Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:46 pm on 20 November 2018.
Yes. It was certainly very much an issue in the aftermath of the referendum that we saw a spike in hate crime. One of the things that I did was to go and visit communities around Wales—a Polish community in Llanelli, of course, and I went to a meeting in Swansea—just to reassure people that the Welsh Government and the people of Wales are welcoming, and that it wasn't the case, as some people did believe, that they would somehow be thrown out of the country very soon, even to the extent that one person said to me that she feared the knock on the door. That's how bad it was as far as their perception of what might happen.
On the issue of citizens' rights, the withdrawal agreement does take us further and provides some kind of certainty compared to where we once were, but, of course, what businesses are saying to me is that, yes, they understand the point that there is a need to get skilled labour and professionals in the health service—we've all talked about that—but also there's a need for unskilled labour as well, people who are going to work in jobs that are not as highly paid, which are unattractive in a climate of full employment, such as the abattoirs. I keep on mentioning them; I'm not running a kind of vendetta against them, but they do find it difficult to recruit because the nature of the job is unpleasant for most people. Where will they get their people? If they can't get their people from the EU, that means they won't be able to function, and people who live locally won't be able to get a job there either, because the opportunities won't be there. So, these things have been missed by the UK Government.
And, of course, the tragedy of this is that people celebrate the ending of freedom of movement. What does it mean in practice? It means that UK citizens will not be able to travel and live freely in 26 other countries that they previously could—it's a wall. However, if you're Austrian or German or French, you can travel to 26 other countries, but not freely to the UK. So, actually, you can travel to all these countries around Europe without any restrictions. If you're Irish, you can travel to them all—UK and every other country in the European Union. So, what in fact has happened is that restrictions on freedom of movement have actually applied more strictly to our own people than to anyone else in Europe, because it's our own people who now won't be able to live and travel and work as they used to, whereas every other citizen in Europe will be able to do it, except they won't be able to come to the UK in the same way. So, actually, it's been a self-defeating action to limit the places where UK citizens can actually go and live long term, and work long term. Those strictures will not apply to other countries in Europe. So, it shows that what we've done here is not actually to create a situation where immigration is in some way better controlled in the UK; it's meant that UK citizens will now have controls put on them when they have to travel to other countries in Europe.