Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Lord Empey Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Byford]

My Lords, I apologise for the fact that, for health reasons, I could not unfortunately participate in Committee. I also send my best wishes to the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, who certainly is a great fighter on behalf of these matters. We do not always agree, and on this occasion I do not agree with this amendment. I know there were powerful contributions in Committee and, had I been here, I would have raised one or two points.

As the noble Baroness has just said, the introduction of the minimum wage has altered the way we look at things. The Agricultural Wages Board came in many years ago and fulfilled a very necessary function, but nowadays many agricultural workers are paid well above the minimum wage because what farmers are looking for these days are skilled workers, not just people to do menial jobs, as they used to. The wages that people were paid in those days reflected that. The noble Baroness, Lady Quin, will remember, as a former Minister, the various difficulties that one has to go through to qualify for many of the jobs that one has to do on a farm. Clearly farmers are not looking for the same skills as before, so I do not support her amendment, but there are a couple of points that I would be grateful if she would pick up from me. She mentioned that the National Farmers’ Union is, on the whole, in favour of the board. It will have explained its reasons and she will know those very clearly. I do not agree with her that the abolition of this board will drive wages down for the reason that I have already indicated: the needs of agriculture in today’s modern world.

According to the Foresight report that came out in January, which I have had the pleasure of reading, the thrust in the future is to produce more food to feed the world. Therefore, we need to raise the profile of agriculture for those coming into the industry and those who are already there, and we need to pay them well. Those whom I have been in contact with are well aware that we normally pay above the minimum wage. For the benefit of newer Members, I remind the House of my family’s farming interests, although sadly, for various reasons, we do not employ anyone ourselves now but have contracts with our neighbouring farmer. There were certainly low wages and long hours in the past, and the long hours continue, but during the winter in the quieter season workers are quite rightly paid for when they are not so busy. The agricultural working week, if you look at it over a year, is very different from the working week of someone who works in an office from nine until five.

The noble Baroness said that the abolition of the board would not save much money. If her Government had dealt with the problem, we might not have to save money now, but that is another point. How much has the board cost over the past 10 years, for example? I hope she has that sort of response for me. She expressed her concerns about the relationship between those employing people on the farm and the workers themselves. Nowadays that relationship is much closer than it was in the old days, for the various reasons I have given. I hope that she will be able to fill in the gaps because I missed the detailed discussions in Committee, and that, once she has heard the Minister’s and other noble Lords’ responses, she will think again about the amendment.

[Lord Empey]

My Lords, we are not going to get consistency throughout the United Kingdom on this because in Northern Ireland we have already decided to abolish our Agricultural Wages Board. The reason for that in no way challenges the arguments put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Quin. A variety of things have collided here—not only the activities of the Low Pay Commission but the problems in the industry arising in different areas: for instance, the activities of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority and the fact that many part-time workers were being brought in, a number of whom we felt were being exploited. As Employment Minister, I was charged with bringing in special measures. We found that the best way of dealing with this was within the framework of national law, with particular emphasis on the Low Pay Commission. We found that many part-time workers, even if they were not indigenous, as many of them were not, were undoubtedly being abused in the contracts to which they were being asked to work, even being forced to pay for temporary accommodation, the cost of which was deducted from their wages by some unscrupulous agents. We introduced a law to prevent that.

The profile of the industry where I come from is different, because many more farmers today are part time. As the noble Baroness has just stipulated, very few people can employ workers in the same way as in the past. Given the difference in profile—the fact that farms tend to be either part time or much larger and much more sophisticated organisations—we feel that, although the agricultural wages boards as originally envisaged had a good and valid purpose, time has moved on and the profile of the sector today is radically different. The bodies have a very proud track record and we all strongly support what they have done, but, as with so many of the other bodies that we will discuss later today and on other occasions, time has moved on. We feel, and felt, that other measures that would bring the sector more into the mainstream of employment generally would make more sense in today’s world, because fewer people are employed in the sector and there are fewer farms, which have a totally different profile from the profile of those that were previously envisaged. However strongly the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, might feel about their amendment, I can say only that, in our circumstances, we looked at it and came to the conclusion that the time had come to move on.

[Lord Newton of Braintree]

My Lords, perhaps I may chip in as a mere layman, and a former MP for a constituency that looked as though it was rural, just to support the previous two speeches. In passing, I may say that I really would not want to accept the noble Baroness’s description of my Front-Bench colleagues as stubborn, obdurate and wanting to settle old scores in relation to the amendment. That might turn out to be true in relation to others, but I am not sure that I would regard it as such in relation to this amendment.

As I said, I was a Member of Parliament in an area that looked as though it was rural. It had a lot of farmers 36 years ago—I was elected in 1974. Even then, although the numbers would have been down, a lot of people worked on farms. By the time I left, very few people worked on farms, certainly in eastern England, where it is heavily arable and a lot of people do not have or want animals. What one had were vast, Rolls-Royce-type pieces of equipment that needed highly skilled, trained people, as my noble friend pointed out, to operate them. Frankly, in a part of the country such as that, with modern farming—it is probably different in some other parts of the country—this whole thing has an antique feel about it compared with the circumstances in which the boards were set up. So I have some sympathy with my noble friends.