Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Baroness Quin Excerpts

Wednesday 1st December 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Clark of Windermere, I remember the 1976 Bill coming through Parliament. I was on the Benches that he is sitting on now. I thought it was a bad Bill then, and it has remained a bad Act, in particular with regard to ADHACs. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said that this body is necessary. If it had been necessary, it would have been compulsory to have consulted an ADHAC. As it is, it is a purely voluntary agreement that an ADHAC can be used for consultation with the housing authority if necessary. The vast majority of cases are dealt with directly with the local housing association, so “necessary” was not the right word to use in this instance.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said that there are 40 to 50 cases a year. I question that. My information is that the number is almost in single figures now. Sixteen ADHACs have some 10 cases a year in total. That means that half of them are not doing anything at all. It is high time we got rid of them, and I thoroughly support my noble friend in this. Could I just ask him whether, when we come to the follow-up legislation, he will propose to get rid of all 16 ADHACs at once, rather than one by one?

[Baroness Quin]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, in having tabled this amendment, which allowed this issue to be aired through this short debate. I know that he had some support from my noble friends who added their names to his amendment, which is symptomatic of a wider concern than if the amendment had simply been tabled in his own name. It shows concern that the issues that the agricultural dwelling house advisory committees have been dealing with are still important to address for the future in whatever way the Government are envisaging. We will be very interested to hear how the Minister responds to this debate.

It seems to me that the scale of the issue is quite important, despite what the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, has just said. As I understand it, 30 per cent of agricultural workers live in tied accommodation. Given that there are some 150,000 agricultural workers, we are talking about a considerable number of people who could avail themselves of this service. Obviously, there is some dispute about the figures; I am also aware of the figures cited by my noble friend showing that the advisory committees deal with about 40 to 50 cases each year. The noble Earl has given us different figures. Perhaps the Minister, in his reply, might like to give us the official Defra figures for this process.

Even if the figures are lower than I and my noble friends believe, that does not necessarily mean that all the committees should disappear. There might therefore be an argument for rationalising the structure. I do not know if this is something to which the Government have given consideration. If there are cases—sensitive cases, because they concern people’s accommodation and whether they are going to be able to stay in their homes or be forced to move—being dealt with properly by the committees in a sensitive and efficient way, then it would be very unwise to simply disband the committees without having some very clear assurance as to how these matters will be dealt with in future. Perhaps the Minister can give us some figures showing whether the tempo of consultations and referrals to the committees has increased or decreased in recent years. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, was quite right to stress, as the major point of his argument, the importance of how these issues are going to be dealt with in future and whether there will be people who know of the special circumstances of agriculture and the agricultural industry who will be able to deal with them.

Consultation is also important. I see that the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, is in his place. Much to the House’s pleasure, he gave it some assurances about the consultation process to which he was committed while taking forward the provisions in this Bill. It would therefore be interesting to know what consultation has taken place so far on this issue with those likely to be affected and those who are members of the committees at the moment, and to know whether they judge their work likely to decrease or increase. After all, there are quite a number of different and even specialised aspects to agricultural tenancies; for example, the different types of tenancy—protected, statutory or assured. We need to know that there will be people who understand how the system works and will be able to operate it in future. The point has also been made to me that when farm workers come up for retirement but want to stay in their homes, that can be a difficult time. Therefore, we are entitled to ask who will represent and support farmers at that stage of their lives and in those circumstances.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Lord Maclennan of Rogart]

Would the noble Baroness agree that the debate has been forceful in indicating that consultation would be advisable and helpful, and that perhaps it would be sensible not to reach a conclusion on this matter in this debate, because evidently there is still a great deal of time left to consider the Bill?

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Quin]

The noble Lord makes an important point. Obviously, how we proceed is up to the author and introducer of the amendment to decide. None the less, given the number of questions that have been raised in this debate on all sides, and given the fact that there has been a very strong feeling in the Chamber that this is an issue about which there should be proper consultation, I am inclined to support the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, in his comments. I am sure that, in the light of whatever response we get from the Government, we would very much want to return to this in any case, because it is obviously of great concern and interest to many Members in this House and, of course, to many people outside.

The issue of cost has once again been referred to. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, in his introductory comments, said that the cost of abolishing the board was very limited. In answer to a Parliamentary Question in the other place by Willie Bain, I understand that the Government said that the costs would be “negligible”; indeed that the,

“changes to include agricultural workers within the scope of national minimum wage legislation”,

were,

“expected to be cost neutral”.—[Official Report, Commons, 25/10/10; col. 14W]

Therefore this has not been brought forward to save a great deal of money, again like some of the measures that we were considering earlier. In many ways it seems to be part of a political agenda—a political decision—which I must say I very much regret. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, himself said that the abolition of the agricultural wages board was part of the Conservative manifesto but was certainly not part of the Liberal Democrat manifesto. It was not part of the coalition agreement, and for that reason I think that it would be very good if it were not part of government policy here and now. I know, having looked at the Liberal Democrat Voice on the internet, that there is a concern generally about the Bill among Liberal Democrats, but also about some of the specific proposals, including this one.

I know that some farmers have come out very much in favour of abolition of the agricultural wages board, including the NFU in England. It is interesting, however, that the National Farmers’ Union in Wales has come out more in support of the retention of the agricultural wages board. Indeed, it and some other farmers have made the very important point that the agricultural wages board actually lifts from individual farmers the burden of negotiation. Quite understandably, this debate has focused on the effects of abolition on agricultural workers, but there is also a negative effect on many farmers who find the operation of the agricultural wages board helpful and valuable in terms of the recruitment and retention of skilled labour. The Government have said in the past, in debates in this House, that they value professionalism in agriculture; yet I fear that, by going down this route, we will undermine agriculture and show it as a low-paid profession where there is not proper protection for workers. We already know that agriculture is a dangerous industry in terms of accidents. We need to tackle that issue, which I think the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, referred to. At the same time we want agriculture to be seen as an industry which is attractive for new employees in the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Henley]

I do not think that it is necessary for that work to have been done. As I said, we believe that with the abolition of the board the industry will be able to operate more flexibly, which would lead to more job creation and better opportunities. What the noble Lord and others have been asking us to do is describe what picture, as they put it, we see for the future. I believe that it is one where it is open to the industry to come together to set up its own system. Again, I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, who said that the NFU ought to be out there seeking to put something together. What I did not hear from the representatives of Unite or Unite’s predecessor, the Transport and General Workers’ Union, was whether they were prepared to come together with the NFU and put something together. I do not see why the NFU, Unite and other industry representatives cannot come together and create their own advisory committee to discuss these matters. We do not think that it is necessarily a matter for the Government.

[Baroness Quin]

If I could follow up on my noble friend’s point, I thought that the Government had said that they would routinely carry out impact assessments in coming forward with legislation. I do not understand why they do not seem prepared to do so in this case.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, as I made clear, I do not think that it is necessary in this case to carry out an impact assessment. If it was necessary, we would do so. What I am saying is that, after the abolition of the wages board, it is open to the industry to look at its own arrangements. That is why I was grateful for the intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, who said that the NFU could do this, but I do not see why the NFU cannot do it along with Unite and all the other representatives of the industry.

I appreciate that we have now spent an hour and a half discussing these matters. We will no doubt come back to this in due course. My noble friend Lord Maclennan said that there was still much time to discuss these matters. There certainly will be time, because noble Lords opposite wish to make sure that there is. We will discuss these matters further, therefore, but I have not heard anything yet this afternoon that would encourage me to say that there was a case for preserving the agricultural wages board or the agricultural wages committees. I hope, therefore, that my noble friend will feel able to withdraw his amendment.