7. United Kingdom Independence Party Debate: Upland Livestock

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:03 pm on 19 September 2018.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Mr Neil Hamilton Mr Neil Hamilton UKIP 6:03, 19 September 2018

Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. Well, we've had quite an interesting debate, but unfortunately it's not been about what the motion addresses, as David Rowlands pointed out in his opening speech, about the nature of the amendments that the other parties have put down. Andrew R.T. Davies tried to justify the Conservative amendment on grounds that our motion couldn't be amended to include the points that the Conservative amendment has on the order paper, but I couldn't see why not. I don't see why the UKIP motion has to be deleted to put down the very constructive points that the Conservative motion addresses, all of which I think we, in our party, could have supported. In which case, we could have had the penny and the biscuit of our motion, as well as the amendments of the Conservative Party.

How Llyr Gruffydd could think that our motion today is inflammatory is entirely beyond me. We were addressing a very specific problem of the wilding of the hills and the environmental impact of the current regime, which causes many difficulties both in land management terms and also with disease control. It's a pity that this debate has turned into yet another debate on Brexit, which, in one sense, we should be very happy about in UKIP, but we really were trying today to put down a motion that was not going to concentrate upon the merits or otherwise of leaving the EU for the agricultural sector, important, obviously, as that is as a background to everything. But I thank Andrew R.T. Davies and Llyr Gruffydd, in addition of course to the Cabinet Secretary, for their interesting contributions and I'll refer to some of the points that they made.