Mr Neil Hamilton: Well, as the deal that Theresa May has put on the table gives the EU all it wants—the £39 billion, detaching Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK, a continuation of regulatory alignment without a voice or a vote in the EU, and with no unilateral right to leave, which we currently enjoy under article 50—effectively what the Prime Minister is proposing is very largely what the Welsh...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Well, I'm sure the Counsel General would agree with me that this resolves, ultimately, into a question of trust in Government, which is a vitally important issue. Here we have, on the one hand, the Government's chief negotiator being overheard in private, in circumstances where he didn't know he was being overheard, saying one thing, and the Prime Minister in public denying what he said....
Mr Neil Hamilton: Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. The Counsel General will have seen that Olly Robbins, the Government's chief negotiator with the EU, let the cat out of the bag yesterday in Brussels and revealed Theresa May's true intentions. She has always said that she doesn't want to extend article 50 or to have any delay in Britain leaving the EU beyond 29 March. But Olly Robbins said that his task,...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Like everybody else, I'd like to thank the Minister for this statement and to express my own appreciation to NHS staff for the tremendous job that they do, often in very difficult and stressful circumstances. And can I start by echoing what Helen Mary Jones said in her questions earlier on, asking the Minister for greater transparency in statements of this kind? I know I'm knew to this brief...
Mr Neil Hamilton: I entirely agree with that point. That could be said for the United Kingdom as a whole of course, that business rates are a property tax that is wholly outdated and bears no relationship to people's income and therefore their ability to pay. Getting from where we are to where we want to be, of course, is not necessarily an easy thing to do, but, nevertheless, I do think that for a country...
Mr Neil Hamilton: We've just had two very interesting speeches from Mark Reckless and Mike Hedges, all of which I agree with. I often think, if Mike Hedges were the leader of a political party, I might be tempted to join it, because I often agree with a lot of what he says in the Chamber. I hope that doesn't do fatal damage to your career. But I think he made some very positive, practical points. It's too easy...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Of course, the performance of some health boards in recent years perhaps makes it more difficult to recruit staff, in areas like north Wales in particular. Nevertheless, that can't be the whole answer to this difficulty, because the same problem is seen with locums for GPs as it is for NHS staff in other areas of professional activity. For example, in relation to Blaenau Ffestiniog, the...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Of course, some health boards in Wales are doing very much better than the boards that I've just quoted. In Cardiff and Vale, for example, only about 1.5 per cent of their staffing budget is spent on agency staff. So, if they can do it, why can't the other health boards? This is largely going on medical and dental staff, and nursing and midwifery. Again, in Betsi, 65 per cent of the money...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Diolch, Llywydd. The Minister will be aware, from the auditor general's report on NHS Wales's expenditure on agency staff that the amount of money that is being spent has gone up by 171 per cent over seven years, and amounted to £135 million in 2017-18. This is a very expensive way to recruit staff. In Betsi Cadwaladr in 2017, they were spending 7 per cent of their total staff budget on...
Mr Neil Hamilton: How does the Welsh Government intend to improve access to healthcare for patients in Mid and West Wales?
Mr Neil Hamilton: Will the Member give way?
Mr Neil Hamilton: I said in the course of an intervention with David Rees that I didn't want a 'no deal', but this has been forced upon us by the intransigence of the EU and the stupidity of the Prime Minister that no deal is better than a bad deal.
Mr Neil Hamilton: The British people voted in June 2016 to leave the European Union. That means leaving the customs union, that means leaving the single market. I didn't want a 'no deal' exit from the EU, I wanted a free trade deal with the EU, but it takes two to tango. Are we actually just going to capitulate to the bureaucrats of Brussels or are we going to listen to the British people?
Mr Neil Hamilton: No, because Theresa May could have chosen an entirely different course, which is to say, right at the start, that we want the kind of deal with the European Union that Canada, South Korea and a handful of other countries have managed to secure, which preserves a wide measure of free trade between us, but doesn't involve all the governmental entanglements that actually gave rise to the...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. I beg to move the amendment in the name of my colleague Gareth Bennett. We are at the culmination of two and a half wasted years. When the EU withdrawal Bill was enacted, the leaving date of 29 March was on the face of the Bill, and everybody has known that we've been heading to 29 March in the last two years. It's a shocking dereliction of duty on the part of the...
Mr Neil Hamilton: One of the features that I think does need to be looked at is that, when you look at the councils that have had an increase in funding most recently, many of them have seen a substantial increase in their reserves. So, this is money that could be spent on public services but is being held in bank accounts and not available for dealing with the current problems. Rhondda Cynon Taf, for example,...
Mr Neil Hamilton: I'm sorry I misunderstood the complexities of the shuffled portfolios within ministries as well as between them, but rises in council tax are imposing enormous burdens upon individuals and, indeed, businesses. The average band for council tax has more than trebled in Wales since 1997 and it's gone up by two and a half times since the Assembly was created. Even the former CEO of the Welsh...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Diolch, Llywydd. I wonder if the Minister saw one of the attractions of her new job as taking responsibility for the complexities of local government finance in the years ahead, and whether she agrees with me that the funding formula for local government is now looking increasingly dated and requires reform. In particular, one of its defects is that the mechanism within it seems to work so as...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Will the Minister provide an update on efforts to attract consulates to Wales?
Mr Neil Hamilton: How does the Welsh Government intend to improve healthcare for patients in Mid and West Wales?
