Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill

Debate between Viscount Younger of Leckie and Lord Knight of Weymouth

Wednesday 16th January 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

The important thing to remember is that these legal entitlements for the agricultural sector apply regardless of whether your wages are at or above the minimum level set by the Agricultural Wages Board. These entitlements—for one and a half the usual rate for overtime, for example—are there regardless of what you are paid. That is an entitlement in law and we should protect it. I think that it is a good thing for us as parliamentarians to protect these minimum standards for workers, which would go if the Government were successful with their amendment to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board.

Unfortunately, some people do not act as responsibly as the noble Lords who have spoken and declared their interests as farmers. I point to the case of Chris Blakeney of Marden Management Ltd, who has just recently been in court in Swindon, where he changed his plea to guilty in respect of his activities as a gangmaster supplying 500 workers to farms across the country from his base in Calne. There are bad people around exploiting workers. When this protection goes, that exploitation is likely to grow.

A good argument has been made on this side of the Committee for the retention of the Agricultural Wages Board. What about the arguments against? I looked at the letter from the noble Lord, Lord Marland, the noble Viscount’s predecessor, to my noble friend Lord Stevenson on 19 December, when this amendment was announced. I note the manuscript amendment to the letter written by the noble Lord, Lord Marland, in which he said, “I reluctantly agreed to this—decision above my unpaid grade!”. That clearly suggests that the noble Viscount’s predecessor thought that this was all a bit dodgy. I would be interested to know whether the noble Viscount agrees with his predecessor about the dodginess of this amendment.

I then looked at the letter from the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, whom I am pleased to see in his place. I think that we have answered most of the questions. The noble Viscount repeated the notion that this will improve employment but, as we have said, the impact assessment—on page 19, in paragraph ii, headed “Employment”—says:

“This effect is highly uncertain, and may therefore not be significantly different from zero”.

The Government anticipate no employment effect at all.

We have heard the arguments around whether agriculture is unique—people take different views on that. We have also heard the concerns about consultation. The lack of consultation on the amendment is truly shocking, given that 154,000 workers are directly covered by it. Four weeks’ consultation is completely inadequate for such a measure. There is then the problem of the number of people who were not included in the list of consultees. Action with Communities in Rural England was excluded. The various training organisations, such as Lantra, were not included. Housing bodies, such as the National Housing Federation and Shelter, were not included, even though the housing committees are being abolished. Even the Arthur Rank Centre was not included, despite the important role that we know the church plays in rural communities.

The consultation has been shocking. The procedure has been ignored. I would have welcomed a four-week consultation if it had been for the ash trees, for which we had an eight-week consultation; that matter was urgent. There was a really good reason for a short consultation on ash tree disease and four weeks would have been great; but we chose to go for eight weeks where there is an urgent need but four weeks to get rid of something that has been in existence since 1917. That makes no sense to me. The proposal is then brought here to Grand Committee where issues debated are supposed to be non-controversial, and we have a big row about whether the board should be abolished.

There is principled opposition and the noble Viscount should now tell us that he will withdraw his amendment and go away and reflect on it. He can then choose to bring it back on Report but it is not appropriate for the Grand Committee.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My Lords, this has been a helpful and somewhat lengthy debate, which has included some passionate speeches from all sides of the Committee. I thank all noble Lords for their contributions.

I will clarify a couple of points. First, in relation to a point that was made by my noble friend Lord Plumb and led to a mini-debate concerning the figures in relation to retaining the Agricultural Wages Board, my noble friend is right to highlight the cost of the board. I have been advised that over recent years, the annual cost of running it has been around £180,000 and, for the ADHACs and the AWCs, the cost is around £20,000. That is just for the record. Secondly, the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, brought up the issue of rates of pay for farm managers. He quoted a rate of £14.10 per hour. I should like to clarify, and I hope he will agree, that he quoted the overtime rates, not the basic rates. The minimum hourly wage rate is £9.40 and the overtime rate is £14.10.

I will address directly some of the procedural issues that have been raised by noble Lords. The first issue was the question of whether the Agricultural Wages Board met the requirements of the Public Bodies Act procedures. This was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, my noble friend Lord Plumb, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Health. The Public Bodies Act is only one legislative route open to the Government to abolish the board. It is not the only route and it is perfectly open to the Government to decide upon another legislative option.

It would be politic to explain a little more about this. The Public Bodies Act created a specific set of arrangements for the reform of a wide range of public bodies by means of secondary legislation, which included the consent of Welsh Ministers, even where they exercised only minor functions. Welsh Ministers have specific, minor functions under agricultural wages legislation, for example in relation to the appointment of members of the Agricultural Wages Board, and ministerial consent was therefore needed to the proposal to abolish the board under the Public Bodies Act. The Welsh Government refused to give consent without powers to set agricultural wages and other terms and conditions being transferred to the Welsh Ministers. The Government could not agree to this for two main reasons. First, we regard this as a non-devolved matter relating to employment and, secondly, this would involve using the Public Bodies Act to extend devolution in a way that was never intended. I hope that that goes some way to explain why the Agricultural Wages Board stood out on its own.