Mr Neil Hamilton: I thank the Cabinet Secretary for that response, but it doesn't actually reflect the reality of modern foreign language teaching in Welsh schools today. The latest Universities and Colleges Admissions Service figures indicate that there are 80 students from Wales who secured places on European language and literature courses last year—down from 120 at this time last year. And, over the...
Mr Neil Hamilton: UKIP will be supporting the Plaid Cymru motion this afternoon, although I think it was a mistake to base it upon this UN report by Philip Alston. He's very far from what John Griffiths has just said, politically neutral, he's in fact an extreme left-wing anti-Trump zealot professor of law at New York University with a political axe to grind. His measure of poverty—[Interruption.] His...
Mr Neil Hamilton: I've had the advantage of questioning Clare Pillman, the current chief executive, on the Public Accounts Committee, and I have to say that she did impress me, and she's certainly a vast improvement on her predecessor. But I wonder whether there is an inherent tension between the regulatory role on one hand and the management of the environment role in NRW, and its commercial arm, given the...
Mr Neil Hamilton: I admire the Member for Cardiff Central for her independence of mind, and I frequently agree with what she says. There is a serious argument about which is the best solution to the problems that we all know about. I stood for election, as did my colleagues, in support of the blue route rather than the black route, although I did say about two years ago that the black route would be better...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Well, I'm going to satisfy Andrew R.T. Davies by saying that we will support the motion and the amendments. And I agree with everything that's been said by Llyr Gruffydd and also by Andrew R.T. Davies. I've always seen Brexit as an opportunity for Welsh agriculture. There is a challenge, obviously—any major change of this kind is bound to be a challenge, but looking at the medium to the...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Diolch, Llywydd. I agree, but from a completely different perspective, with much of what the Cabinet Secretary has just said. But we need to understand that the background to this is the result of the referendum that was held two and a half years ago. And, without any kind of qualification, the people voted to leave the EU. They didn't vote to give the UK Government a mandate to negotiate,...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Once the protocol to this agreement is in force, it is quite clear that the UK cannot leave except by a joint decision of the UK and the EU. And why would the EU want to put us in a position where we can leave at that point? Because they will have locked us into a permanent arrangement with them, whereby they have free access to our markets—and, of course, the reciprocal is that we have...
Mr Neil Hamilton: The Member is making an eloquent case for having a second referendum, but was he in favour of the first referendum? And if we have a second referendum, why shouldn't we have a third, a fourth, a fifth, et cetera on an annual basis?
Mr Neil Hamilton: Diolch yn fawr iawn, Llywydd. Can I commend the chief economist to the Welsh Government for the document that was published this week, summarising the economic analyses that have been made by the UK Government of the effects of Brexit under different scenarios? But the document contains some of the more ludicrous projections, including the ones that have been published by the Bank of England...
Mr Neil Hamilton: I'm afraid the Cabinet Secretary, in disagreeing with me, is also disagreeing with the former governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, and indeed with Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman, whose political views are very far from mine and are actually not too far from the Cabinet Secretary's, because Mervyn King has said that he is saddened to see the Bank of England unnecessarily drawn into...
Mr Neil Hamilton: I would refer back to the chief economist's report, because he does say in it that there is a strong consensus amongst economists about the key principles of forecasting, one of which is that distance itself is a barrier and trade is generally more intensive with partners who are approximate, both geographically and in terms of their stage of economic development. The Treasury model and most...
Mr Neil Hamilton: 8. Will the Cabinet Secretary provide an update on the local government settlement for Pembrokeshire County Council? OAQ53037
Mr Neil Hamilton: I thank the Cabinet Secretary for that reply. When I raised this question a year ago, Pembrokeshire was being forced to raise its council tax by 12.5 per cent—the highest rise in Wales. This year, the draft budget was presented on Monday, as a result of which, council tax is set to rise by another 10 per cent and there are going to be £15.5 million-worth of cuts in services. Prior to the...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Diolch, Llywydd. Well, we live in very uncertain political times, and I suppose this may well be the last time in which we shall face each other across the Chamber in the Cabinet Secretary's current capacity, although I should regret it if she is moved on. I've come in the last couple of years to admire and respect the open-minded approach that she has brought to quite a number of issues,...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Well, I accept that the application for a judicial review in the case of Hendy limits significantly what the Cabinet Secretary can say, but I do think that the decision that she took is troubling as a matter of general principle. Localism is an important principle of government, in my opinion, and I'd be surprised if the Cabinet Secretary disagreed with that. Occasionally, national...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Well, I'm sorry that the Cabinet Secretary's unable to answer, because I think there's an important question of transparency involved here, that the decision on Hendy was very different from the decision that she took on Rhoscrowther. She decided there not to intervene, and so we now have a windfarm going up. I visited it myself last week. Scars in the landscape are being made, which will...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Abstain.
Mr Neil Hamilton: Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. Well, it's been an interesting, informative and enlightening debate, and UKIP has brought this debate forward in a spirit of consensus at this time of year, when the spirit of goodwill should suffuse us all, and it seems to have done so. Even though we can't accept all of the amendments, at least we managed to avoid the 'delete all', which usually is the preamble to...
Mr Neil Hamilton: I'm pleased to follow a thoughtful speech on this important subject from Jenny Rathbone. I agree with her about the wages that are paid to those who work in nursing homes. For the last 18 months of her life, my mother was in a nursing home—she'd been incapacitated by a stroke and couldn't do anything for herself at all. I was amazed at the commitment of the staff who looked after her and...
Mr Neil Hamilton: I'm going to continue along these consensual lines, because I do think, as the Minister said, we need to have maturity in this debate. It shouldn't be a political football. There may be disagreements, of course, about which is the best way forward, but I don't think that we should treat this as a kind of a party political dogfight issue just to score points for the sake of them, because it's...
