Mr Neil Hamilton: I think the public at large will regard that as a laughable explanation of the decision because, although it's correct that you said last week: 'the Welsh Government's position is a matter for NRW's ongoing consideration and did not bind them to accept and follow our position', the acting chairman of NRW, Dr Madeleine Havard, said Welsh Government had 'given a clear steer' on the direction...
Mr Neil Hamilton: If, as the Minister says, shooting is unethical on public land, it must surely be unethical on private land as well. So, it's quite clear what the direction of Welsh Government policy is here, and all anglers, all shooters, anybody in country sports generally, now can regard the Welsh Government as their determined enemy. This is the thin end of the wedge; they are all in the Welsh...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. I move our amendment to this motion. I was disappointed by the speech of the new leader of Plaid Cymru, who I welcome to his position, for its pessimism, its faintheartedness, its gloom, its utter lack of confidence in the people of Wales and the people of the United Kingdom to make a success of the great opportunities that becoming once again a sovereign, independent...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Can I finish this point? It was a most important contribution in his intervention, where he asked what damage this would do to the fabric of democracy of this country if this decision were now to be reversed. I give way to Mick Antoniw.
Mr Neil Hamilton: Oh, certainly it is, yes. I never had any great confidence that the EU would negotiate a deal with us in the first place because—[Interruption.] The EU is a political project first and foremost, and we are talking here in terms of an economic relationship with the EU in the years to come. I would much rather leave, as Theresa May used to say, with no deal than a bad deal. I believe that the...
Mr Neil Hamilton: I gave way to you.
Mr Neil Hamilton: In the course of my speech, I read out from the document that the Government sent to every single household in the country, and it explicitly states in here, in effect, that we would be leaving the single market: 'Losing our full access to the EU's Single Market would make exporting to Europe harder and increase costs.' There were arguments on both sides. We've heard a load of them today,...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on the support provided by the Welsh Government to veterans?
Mr Neil Hamilton: Well, it would be surprising if any Government didn't have anything to boast about as a result of 12 years of activity, and I acknowledge that there's been progress on numerous fronts in the course of the last year. Obviously, we all welcome such things as the new treatment fund, the tax cuts that have taken place for small businesses and so on, which are laid out in the foreword to this...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. The Cabinet Secretary is well aware that I'm keen to explore the possibility that by cutting tax rates in Wales we can create a tax advantage compared with England and grow the Welsh economy, and, therefore, increase the size of the tax base. We had a productive exchange, I thought, in the Finance Committee a few days ago, where I was pleased to see that...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Perhaps I can help the Cabinet Secretary by instructing my officials to do that, and sending him the results of their labours in due course. But I would like to draw the Cabinet Secretary's attention to the statement on page 56 of the Welsh tax policy report, which summarises the effects of the numerous studies that are mentioned in the footnotes, which says that 'These have tended to show...
Mr Neil Hamilton: These are not zero-sum games; it's not one or the other—we can have both, in my opinion, and that's what I'm interested in exploring further. The Bangor study suggests that taxpayer growth in Wales is going to decline from an increase of 0.007 per cent in 2019-20 to -0.11 per cent in 2023, so the prospects for the future under things as they are now—even bearing in mind all forecasts are...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Can I extend my support for the finance Secretary in much of what he says in his statement? I don't think it's at all unreasonable for him to say that it would be unacceptable for Wales to be a penny worse off as a result of the Brexit settlement, whatever that might be, although I disagree with him saying 'as promised during the referendum campaign'. The only people who could promise that...
Mr Neil Hamilton: I would like to raise the question of the effect of the way much of this money has been spent over the years. As Darren Millar pointed out, in fact in Wales we've gone backwards in the last 20 years in terms of relative prosperity. In 1998, the average gross value added in Wales was 74.8 per cent of the UK average, and in 2016 it was 72.7 per cent, so we've actually, relatively speaking, gone...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Thank you, Llywydd. I was rather staggered to hear the health Secretary's response to Rhun ap Iorwerth's questions in today's session. Effectively, what the health Secretary did was to dismiss Professor McClelland's views as along the lines of not being able to see the wood for the trees or, perhaps, magnifying her own personal experience and universalising it unfairly to the health service...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Of course, there are improvements in some parts of the health service in Wales, but in other respects we seem to be going backwards. So, in spite of all the money that is spent and the fact that half the health boards are either in special measures or in targeted intervention—in some cases, like Betsi Cadwaladr have been, for many years—progress is, at best, painfully slow. So, this,...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Certainly, as far as north-west Wales is concerned, part of my region, Blaenau Ffestiniog and now in Porthmadog as well, we have a situation where things are actually getting worse, because patients do not feel that they have a personal relationship with an individual doctor, because they can't develop that sufficiently with a locum by definition, because they're not necessarily going to be...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on the provision of adult education?
Mr Neil Hamilton: I want to start by being perhaps uncharacteristically generous towards the Cabinet Secretary for health, because I recognise, having been in politics a very long time, that the health service is not always benefited by the party political dogfight, and the constant change and reversal of change that I've witnessed in the course of the last 30 or 40 years has often been an impediment to...
Mr Neil Hamilton: I thank the Counsel General for his very comprehensive response to Helen Mary Jones and I agreed with every word of it. It's lamentable that the United Kingdom Government has not taken the moral high ground in this respect. It would have been quite easy for the UK Government, unilaterally, to guarantee the rights of EU citizens lawfully living and working in the United Kingdom, regardless...
