2. 2. Debate: The Outcome of the EU Referendum

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:37 pm on 28 June 2016.

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Photo of Mr Neil Hamilton Mr Neil Hamilton UKIP 2:37, 28 June 2016

No, no. The whole point of the anti-dumping legislation, which you can use under the World Trade Organization rules, is it’s only where steel is exported to your country below cost on the world market, which is not the case with steel produced in the European Union, but it is the case with steel produced in China, which is the cause of all the problems—[Interruption]. I didn’t vote against it, at all. [Interruption]. My party did not vote against it, so you are misinformed, but that’s not a surprise, is it?

So, the single market is not the be-all and the end-all of this, because the average tariff that the EU applies against other countries in the world, exporting into the single market, is only 4 per cent. There are higher tariffs on specific industries, of course, and cars is one of them.

We should negotiate a free trade agreement with the European Union. That’s what I personally would like to see and my party would like to see. The trouble is, the European Union is not terribly good at negotiating free trade agreements, because there are only two of them—Mexico and South Korea. There are other customs union agreements, but, generally speaking, the trade agreements with countries like India, or the United States, get mired for years on end in endless discussion, because we have to get agreement from 27 member states. That’s one of the problems with the EU—its sclerotic nature, because of the inflexibility imposed upon it by its constitutional structure.

The German Chancellor has said today that Britain can’t expect to be cherry pickers in the negotiations that are now going to start, and I fully understand that. I don’t want to pick any cherries; I just want generalised free trade with the European Union, on a fair and free basis. That’s all Britain should want to ask for, and that’s all that the EU is being asked to concede, which would be mutually beneficial. Trade takes place because it benefits both the seller and the buyer—otherwise, it wouldn’t occur.

So, there’s no reason to be pessimistic, apart from the irrationality of politicians who are involved in the negotiations on either side. There is no reason to be pessimistic about Wales’s prospects. To say that the result last Thursday was obtained by means of putting forward a false prospectus on the part of the ‘leave’ campaign is, of course, nonsense. The ‘leave’ campaign was not a single, cohesive unit; it was a loose coalition of different forces, different parties, different interest groups, and we all have different ideas about how the future should look.

So, all I will say is, to reiterate what I said earlier on in this Chamber to the First Minister, that UKIP will play its full part in assisting him to get the best possible deal as part of his negotiations both with the UK Government and with the European Union. I hope that he will want to involve other minor parties in this house in this process because I think that we can help to give his negotiations greater credibility and greater force, because, with a unanimous voice, in this respect if in no other, we are certainly better, stronger and safer when we act together.