8. Brexit Party Debate: Devolution

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:43 pm on 26 February 2020.

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Photo of Mr Neil Hamilton Mr Neil Hamilton UKIP 5:43, 26 February 2020

Diolch, Llywydd, and I beg to move the amendments standing in my name. I agree with Darren Millar that this doesn't necessarily mean that devolution could have succeeded and that it's because we've had a Labour Government, propped up by Plaid Cymru, for the entire life of this Assembly in one shape or form—either in coalition with it or at the beginning of this Assembly, of course, they were instrumental in voting for the Labour Government to be put back into office under the former First Minister, so Plaid Cymru bear equal responsibility for the failures of the Labour Government.

Dai Lloyd said in his speech that we should respect the result of the 2011 referendum, which raises a horse laugh in those who didn't want to respect the result of the referendum in 2016 and wanted to reverse the decision of the British and Welsh people before it had even been implemented. It took us 41 years from 1975 to get a new EU referendum. It's been a generation since the first referendum to establish an Assembly in Wales and I think, after 25 years of failure, unrelieved failure by a permanent Labour Government, it is time to allow the Welsh people to have their say once more. I wouldn't, personally, be against having a referendum on independence as part and parcel of that. I see no reason why that should not be put to the Welsh people as well. So I hope that Plaid Cymru will support me in a demand for a referendum on the various options that the Welsh people can decide between. 

There's no doubt that there's been considerable disaffection growing in Wales, from both ends of the spectrum here, in recent years. The latest YouGov poll, in January, had in its results that 21 per cent of those who responded favour independence but 24 per cent want to abolish this place. That's 46 per cent one way or another who express an extreme form of dissatisfaction with the performance of the Assembly. Until Gareth Bennett started to raise this issue a little time ago, there was nobody in this Assembly who was giving voice to that very substantial minority that now wants to see this place abolished. I'm pleased to see the Brexit Party following in our slipstream, but I'm not sure that the proprietor of the Brexit Party actually knows about the policy change that has been adopted. Maybe we'll find out about that later. 

There are arguments for devolution, of course—in fact, I've made them myself in this Assembly, earlier on. I have seen what devolution could have done from other parts of the world and, if we had had a Government that was prepared to put forward policies that could start to solve some of the problems that have been pointed out in this debate so far, then I could support it—[Interruption.]