9. Plaid Cymru debate: Continued membership of the Customs Union

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:33 pm on 28 February 2018.

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Photo of Mr Neil Hamilton Mr Neil Hamilton UKIP 5:33, 28 February 2018

I entirely agree. [Interruption.] I think we must really keep this in perspective in any event. The average tariff that applies to goods being imported into the European Union is about 3.5 per cent. There are specific sectors that are affected more than that: motor cars, as we all know—10 per cent, and agricultural products are a special case, very often, even in free trade agreements, as has already been pointed out, and are exempted in the case of Turkey. But the proportion of the economy that is accounted for by these areas of production are almost vanishingly small. Agriculture, as we know, is only 2 per cent of the entire gross domestic product of the country. If we want to support farmers and farm incomes, we can do that in many other ways than imposing taxes on the import of goods, if we want to, but ultimately, it's a question of democracy.

It's up to us to decide, ourselves, as an independent country, what tax, if any, we want to impose upon the import of goods from other countries. Why should we impose an import tax of 17 per cent on sports footwear, for example, from the far east? Why do we want to have a tax on the importation of oranges, which can't be grown in the United Kingdom? There are so many absurdities of this. When you outsource the power of legislating for taxation to a body to which the British people have no power to control, then this is what will happen. We don't know, from one week to another, what the European Commission is going to do in this area. So, fundamentally, this is a question of democracy, and I can't understand why a party like the Labour Party, of all parties, which is devoted to the principles of democracy, and came into existence to defend the interests of working people, should now be throwing that to the winds and being followed so enthusiastically by Plaid Cymru.