Plaid Cymru and Ukip - With Bethan Rhys Roberts Ask the Leader

After the tragic events in Manchester this week,

what do you want and expect from your politicians?

In two weeks' time, you will have your vote.

Tonight, this audience have lots of questions,

As politicians begin to return to the campaign trail

after the heartbreaking events in Manchester, tonight

we hear from two party leaders here in Wales.

Our audience, a mix of undecided voters and supporters

In half an hour, we will be joined by Ukip's leader

in the Welsh Assembly, Neil Hamilton.

But first, please welcome the leader of Plaid Cymru, Leanne Wood.

And our first question tonight comes from Hazel Kendall.

In light of events in Manchester, do we need more police and military

on the streets of Wales to tackle Islam extremism?

Thank you for your question, and I'm glad that you've opened with that,

because after what has happened, it would be strange if we didn't

And I would like to first of all put my condolences

on the record to everybody who is affected by those horrific

And it was particularly cruel because it was so clearly targeted

And hearing some of the harrowing accounts of parents who were looking

for their children, not to find them, was particularly

At a time like this, it's important, I think,

to recognise the tremendous work that our public servants do

in the emergency services and the health service as well.

And it's pretty bad that those public workers have had to face

so many deep and drastic cuts in recent years.

That's particularly the case with the police.

And I understand that Manchester police are going to be cut

drastically over the next few years as well.

So I think if anything we have to invest in those public

services in the future, to show how much we value them.

It's difficult to imagine doing a job where you have to run

into a situation of danger when everybody else is running away.

And I know that, from the police officers I have spoken to in recent

times, there's a lot of anger there about those cuts,

So, yes, we do need to invest in our police services

and intelligence services, to try to do all that we can to make

sure that our streets and our population is safe.

But the question was also about the military.

Would you welcome the military on the streets of Wales?

I think we have to be careful about that.

There are extreme conditions when we have military

on our streets, and of course we are in an extreme situation.

But I wouldn't want that to be the norm.

I think that the police are there to do the job that they do,

and they need to be given sufficient resources to do that job properly.

And I would prefer police activity prioritised over military action.

Although clearly in this situation, you can see why

when it was critical, that the military were involved.

Would that involve devolving counter-terrorism, for example?

Would you want national security in the hands of politicians

I think for counter-terrorism, there's a good argument

for working across boundaries, whether that be between England

and Wales and Scotland, or even wider throughout Europe.

So, yes, I want to see the police devolved.

But I would also want to see the cooperation that happens

And it's particularly important in order to prevent incidences

You say you want to be devolved from the police

No, because the police is devolved in Scotland, for example,

but there are still many aspects of cross border.

They work cross border in Scotland, despite the fact

But it is not devolved anti-terrorism, not in Scotland.

But the police is devolved in Scotland, and the countries

still cooperate in terms of anti-terrorism.

Are you saying anti-terrorism should be devolved?

No, police should be devolved but cooperation

between countries should continue for anti-terrorism measures.

So you don't want any form of Welsh MI5?

Devolution stops at counter-terrorism

I want the police devolved because I want Wales to have its own

I want us to be able to create laws in Wales and have the enforcement

But it does make sense for some operations,

and counter-terrorism is an obvious one, for cooperation

I think that should happen outside the UK as well.

Do you feel you have had an answer, especially your point

But I would like to bring to your attention that it was

on the television earlier today that they had been aware that this

young man had been known about as long as five years ago.

So why weren't people actually keeping their eye on him,

because five years is quite a long time?

There are serious questions that need to be answered

I understand that information was brought to the attention

of various authorities on more than one occasion.

So I have no doubt that people are going to have to answer some

On that issue of surveillance and the Investigatory Powers Bill,

Plaid Cymru members of parliament voted against that, which would have

What we are concerned about is mass surveillance.

Yes, targeted surveillance and really monitoring those people,

like the person responsible for this, absolutely.

The problem we have is monitoring everybody's e-mails.

There is such a thing as information overload.

You need to be able to target and focus down.

If you are watching everyone, the chances are that

We can't monitor everybody, but we need to get to

Why is this happening, what are the causes?

To mention Wales, we do have our own counter-terrorism work

The Prevent strategy, that is a way of encouraging

communities to look out at each other and inform the authorities

I am concerned that it raises suspicions among people,

and it can encourage divisions within communities.

We do need to have a strategy to try and make sure that all of those

people who are feeling outside of society, whoever they are,

are able to be brought in, because if we are talking

about getting to the root cause of some of this, I used to work

Getting to the root cause of a problem is something I am

But this is not easy and there is not one single answer.

We have to look at foreign policy, at education and schools,

One from the front and the gentleman in the back.

You said about investing in the police, but does there need

to be more investment in the surveillance people,

if there is a large majority of people, there was a figure

quoted, a large amount of people who need surveillance?

Does there need to be more investment in that,

or do you think there is enough investment in the resources, people

A few minutes ago, in your talk about devolution you said,

we would be able to produce and design our own laws under

Surely that could imply having to have some sort of boundary,

border, with England, dependent on the extremity

of the laws you decide to create that are different

There is a border between Wales and England and we have separate

We don't have a border between Wales and England.

I travel over that bridge practically every day and I do not

You can travel freely within the European Union

without showing your passport in many places, but that does not

mean there are not borders between states and countries.

I am not talking about any country outside of the UK.

If you would like to quickly take this point.

Does there need to be more investment in

Are there enough resources, whether it be police or the people

who are needing to monitor phones, or social media, or whatever it is,

It seems a lot of people and do we have the resources?

My understanding is that extra money has gone

It is the wider police forces that have seen cuts.

But yes, if there are people who need to be monitored and kept

an eye on, then we should make sure the resources are there to do that.

Otherwise we end up in a situation like we had a couple of days ago,

Let's move on to our second question which comes from Leanne Lewis.

Do you agree that we need more immigration to give the NHS going?

That is a difficult thing to say as a politician

in the context when many people want to see immigration reduced.

But from a Welsh perspective and from the Welsh NHS perspective,

the numbers of medics, doctors and nurses working in the

And if they were all pulled out overnight and told to go home

to their country of origin, we would be in crisis.

We are already in crisis, you could argue.

Wales has fewer doctors per head of population

than almost every other EU country, bar two.

We need to invest in doctors, because so many of our

doctors and GPs are coming to retirement age.

And there has been no plan to replace them.

Back in 2014, Plaid Cymru put forward a policy to recruit

and train 1000 extra doctors and 5000 extra nurses for our NHS,

so that we could put that workforce plan in place,

so we would not get to crisis point when those GPs retired.

The Government has not put such a plan in place, and my concern now,

as we leave the European Union, if the hardest possible Brexit

is pursued and freedom of movement is ended,

that we could face serious problems in terms of attracting doctors.

I need to make the point that we have to plan

to train our own doctors as well, and Plaid Cymru has been pushing

quite hard for a new medical school in Bangor, for example,

to increase the capacity, so that we can have more

And we need to encourage them through the education system as well

to apply for medicine, so that we can train

So you would increase immigration into Wales?

Wales has 5% of the population of the UK, so we would like control

over 5% of the work visas that come in under the new system

The reason we want to have responsibility over those visas

is that there are particular pinch points in the Welsh economy

and in our public services, where Labour from overseas is needed

because, in the main, in some industries anyway,

local populations do not want to do the work.

So in order to make sure that we are able to keep our economy

going and that we do not have big problems in certain sectors,

we would like to be able to use a Welsh visa system

We got into that position when Wales started off,

you are saying Welsh people don't want to do this work.

You are saying that Welsh people don't want to do these jobs.

That is what I have been told by various employers who take

There are a lot of employees out there on zero-hours

contracts, which I think shouldn't be happening.

Those contracts are actually using those in your own counsel,

so your own council is applying zero-hour contracts.

That demoralises society. Plaid Cymru has seven times tried to

introduce legislation to abolish zero-hours contracts so that local

councils that are currently employing people on zero-hours

contracts, who are in competition with the private sector, in the care

sector, so they will not be forced to go down that route. But Labour

have voted against us seven different times. Despite that, it is

in their manifesto. The agricultural workers around

here, doing the farm work, even these car washes that have sprung

up, people saying they have the immigrants caught the job. Have any

of the people around here taken it up? No, they haven't. It's the same

with farmworkers, all right? They haven't taken that up. The gentleman

there? Everytime I see what the stage, Leanne, you talk about taking

doctors and nurses from poorer countries and bringing them to

Wales. Is that morally right, that these countries spend large amounts

of their money to train doctors and nurses in and of developed countries

and we come along and cherry pick them because we fancy a doctor? Is

that morally right? I'm not necessarily talking about taking

them from poorer countries. There are doctors in the EU, in other

countries. We've already in some cases gone to Spain and recruited

doctors from Spain. There are doctors who are unemployed as I

understand it in countries like Greece as well. So the point is we

don't have enough doctors. Ideally I would want to be having to look for

our doctors overseas, but we don't have them in Wales. So what do we

do? Do we say to people, you can't have a Doctor's are appointment for

two months. No, we have to try to plug the gap. It takes a long time

to train a doctor. If you introduced a new medical school, trained that

doctor from scratch, you still have a gap to plug. We've had a Welsh

Assembly for nearly 20 years. What's been happening all this time? Labour

has been running it. Let's take a point there.

APPLAUSE The gentleman at the back. I'd like

to thank Leanne for asking that question and I'd like to thank

Leanne over here for the way she answered it. Leanne, would you say

that on balance immigration benefits Wales, and also could you say what

you think of those people who already are trying to link

immigration, disgracefully, with terrorism?

APPLAUSE I've heard some quite concerning

statements from some politicians who should know better on that front and

I would say what has happened in Manchester is horrific, but if we

allow ourselves to be divided, if we turn on those people in our

communities who are from a Muslim background, then the terrorists have

won. And we should not allow that to happen. We have to remain united, we

have to stand together. I've heard scores of Muslims talking on the TV

and the radio about how a Boruc they find these attacks and I stand in

solidarity with those Muslims in our communities who want to work with as

to stop that -- how Iborra and they find these attacks. Let's remember

something on this, those people who carry out those atrocities they

don't like women in politics. They wouldn't want to see a female leader

of a political party. They don't like people going to music concerts.

So we should make absolutely sure that we continue with our politics,

our uniting politics, where we stamp out division and we should also go

to music concerts. APPLAUSE

We'll take a couple of points that, one in the front, and moved to the

next question. Come up with this shadowy thing is if we're going to

lose EU citizens from the NHS. Nobody has suggested that, ever. So

you are just raising it as a thing that doesn't really exist. What do

you think ending freedom of movement means then? It means people will

have to apply and it means there will be equality with people coming

from Europe or people coming from Africa or Australia, which there is

not at the moment. The point is we are already finding it difficult to

attract doctors. Do you think a message that says you are not

welcome here will help doctors? Is no question of that. You've invented

that. No, I'm sorry, I've spoken to people who have moved here from

other European countries who are now going home. They are leaving here

because they don't feel well come anymore. You have worried them. Oh,

come on. The gentleman at the back and the lady, the gentleman in the

yellow at the back. I'm a qualified doctor who has come over from -- I

know a qualified doctor from Libya, he lectures at university and

unfortunately hay are to work in McDonald's which there are rules

that allow him to doctor in Libya, but not in Wales. There are willing

-- there are people who are willing to help but there are rules. Amat

Assyrian who had come here, a qualified doctor, not allowed to

practice as a doctor because he was an asylum seeker. The gentleman. A

surgery up the road was closed in 2315 because they couldn't get the

doctors and the surgery I go to has taken 1000 patients on in the last

12 months, because this place has closed. It's not sustainable. We've

got to have doctors in our NHS. Thank you very much, we will move on

to our next question. APPLAUSE

Which comes to light from Sean. What will you do and your party to make

Brexiter success? We've published a positive post-Brexit plan. I'm not

going to pull the wool over your eyes, I was a Remainer and I

campaigned for remain vote, but we accepted the results on the day that

it was announced and we haven't gone back on that. We've worked quite

hard to come up with a set of ideas and proposals to try and make sure

that when we leave the European Union, Wales can make a success of

it and find the opportunities. The key thing for us is jobs. There are

200,000 jobs at the moment that are reliant upon tariff free access to

the European Union. It is vital that we safeguard those jobs. But it's

not just enough to defend what we've got in terms of jobs, we also have

to create the conditions to have better employment. It's an absolute

scandal that wages Wales are 10% behind the UK average. The jobs that

we have here in the future have to be well paid jobs, but it's no good

creating additional jobs, if we lose the jobs that we already have. So

jobs and the economy is at the centre of our positive post-Brexit

plan. There are opportunities potentially through procurement, for

example. Plaid Cymru has talked quite a lot over many years about

the benefits of spending public money, public contracts, on small,

local firms in Wales, so that money is circulated in local economies.

There have been some rules restricting public procurement

happening at a local level through the European Union, so it may well

be that in the future we have more opportunities to buy more local from

the public purse. You sound pretty enthusiastic about Brexit now. Yes,

there was a vote, but your MP still voted against Article 50, triggering

the whole process. What has changed since February and made you now

pro-Brexit? You were easy as did about the opportunities, which

clearly you couldn't see a year ago. Well, the MPs voted against the

triggering of Article 50 because they didn't want to give the Prime

Minister a blank cheque. Now times have moved on. It's quite clear that

at that point we were hoping that we could maintain a relationship with

the single market. That's become less clear. Theresa May has been

talking more about a hard Brexit. So things have moved on and it's pretty

clear that is happening. It's definitely going to take place. So

it's our job as the party of Wales to try and find whatever

opportunities we can in this situation. I'm still in a position

where I would have preferred to remain vote. But we are where we

are. Let's go to the audience. Anyone else made that journey, who

were in favour of remaining? Greenberg in the farmers' subsidies,

where is it going to come from? It has to come from Westminster. That's

a joke, will they do that? As it stands, no, they won't, but that's

why we need a strong team of Plaid Cymru MPs elected. Since the

referendum Wales has been largely ignored. Gibraltar has had more

mentions than we have here. That situation will continue if we do

what we have always done and continue to elect a number of Labour

MPs. It's only by having strong Plaid Cymru MPs will have our voice

heard. The Scots have a strong voice, what about Wales? Are we

going to have a strong voice ourselves? You are talking about

subsidies from Europe. Who we are looking at it from a Welsh

perspective, it's not the case we get more back. We get more of a

benefit. Then you are saying you don't trust the government. I don't.

We have to trust the government. Not many people I know in Wales would

trust the Tories. The gentleman on the end? We talk blog about farming

subsidies, certainly, but once we the European Union knowing we only

produce about 60% of our needs for food in the United Kingdom, surely

there will be a new UK market for Welsh produce, Welsh lamb, and it's

an opportunity to build and Wales within the United Kingdom. Great,

it's a great opportunity. APPLAUSE

. I've not seen any plans on the government that tells me that Welsh

agriculture is a concern for them. They are more concerned about the

City of London. They are not even thinking about the needs of Wales.

That's what concerns me. Our final question for Leanne Wood this

evening, from Tom. Would Plaid have a proportion of MPs, what impact can

the party have in Westminster? The maximum number of MPs could be 40,

if we had 40 MPs we would be an extremely strong voice for Wales.

What's important to remember is that Westminster is made up of a majority

of seats from England. 82% of all the seats there are from England. If

you look at it from that perspective we are always going to be small. But

if you look at the influence and the voice that Scotland has had since

electing 50 odd MPs in 2015, then they've made sure that Scotland's

needs are articulated and the Scottish national interest is on the

agenda in Westminster. That's what we have to do as well. Your economy

has macro economy spokesman has talked about eight seats. Is that

what you're expecting? I haven't had a number on it. I'd like to have 40

MPs, obviously. I'm not going to put a number on it. We are going all-out

to win as many seats as we can. The more seats we have, the bigger voice

Wales will have. If you make any gains and you return three, what is

your future? I was elected as a long-term project to build up Wales

and get us to the point where we can take decisions for ourselves and

that project is still got a long way to go.

APPLAUSE Very briefly, at the front.

INAUDIBLE . Very quickly, wherein a last

minute of the programme. Your approach to getting more young

people involved and having their voices heard, we've got some young

people from Bridgend here. What would the view of Plaid Cymru B of

that? Decisions are being made about your

future and you will be living longest with them. It is vital that

young people get involved in politics. I would like them to have

the vote at 16 but voting is not enough. We need to get involved,

pressure politicians, write letters, get on the internet, use social

media, do what you can to make your voice heard. It is really important.

That was Leanne Wood. Thank you very much. Don't forget, you can join the

debate. If you would like to leave the podium, that is it. You can

debate tonight on social media. Tomorrow night we will be joined by

the leader of the Labour Party in Wales, Carwyn Jones, and the leader

of the Welsh Liberal Democrats, Mark Williams. But now, please welcome

the leader of Ukip in the Welsh Assembly, Neil Hamilton.

Our first question to Mr Hamilton tonight comes from Darren Thomas.

Would a tougher immigration policy prevent another

Well, no, a tougher immigration policy wouldn't necessarily prevent

another terrorist attack, quite obviously, because this

was one individual and no immigration policy is going to be

able to keep out all terrorists, and this particular one anyway

So terrorism is an issue which is only tangential to immigration.

The immigration, the terrorism problem, will perhaps

I mean, we've lived with it for 50 years.

I was a minister in Northern Ireland in the 1990s, so I lived

And this is a particular problem within the Muslim community,

So whilst firm control of immigration is absolutely

essential, for a variety of reasons, I don't think that the terrorist

element of it is the principal reason for controlling it.

What would you do to prevent attacks like this?

You've mentioned them in your manifesto today.

You're talking about 20,000 extra troops, you're talking about seven

extra prison officers, four extra border guards.

It is a lot of money, but we have the Brexit

We have said that we will cut the foreign aid budget by 10 billion

a year and devote that money to other causes within

the UK, whether it's the health service or...

Well, you've spent it on the NHS, haven't you?

No, no, if you look at the Ukip manifesto,

which you'll find on the web, you will see that all our spending

promises are fully costed and justified in terms

of the spending reductions which we are obtaining

So our sums add up, unlike the sums of all the other parties.

The Labour Party thinks that money grows on trees and you can just make

spending promises without saying where the money comes from.

The Tories are saying, oh, well, we don't need to balance the budget

as quickly as we originally said, we can now push it up,

not to the end of this Parliament, into the middle of the next

So Ukip is the only party whose sums add up.

Thank you, let's take a few points on terrorism and tackling terrorism.

On security, do you think that more powers should be

devolved to the police, military and security services

Whereby a more enhanced stop and search policy or maybe searching

of people's properties on a wider scale?

We're not talking one house, maybe go to a crucial area that

needs to be done and we search and clear those houses.

Do you think that sort of anti-counter-terrorism would work?

Well, I certainly think that the police's stop and search

They've been very significantly cut back in recent years.

We've got to have effective policing and we will never get on top

of terrorism if we don't have effective policing.

You've got to give the forces of law and order the tools to do the job.

We can't just take the view that somehow or other this

is going to evaporate for reasons beyond our control.

Clearly, this is going to be a massive problem

for the whole of western society for the indefinite future

and we have to give the people who are tasked with the job

of keeping us as safe as we possibly can be,

we've got to give them the tools to do the job.

The lady in the black and white at the front.

Do you think it's about time that we were all treated the same,

instead of we can't do that because we may upset their culture?

If they do something wrong they should be punished

You've got somebody putting a poppy on to a mosque, you get six months.

You get somebody burning a poppy, he gets told off.

Well, obviously everyone, everybody should be equal before

the law and there shouldn't be any favouritism either for or against

and people should be penalised for factors

which are beyond their control, whether it's their race

or religion or whatever, but also people

I think there has grown up in recent years a culture

of political correctness, which means there's certain things

can't be fully discussed and I think part of the problem

with Islamophobia today in Western society is the people feel that

we've not been able honestly to discuss the problems

that undoubtedly exist within the Muslim community.

There is a strand of Islam which is extreme and fundamentalists,

who don't believe that women have any place in society,

for example, and, well, somebody says a 20%.

It doesn't matter how tiny the percentage is,

it clearly has a dramatic and disastrous effect.

The views espoused by the person who was responsible

for the disgraceful, disgusting outrage in Manchester

a few days ago is somebody who believes in fundamentalist Islam

and of course the overwhelming majority of Muslims are just

as outraged by this as anybody else, but until we actually deal

with the particular problems that exist within that religion and no

other in Western society, let's be honest about this,

it is solely within Islam, this is something which will never

OK, others disagree about other religions, but there we go, let's

It's not a problem within the Muslim community,

A problem in Manchester, we had a vigil in Bridgend last

We shouldn't tar them, every Muslim, with the same brush.

Did I not say a moment ago that the overwhelming majority

of Muslims are just as outraged by those events

as we are ourselves, but when you look at

all the suicide bombers in

recent years, I mean, how many of them are not

Islamists of an extreme and fundamentalist kind?

Don't you think that antiterrorism needs to

A lot of these people committing terrorism,

unfortunately young men, are disillusioned and there have

been people in Cardiff that have gone off to Syria and Libya.

Schools are very reluctant to talk about terrorism.

Is there anything we can do to get people into schools

to educate people who may be vulnerable on social media and stuff

This is nothing whatever to do with education.

These are people who believe that God tells

them they have to kill infidels, that is people who are not

So they also blow up Muslims in other parts of

the world too, deliberately, because they are different strand of that

This is a religious problem and it has to be dealt with

I'd just like to make the point that the

thing that most terrorists have had in common in recent years, be they

Muslim or Irish, is that they are all male,

and I don't think that is

You are saying that you are putting Muslims in one box, but

you are not looking at the wider issue,

that Irish terrorism and

Do you think that all males should be

stopped and searched, just like Muslims?

The question was about the terrorism

This is a particular problem which needs to be solved now.

But it's a point of principle, isn't it?

Are you particularly as a party tending to target the Muslim

We are not targeting the Muslim community, but the

problem exists only within the Muslim community.

On the contrary, on the contrary, we are not

This suicide bomber was a fundamentalist Muslim.

All suicide bombers have been fundamentalist Muslims.

We are targeting the root cause of the problem.

I'm very far from saying that all Muslims believe in

killing people for religious reasons.

But if we try and pretend that this is

not a problem within this particular religion,

then I'm afraid we're never going to get to the root of

Should immigrants to Wales adopt our culture and language, or

should we accept that they want to keep their own?

Well, I'm very much in favour of people who come to

Wales learning the Welsh language and immersing themselves in the

That applies as much to English people.

Just to be clear, should that be compulsory then for

immigrants coming into Wales, that they have to learn Welsh?

No, of course it shouldn't be compulsory,

but I'm saying this would be a desirable thing to happen.

We now have a policy in schools that everybody has to learn Welsh up

to the age of 16 and I think that is quite right.

When I was in school, I had a choice when I was 14

whether I wanted to continue to learn Welsh or learn

So for me, it's now actually a source of regret that I didn't

continue with my Welsh studies then, so I could make a passable speech

You are getting to the principle of, if immigrants into England

have to learn English, if you're moving into a community

which is Welsh speaking, and jeopardising potentially

the cohesion and culture of the community, should

Is it the same principle, or do you see it as different?

I don't think you can make it compulsory that I do think it's

desirable to encourage people to learn the benefits

You get so much more out of life if you do.

Fortunately, in my lifetime, I have seen a recovery of interest

in the Welsh language and support for the Welsh language.

In the 1960s, it was going in the other direction.

Now there is a cross-party consensus in the Senedd,

that we do want to see a million Welsh speakers by 2050 if we can

And we are providing the tools and the means of doing that.

Just back to the question, were you getting at multiculturalism?

You were mentioning maybe getting at the proposal to ban the niqab

It's just for anybody, English, Scottish, from whatever country,

we are a minority people in Wales and it's very important

that we keep our culture and language going, isn't it?

If we're going to have more immigration, there

is the risk that it can be diminished, isn't it?

If you meant the wider question of immigrants coming from different

cultures outside the United Kingdom into it, particularly the problems

of integration that we see in other parts of the United Kingdom,

then I think it is of vital importance that we get

It's an unfortunate feature of the Muslim community

that there are a very substantial proportion of Muslim woman,

towards a quarter, who have very little command of English

And we will never get proper integration unless we do something

The lady in the red, first, followed by the lady

That must be me, then, who can't speak English.

I've been to school, been to college, got a degree.

I do speak very well English, thank you very much.

I don't understand the point you are making.

I said that academic studies tell us that about a quarter of Muslim women

do not have good language skills in English.

And I'm saying it would be better for integration if this

OK, let's take the lady in the back in the black and white, please.

I'm the proud daughter of a Welsh immigrant.

My Welsh immigrant grandmother never learned to speak

English very well, but she was very proud of being in Wales.

She didn't believe it was just defined

That's true, it isn't just defined by language, you're

But I do think the language is a very important part of

Wales' history and culture and languages should be nurtured.

I think the literature and poetry of Wales is very significant.

The point I wanted to make is there is a

very long tradition of immigrants to Wales.

And many of us here are the children of

immigrants to Wales Irish, Spanish, Welsh.

The lady in the back there, thank you.

You think of the Italian cafes, but under Labour, immigration just

A point here, the gentleman in the jacket.

What do you suggest we do to encourage more

integration then, because you say a quarter of Muslim women

Well, it's a very difficult problem to solve, you can't compel people to

do what they don't want to do and if there are male dominated

societies that isolate themselves within our

own wider culture it's going to be very difficult.

Obviously over time I imagine there will be greater

integration, but we need to have a much greater

I think it's got to come from within the Muslim community itself.

Mr Hamilton, if I can just interrupt you, because...

Part of the silver lining of outrages like the one we

had in Manchester this week is that the obvious sense of outrage

that the Muslim community by and large

feels itself will lead to a further desire to try and improve

You just said, Mr Hamilton, you can't force

people to do what they don't want to do.

Your party wants to force Muslim women, who want to wear the niqab,

who want to wear the hijab, from doing so.

Well, this is true, you can force people to change the

But that's exactly what you're doing, you are

forcing them to do something they don't want to.

That is only a very small part of the problem.

The veil actually is a barrier not just to

integration, but also to treating women, I think,

in a way which frees them from the confines

of what I personally regard as anachronistic views

have you done any kind of survey with the Muslim women who apparently

I think that was very presumptuous, you

paint this group of women in a bad light.

The second point is it's just as bad for

a garment to be forced on a woman as it is for one to be forced off.

We have rules about dress which are enforced by law.

We can't simply strip off all our clothes and walk

Sorry, Mr Hamilton, can we take one from the

I'm not going to respond to your point about what I

should or shouldn't wear, because I don't think

you deserve it really, but I just wanted to say...

Now that we are leaving the European Union...

Now that we are leaving the European Union and Ukip

have fulfilled their only goal, do you think your party has focused on

targeting the Muslim community to keep yourselves relevant and keep

I'll repeat what I said to you earlier on.

We are not targeting the Muslim community.

All we've heard this evening is about Muslims.

I haven't come here to make a speech about Islam, I've come here to

respond to your questions and I'm giving you honest answers.

That's something I think we should welcome.

Leaving the EU isn't our only policy.

Our manifesto today, which has a range of policies

throughout the whole breadth and length of the issues which have

You say you will provide honest answers.

Let's get our next question, which tonight comes from Steve Bray.

How can a referendum based on lies and

exaggerations be a clear mandate to leave the EU?

Even Farage said if it was 52-48, he wanted another

I take it you are a Remainer, possibly.

And I'm sure you'll find people on the other side

of the argument who will say your side of the campaign

I think this is not the way in which... So you did tell lies? No,

I'm not. You just said, tell lies as well. I said you will find both

sides of the argument, people will sell they were telling lies. Sorry?

I did not say... Excuse me, excuse me, you are misrepresenting my view.

I did not say, I did not say and I want to say this clearly to you, as

an impartial presenter this evening, I did not say that those who are on

the other side of the argument were necessarily telling lies. Some did,

some didn't. Your lies divided the nation. I resent this. I didn't tell

lies in the referendum campaign. Your party's lies have divided the

nation. Nor did my party tell lies. The trouble with people like you is

you can't accept the result of a democratic vote.

APPLAUSE OK, thank you very much. Thank you.

BOOING. Thank you very much, thank you, sir. OK. Thank you very much.

Enjoy. Thank you. Your next contribution. I know what I shall do

with it. Mr Hamilton, the words on the bus, the ?350 million a week for

the health service, do you stand by that figure? I didn't put those

words on that particular buzz, but it's possible to spend an extra ?350

million on the health service. It's up to the British government. The

people you elect and can dismiss if you don't like the decisions they

take, this Brexit dividend of ?18 billion a year is available now to

your elected politicians to decide what to do with. Not unelected

people in Brussels, whom you can't even name, let alone vote for or

dismiss. The European Commission... The European Commission... Let him

answer. The European Commission are 28 appointed technocrats, who when

they get to Brussels have to renounce any national interest. They

are not voted for by a single person in the EU. They are appointees. You

can't dismiss them. You can't have any effective complaint against

their decisions. APPLAUSE

I'm amazed that the Remainers are so careless of the democratic rights

which our people have fought and died for over the last few hundred

years. Concentrating on what's going on in the future now. It's been

cast, the vote has been cast. More young people in Wales voted to leave

the EU than in most of the parts of the country. It's about time we

forgot about this and moved on with the business in hand. Especially

when we've got so much in hand that we need to deal with and we need to

concentrate on. There's no time to talk about any of this anymore. We

need to move on. Thank you very much. The gentleman there and the

lady. With no respect -- disrespect to the lady over there, I'm married

to an ethnic, but I hope it never happens, but I hope we never see

somebody coming out in the street with a burka and a man underneath

it. OK, let's move on to the lady in the spots, please. Thank you, Mr

Hamilton just stated we Remainers, I know I'm a Remainer, are not

accepting the result of the referendum. I didn't say that. Nigel

Farage said before the referendum that unless there was a 75% turnout

and 60% of those people voted to remain, he would not accept the

result of the referendum and would push for another referendum. Was he

right? No, he wasn't right. Next question. The gentleman here and

there. We were when you've talked about democracy and the democratic

process. You've been routed in every election in the last couple of years

and you will be in this one. What will be your next party? Where will

you be next year? Can I answer that. You've spoken about the dividend.

Where is this dividend come from? Where is the income coming from?

There's nothing guaranteed. There's no money guaranteed. You are

spending hundreds of billions of pounds. You've been announcing

spending hundreds of billions of pounds, but you've got no guarantee

of a single penny coming in after Brexit. Well, we pay... West the

money coming from? British taxpayers up the money, 18 billion a year...

Can I answer? Please let him answer. British taxpayers the European Union

18 billion a year of our money for the European Union commissioners to

dispense -- to decide how to spend. 8 billion of that is spent European

farmers, for example, outside of the United Kingdom. 10 billion comes

back in one shape or form but your politicians here do not decide on

the priorities for that spending. After we leave, the whole of that

?18 billion is available to the British government to decide how to

spend. I have said that every single penny... We won't have any income.

People won't be paying income tax because they will be out of work.

This is nonsense. Where are the markets? You are confusing to

issues. We haven't got any. Britain is the fifth-largest economy in

world. At the moment it is, because we're in the European Union! The

fifth largest economy in the world and 7% only of our GDP, 7% of our

GDP, is accounted for by exports to the European Union. We're not going

to build a wall... 60% of the jobs... Do you want, peer? -- do you

want to come up here? As I said... Very briefly. The British economy is

the fifth largest in the world. Only 7% of our national income is...

Thank you very much. Shall we take a vote in the audience? One point. I'm

a law student and I'm not hearing much mention of anything to do with

this money we are getting back to do with tuition fees. Where do UKIP

stand on that? As a devolved issue. It's a devolved issue but UKIP

believes tuition fees should be remitted for those studying science,

technology and medicine and our aim would be over the period of

Parliament or more, if economic Dec circumstances permit that, to extend

it to all students. Our last question, from Vincent Cawthorne.

We've been good evening, Neil. My question is very brief. A precis of

what I submitted earlier. UKIP appears unfortunately to be have

become the United Kingdom Irrelevance Party. Can you please

explain how UKIP is going to be able to cope and move forwards without

Nigel Farage? Well, that's a separate issue again. In policy

terms, of course we have a perfectly good leader in Paul Nuttall, but

what matters, what matters what role does UKIP having a post-Brexit

Britain? UKIP's achievement in getting Britain out of the EU is

extraordinary, considering that we never even elected an MP to

Westminster before the referendum and the Tories would never have

granted a referendum in the first place but for UKIP breathing down

their necks. UKIP has been absolutely pivotal in securing a

vote to leave the EU. If we can do that without any MPs, think what we

could do with MPs. You no longer have MPs. You've lost 145

councillors in the local elections recently. No councillors in Wales.

The show is over now for UKIP, isn't it? It certainly isn't.

APPLAUSE We have members in the National

Assembly of Wales, in Cardiff, and we are on our feet every single day

when its meeting, participating in the debates and all the things that

matter to the people of Wales. In this UK election, which doesn't

principally concerned devolved issues of course, we have policies

that none of the other parties will espouse, like putting an extra 10

billion into the health service from cuts to overseas aid, getting rid of

Reims taxes to reduce everybody's electricity bills by scrapping

subsidies on windmills and so many other policies. Do you miss Nigel

Farage? I do miss Nigel Farage. Like him or loathe him, there's no

politician who has had a big impact on the British process in the

last... Neil Hamilton, thank you very much and our audience here,

that's it tonight. Thank you to Leanne Wood. Join us again tomorrow,

when we'll hear from Labour and the Liberal Democrats. From all of us

here, nos da, good night. APPLAUSE

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