7. 7. UKIP Wales Debate: The European Union

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:24 pm on 22 June 2016.

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Photo of Mr Neil Hamilton Mr Neil Hamilton UKIP 5:24, 22 June 2016

Yes, we do like experts. The future is inherently unpredictable—I know that—but common sense tells us that Germany will not want a trade war with Britain when it would hurt them far more than it hurts us [Interruption.] The Treasury—. There’s a limit to how many times I can give way.

The Treasury’s Armageddon forecast of just a few weeks ago forecast the worst that George Osborne could throw at us, and, although they were purporting to forecast what the state of the economy would be like in 2030, it would be nice if they could forecast the state of the economy next week. He’s never met a single one of his forecasts for economic growth or the Government deficit in the five years or so that he’s been the Chancellor. But he has purported to know, as an expert, what’s going to happen in the year 2030, and what that report says is that, if we are inside the EU, we can expect to get a 37 per cent growth in disposable income in the next 15 years or so. Out of the EU, it would be a 29 per cent growth in income.

So, there’s going to be no collapse of the economy. Even on the worst-case Treasury forecast scenario, it would be a growth of 29 per cent rather than 37 per cent. But, I pay no attention to these guesstimates at all, because it’s garbage in and garbage out with the computer. It all depends on the assumptions that you use. So, so much for David Cameron’s forecast that this would trash the economy. Actually, what he has done, of course, is to trash the truth. And, as he described himself six years ago, as the heir to Blair, I think, out of the mouths of babes and sucklings.

What voting to leave the EU tomorrow will do is enable us to take back control of some of the most important policy decisions that affect this country, in particular, of course, control of our borders, because uncontrolled immigration, adding a city the size of Cardiff to the population of the UK each year, from population increases alone, has brought massive wage compression so that, for millions of people now, the minimum wage is the maximum wage. The Bank of England’s own research has shown that, for a 10 per cent increase in immigration, there’s a 2 per cent fall in the wages of semi-skilled and unskilled people.

Energy prices have been pushed up by crazy EU green energy schemes and green energy levies. We could probably halve the energy costs of Tata in Port Talbot if we had control of our own energy prices. We could take control of our own trade policy again. Like the United States, we could slap a 522 per cent levy on imports of cold-rolled steel from China, which are exported below cost on world markets, instead of the 24 per cent that the EU has proposed—