Mr Neil Hamilton: I was muted—
Mr Neil Hamilton: Thank you very much for that. I proposed in an amendment—and I understand, of course, it's not been selected—that we should actually have a real consideration of this by the public at large in the form of a referendum. Angela Burns said in an earlier debate that the Welsh Conservatives say 'no' to referenda because ultimately we should have the power to proceed or not using our...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Well, Wales has many problems at the moment, but I don't think we'll find many people in the outside world who think that the answer to any of them is more politicians, more Members of this place. The reality is that there is absolutely no demand whatsoever amongst the people who have elected us to this place to increase the size of the Senedd, and we know this just by looking at the...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Will the Minister provide an update on the Welsh Government’s ongoing assessment of the impact of the UK Internal Market Bill on Mid and West Wales?
Mr Neil Hamilton: Yes. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. So, my overall view is that whilst racism is of course wrong and to be deprecated, and we all should work towards its reduction, and ultimately, possibly, its elimination, it's not going to be achieved by the kind of debate that we're having today.
Mr Neil Hamilton: I'm so sorry.
Mr Neil Hamilton: Diolch yn fawr iawn, Llywydd. Thank you very much for calling me. Few things, I think, illustrate the gulf between the obsessions of the political class on the one hand and the real concerns of ordinary people on the other in their everyday lives. This disconnect has grown, I think, in the course of my lifetime. I'm very disturbed by the references to systemic and structural racism in Wales...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Will the First Minister provide an update on the impact of intergovernmental relations on public services in Mid and West Wales?
Mr Neil Hamilton: The Minister's, once again, taking a sledge hammer to crack a nut, in my view. Is it not inevitable when you relax restrictions that the risk of increasing infection is bound to occur? And, obviously, as we move towards winter, there's a higher risk anyway of any respiratory infection being contracted by individuals. It's overwhelmingly the case that where deaths from COVID are concerned they...
Mr Neil Hamilton: I've consistently opposed these regulations, because I think that they are wholly disproportionate to the threat that coronavirus presents to us. But I'd like to say first of all how much I agreed with what Andrew R.T. Davies and Rhun ap Iorwerth said earlier on about the manner in which these regulations are approved, weeks after they've been implemented by the Government. I think that's a...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Diolch, Llywydd. Isn't the truth of the matter that none of the people who are going to be housed at Penally is likely to be qualified for asylum in this country, because they've come from a safe country, in France, because they've all, as I understand it, arrived on small boats on the shores of Kent? Eighty one per cent of those who have arrived in 2020 on the shores of Kent have been said,...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Will the First Minister provide an update on Welsh Government action to mitigate the effects of coronavirus?
Mr Neil Hamilton: Then that certainly would imperil the union. For 27 years, I've campaigned, UKIP has campaigned, for the repatriation of powers from the EU to the UK, so we welcome that part of the Bill, but the lasting threat to the unity and integrity of the UK is devolution itself. The Welsh Government and Senedd have paraded their contempt for the Welsh people—
Mr Neil Hamilton: Diolch yn fawr iawn, Llywydd. Like Mark Reckless, I welcome those parts of the internal market Bill that repatriate powers from the EU to Westminster and to the devolved Parliaments. Like him, I've been fighting all my political life to see this objective achieved, ever since I first became a parliamentary candidate back in 1973. But I do oppose those parts of the Bill that grant further...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Apologies, Deputy Presiding Officer, and thank you for calling me. I'm not surprised by the Counsel General's statement, because he's determined to die in the last ditch of remainer resistance to implementing the will of the people, and the people of Wales at that, in the Brexit referendum four years ago. But he boldly asserts his statement that the powers in this Bill directly flout both...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Whilst I welcome the relaxation of restrictions, my objection to these regulations is that they don't go far enough. The First Minister in his statement earlier referred to the need to conduct a balancing act in making decisions about relaxations—the same is true about imposing them in the first place. Whilst the costs of these restrictions seem pretty easy to quantify, we know that there's...
Mr Neil Hamilton: Against.
Mr Neil Hamilton: Vote against.
Mr Neil Hamilton: I vote against.
Mr Neil Hamilton: Diolch, Llywydd. In the course of his statement, the First Minister said that the outlook for coronavirus 'has darkened in many parts of the world', but one country where that is not the case is Sweden. Sweden's had 81,000 cases altogether since the start of the pandemic, but as of yesterday, only 41 people were registered as being in a serious or critical condition, and the seven-day moving...
