Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:53 pm on 9 January 2018.

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Photo of Mr Neil Hamilton Mr Neil Hamilton UKIP 1:53, 9 January 2018

Well, can I respond to the First Minister's sally about the temporary expansion of our group? UKIP has done a great deal since the beginning of the year to entertain the country and cheer us all up. But, we are here to fight for what we believe in and we will continue the fight as we have done in the last year with a group of five.

But one of the opportunities that Brexit offers to us if we are not part of the single market is that we then secure control of regulation. He will have seen that, last week, the markets in financial instruments directive came into force throughout the whole of the EU. This is 7,000 pages long, it contains 1.4 million paragraphs, it's six times the size of the Bible, and it will require all financial firms that deal in shares, bonds, derivatives—indeed, all financial instruments—to acquire a huge mass of documentation, which they'll then have to publish and preserve for five years, imposing mammoth costs on financial services firms. If we're outside the single market, we can slim down that burden of regulation without any danger to the public at all. Dublin has made a great success out of expansion of its financial services businesses by having a tax advantage by reducing corporation tax. Does the First Minister agree with me that Cardiff, as a developing financial centre, could greatly benefit from a slimmed-down financial regulation system whilst properly serving the public interest? Ten per cent of people who work in Cardiff are in financial and professional services, they contribute £1.2 billion a year in gross value added and, indeed, in Wales as a whole it's £3 billion. So, will the First Minister agree with me that it would be a good thing if he were to look to have proportionate regulation in the financial services sector as a means of kick-starting the financial services industry here in Wales?