Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Economy and Transport – in the Senedd at 1:54 pm on 2 October 2019.

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Photo of Ken Skates Ken Skates Labour 1:54, 2 October 2019

I'm delighted that you've been engaging with the Italians of Cardiff Bay. I imagine, given you're a Brexit member, he only thanked you when you left his bar if you gave him a very big tip. If we look at the Italian economy, we'll see similar trends there as in the UK. You have some high-performing regions within Italy, primarily in the north, and then you have parts of Italy that are really struggling, where young, talented people feel that they have no choice but to leave, and they're primarily in the south. I don't know where your Italian bartender came from in Italy, but of course he chose Wales and he's happy here, and I'm glad that he is here, and long may he stay here because he sounds—based on the experience you had—a very good member of the community and a hard-working person, which is not the way that the Brexit Party portrays foreign nationals on a normal basis.

I think what's important is that we recognise that Wales should be and always has been a very welcoming place to foreign nationals. Whilst we enjoy the company of Italians and many other European citizens here in Wales, many European countries enjoy the presence of British people, and I'm really concerned that the rhetoric that we hear now across the UK, but primarily from some of the right-wing elements of the media, give the impression to the outside world that we are looking inward, that we are no longer welcoming and that we resent the presence of foreign nationals in the UK. That is a very, very dangerous position to be in. And we alone as a Welsh Government cannot combat the impression that I'm afraid is emerging across the globe of the United Kingdom as a little England. We need the UK Government to behave far more responsibly in the messages that it sends out about what sort of country we want to be in the twenty-first century, and I want us to be an internationalist country.