Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill

Debate between Baroness Byford and Lord Howarth of Newport

Wednesday 16th January 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, I always listen to the noble Lord, Lord Plumb, on matters of agriculture and, indeed, on other matters with the greatest respect, as do all noble Lords, but the fact is that my noble friend Lord Whitty has made some very powerful points indeed about what the impact of this policy is all too likely to be on agricultural workers.

I want to make only two brief points; they are both about process. The Government have tabled this amendment in order to remove a provision from the Public Bodies Act. The effect of tabling this amendment to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill is to undo what Parliament quite recently legislated in the Public Bodies Act. Only two days ago, the Opposition tabled an amendment to the Electoral Registration and Administration Bill and the House approved it. It had the effect of altering a provision in the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act, and there was the most almighty hullaballoo and complaint from the Government—the Conservative Party, certainly—in the House. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, waxed eloquent in saying:

“Where does it put this House in the eyes of the people should the Committee choose to pass the amendment? We will not be seen, as we would choose to be seen, as the guardians of constitutional propriety”.—[Official Report, 14/1/13; col. 520.]

He said that the amendment would damage, “the delicate constitutional underpinning” of the relationship between the two Houses. He also said that,

“there are great dangers in that”.—[Official Report, 14/1/13; col. 522.]

I can only conclude that all that complaint about the constitutional impropriety of what the Opposition were doing was humbug.

I make no further comment on that, but I want to make a comment on the process that the Government have adopted in introducing the measure as they are now doing. I am told that they allowed only one week for consultation in Wales. I had the privilege of representing a Welsh constituency in the House of Commons and among my constituents were a number of agricultural workers. Any Member of Parliament representing a Welsh constituency is very well aware of the fragility and vulnerability of employment in the agricultural sector in Wales, which deals with very difficult conditions of all kinds. What is at stake in the policy represented in the amendment which the Government tabled is the incomes of agricultural workers. As my noble friend Lord Whitty said, they are poorly paid and in fragile employment. It is simply wrong to consult for no more than a week on a matter of such grave importance to those who would be affected by it. It is wrong and inhumane, and the Committee must deprecate in the strongest possible terms the way in which the Government have proceeded on this.

[Baroness Byford]

I would like to take the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, back to 2000 when we had a long debate on the CROW Act. Why do I refer to that? I do so because he has suggested that this bit has been slipped into another Bill. The CROW Act was four different Acts in one Act. The last bit dealt with areas of outstanding natural beauty. It went through the whole of the Commons before that bit was printed up at all. It then came to this House, and I was sitting opposite the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, when he introduced it formally at Second Reading. I said to him clearly at the time that I was not prepared to go into the Committee stage before we had that legislation before us to consider it as a whole Bill. So I think that his protesting too much about how this part of the Bill is being introduced is a little rich.