Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Debate between Viscount Eccles and Baroness Quin

Wednesday 1st December 2010 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Eccles]

My Lords, I reinforce the argument made by my noble friend. I drove a tractor some time ago—1943, I think it was. Whether I was underage I will leave the House to decide. I remember that we were very happy if we got 30 hundredweights an acre. We stooped it, then it was put in a stack, and it was then thrashed by a threshing machine that came around at about this time of the year.

Today, you have a computer-controlled combine harvester that does the whole thing on its own. It is about two and a half times the width of the old cutters that we used to have. I will gamble that there are very few farmers that own one of those combines. There are some in Norfolk, in the grain area of the east of England, but in my part of England—in north Yorkshire—none of the farmers owns their own combine harvester. The contractors own it—and they do the potatoes as well. There are no labourers left in north Yorkshire in agriculture. No such person exists any longer. If there is not a skill, then you cannot employ anybody in agriculture in north Yorkshire—I am not sure about north Scotland.

I contend that—never mind the £8-something—you will not get that combine driven by anyone paid anything less than £10 an hour. The statistics that I would like to understand are the actual wages in agriculture today, because—believe you me—they do not bear much relationship either to the minimum wage or to the wages that were set on 1 October by the board which we are discussing.

[Baroness Quin]

My Lords, I, too, support strongly the amendment and pay tribute to the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, introduced this debate. It has been an interesting and powerful debate, and noble Lords from around the House have certainly brought their experience to bear on this issue. We even had the personal experience of my noble friend Lord Clark of Windermere, who, at an earlier stage in his career, was affected by the decisions of the agricultural wages board.

We were reminded by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, that the board, in one form or another, was established a long time ago—in 1924—and has been a tried and tested institution. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, also referred, as I think did the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, to industrial action. Happily there has not been industrial action in the agricultural industry since 1923—significantly, the year immediately before the establishment of the board. However, I support the agricultural wages board not simply because it has been here for a long time. The Minister misquoted me in our last debate when he said that I had said at some point,

“that everything should continue as it is just because it always has existed in the past”.—[Official Report, 29/11/10; col. 1360.]

I can assure him that I have never said anything remotely like that, and I am very often persuaded of the need for all kinds of change. I hope, after what has been said today, particularly by my noble friends and by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, that the Government will think again about the decision to abolish the agricultural wages board. I think they should reconsider it very seriously indeed in the light of this discussion.

A number of noble Lords mentioned consultation, and there certainly has been next to no consultation on this decision. The Minister, in answer to a Written Question from me, said:

“No specific consultation was undertaken prior to the decision to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board”.—[Official Report, 26/10/10; col. WA 245.]

It is my understanding that the Welsh Assembly Government criticised their notification of this as being totally inadequate; they were given one week to respond. Indeed, in an answer to a Question from the former Defra Secretary of State in the other place, Hilary Benn, again the lack of consultation was clearly evident. Given that the agricultural wages board has been a very long-standing feature of our economic and agricultural landscape, to have no consultation is very serious indeed.