Lord Colgrain
Main Page: Lord Colgrain (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
Lord Colgrain (Con)
My Lords, Kent is the garden of England. Its fruit and vegetable growers are market leaders and are now being joined by English wine growers in being held in increasingly high esteem. All these producers are being crippled by the restrictions of the seasonal workers scheme.
It is missing the point to say that English workers can fill the void. They cannot, as has been ably demonstrated by the training schemes of the like of the admirable Thanet Earth organisation, where after good teaching and with good pay prospects, English trainees wither on the vine and fail to stay the course. Mechanisation and automation are also not the panacea they are made out to be—at least not for a few years yet. Can the noble Baroness try to apply further pressure to ensure that the numbers in the seasonal workers scheme can be increased? Without the provision of more pickers, many of our admirable market-leading producers will be unwilling to invest and will cease to be competitive.
In my view, the Australian trade deal will prove to be most unhelpful for British beef producers. When, according to the NFU, the cost of Australian beef production is around two and a half times less than for the UK, it is not surprising that the Australian trade negotiators could not believe how easily the British Government were rolled over in their eagerness to get one run on the new trade deals scoreboard. The 10-year implementation period will allow the mist of time to descend to disguise how awkward this trade deal will be for all future British Governments.
The recent decision by Asda to suspend the purchase of British beef in favour of Irish—a quick-turnaround decision made on cost alone—shows how exposed the industry is to cost pressures. Can the Minister give any assurance that the same high standards of animal welfare, environmental protection demands and haulage time limitations, all of which are being imposed on and willingly met by British producers, will be monitored and adhered to in Australia and New Zealand? What power of sanction can she realistically suggest that the Government of the day will have to exercise should any such failings be identified?