty seats in the Chamber today we’ve reached the dog days of summer, but we are left, at least, with the cream of Assembly Members to listen to this debate. The essence of this motion is localism and devolution, and that’s what the Brexit process enables us to extend. I want, before going on to the motion, to address the...
Mr Neil Hamilton: They may well be, but if decision making bodies are over-regulating, that’s a matter of significant concern to us. The EU wants to ban Asulox, for example, which is very important in the control of bracken on the hills. And we’ve had an annual exemption from what they want to do for the last six years. We’ll be able to decide for ourselves whether that’s a sensible policy or not,...
Mr Neil Hamilton: I give way happily, yes.
Mr Neil Hamilton: Well, that, of course, is a distraction from the real issue: that, before 1973, the EU had no effective fishing waters and, as a result of our joining, the CFP was cobbled together in order that British waters could be plundered, the result of which has been that our fishing industry is now substantially smaller than it was 40 years ago. The number of fishermen is down by 40 per cent, the...
Mr Neil Hamilton: I’m not going to take a second intervention, I’m sorry. [Interruption.] The Member can make her own speech, and I hope she does. But it does give us the opportunity to revive the Welsh fishing industry, and not just inshore fisheries, of course, which are not affected by the CFP, but to go further afield. I don’t think you’ll find many people involved in the fishing industry who think...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I enjoyed the colourful speech from the finance Secretary, but I don’t think it took us a great deal further forward in this debate. What surprises me about Plaid Cymru is that, as a nationalist party, they are afraid of having decision taking devolved from Brussels to Cardiff. I would have thought the first thing that a nationalist party would want is...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. In the Government’s document, ‘Brexit and Fair Movement of People’, it acknowledges that, in the British social attitudes survey in 2013, 86 per cent of the UK population wanted to see immigration reduced, and yet the policy of the Government here in Cardiff, in this document, is to oppose the introduction of any form of target for a reduction of immigration....
Mr Neil Hamilton: The First Minister knows that that is not the only way in which targets can work. In particular, the problems that we have for the levels of immigration that we currently suffer are not in the field of professionals, like doctors and nurses, where they will always be able to qualify for whatever the skills needs of the country are. But at the bottom end of the income scale, in particular, for...
Mr Neil Hamilton: The First Minister knows that the policy of my party was in favour of the minimum wage. In the days when I was a member of the Conservative Party, the Conservative Party was against the introduction of a minimum wage, but UKIP has always supported the introduction of a minimum wage, and, of course, there hasn’t been a single prosecution in Wales for breach of minimum wage legislation, even...
Mr Neil Hamilton: As usual, by the time I get my opportunity in these statements, almost every decent point has been made, and Adam Price has well said that—
Mr Neil Hamilton: Well, you could. I’m sure you won’t, Deputy Presiding Officer, being a fair-minded president of the Assembly. But, as Adam Price has effectively pointed out, as the document itself is merely a repetition and a rehash of material that’s been well cooked before, a repetitious criticism of it, perhaps, may not be totally out of place. When I used to go to Sunday school as a small boy, one...
Mr Neil Hamilton: I’m broadly in sympathy with what the First Minister wants to see achieved at the end of the day, but I do think that this is making a mountain out of a molehill. I find it quite extraordinary that the leader of Plaid Cymru should be talking about the powers of this Assembly being constrained or reduced. The powers that we are talking about here we don’t currently enjoy, and there was no...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Well, this is a useful document and a valuable contribution to this debate, but, from the way in which the finance Secretary and others talk about immigration and its importance to the economy, I wonder how on earth we ever managed to survive before the year 2004, when restrictions on movement for eastern European countries were substantially relaxed or removed. The fact, which is...
Mr Neil Hamilton: No, it’s nothing to do with a mask slipping at all, Llywydd. If we’re in favour of immigration control for the rest of the world, why are we not in favour of it for Europe? Why do we want to discriminate against the rest of the world? I’m not the one who is racist. The current immigration policy that we have is a racist one, because we apply restrictions to those with different colour...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Diolch, Llywydd. The consultation period for the document ‘Taking Forward Wales’ Sustainable Management of Natural Resources’ is supposed to end on the thirtieth of this month. I know that the Cabinet Secretary has had representations from many people to say that this is a vast exercise given the breadth of the consultation that is going on and the number of issues that are often very...
Mr Neil Hamilton: I’m sorry to hear that, but I understand the reasons that the Cabinet Secretary has given. And I know she can’t be drawn on the substance of matters that are subject to this consultation, but there is a question of general principle that I think it would be useful to explore here. One of my constituents has written to me to say, in effect, that what we’re trying to do here is to...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Another important feature of this also respects the rights of landowners and farmers. Obviously, it’s in the interests of those who want to see the countryside prosper that we have access as widely as possible, and the more people who get to understand the ways of the countryside, the better it is for all those who live and work in rural communities. But extending the right to, for example,...
Mr Neil Hamilton: The European Union’s own external action service website states that the EU believes that democracy is the only political system that can fully realise all human rights. Would it not be a useful exercise for the Welsh Government to encourage the United Kingdom Government to remind Spain, as a member state of the European Union, that it should live up to the principles that the European...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. Just before we rose for the summer recess, the Government pulled the rug out from underneath the Circuit of Wales project, which would have brought hundreds of millions of pounds of much-needed private investment into the northern Valleys. As a fig leaf, the First Minister and his Government then proposed that they should invest £100 million of public money in a...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Well, there are of course no firm offers to take space in the area that the First Minister is talking about. My colleagues and I had the advantage on Friday of visiting St Athan and seeing what’s happening at the Aston Martin construction that’s going on there, which is a Welsh Government success story—I fully acknowledge that and congratulate the First Minister. But, of course, St...
