9. 9. UKIP Wales Debate: Immigration Policy

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:10 pm on 21 June 2017.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Mr Neil Hamilton Mr Neil Hamilton UKIP 6:10, 21 June 2017

Thank you, Presiding Officer. I suppose it was inevitable that other parties’ contributors to this debate would just refuse to engage with the real burden of our motion, which was wage compression. There’s no dispute by UKIP about the virtues of migration. Indeed, I went out of my way in my speech to say that the real problems that we are seeing today have arisen only since 2004 in relation to EU migration, because of the speed of the inflows that we’ve experienced, and that has had an inevitable impact upon low wages, which is something that the LSE study neglects to deal with. The Bank of England study and many others that I could have named—and I could list them now, because I’ve got all of the reports with me—have come to the same conclusion, and it’s obvious anyway: when you increase supply relative to demand, then you tend to depress price.

It’s a great shame that the Labour Party and Plaid Cymru in particular refuse to engage with what the overwhelming majority of British people feel: that immigration has been out of control, continues to be out of control and must be controlled. If they simply stick their heads under the bedclothes and refuse to acknowledge the problem, then that’s what produces social unrest. That is, at the moment, fortunately, not the position in the United Kingdom, but if we went into a downswing, it might well be in due course.

This debate has nothing whatever to do with refugees—a complete red herring raised by the leader of Plaid Cymru. This is a debate about the economic effects of migration, and I do deprecate the contribution of Jeremy Miles and, indeed, the attempt by the leader of Plaid Cymru yet again to smear us as racists and haters of foreigners, et cetera. If we were to expose the record of many prominent members of the Labour Party, with their anti-Semitic rants and references, including the leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, who has many times refused to apologise for describing Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia who murder Jews, as friends, then I can smear the Labour Party with the same brush. What about Naz Shah, Member of Parliament, who has tweeted that Israelis should be transported to the United States from the Middle East, so the Middle East will again be peaceful without foreign interference from the United States? Are they going to condemn Jeremy Corbyn and Naz Shah? Are they representative of the views of the Labour Party? They are more representative of the views of the Labour Party, because, with the likes of Ken Livingstone still in the Labour Party, who has himself been responsible for making violently anti-Semitic remarks, they are far more at risk of being tainted with racism than UKIP will ever be.

This debate—[Interruption.] This debate was intended to be a serious debate about the economic effects of immigration, and it’s pathetic, actually, that other Members, like Jeremy Miles, have been so infantile as to pervert it into the kind of name-calling that has been seen today. The education Secretary is just as bad, from a sedentary position, as well. If she were in school, she’d be sent to the back of the class or sent out of the room for disorderly behaviour. So, it’s only UKIP that actually will raise these issues, which is why we got 12 per cent of the vote in the election last May, and we do have a democratic right to be here to speak for those who voted for us, and that we will continue to do. I urge everybody to vote for our motion today.