Oral Answers to Questions

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Mr Michael McCann. He has toddled out of the Chamber. Goodness knows what is going on. Mr Grahame Morris.

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I draw the Secretary of State’s attention to the vital role of the Food and Environment Research Agency in detecting and responding to threats to our natural environment and the food chain, particularly in the light of the UK signing up to the transatlantic trade and investment partnership agreement. Will the right hon. Lady think again about privatising this agency, given its vital role?

[Elizabeth Truss]

That is not what we are doing. We are creating a joint venture. I went to visit FERA in York last week. It is a world-class institution, researching all kinds of things from plant diseases to the security of our food chain, which is very important, so I fully support its efforts. I want to see it much better linked into all the work we do across Government so that we can have a truly science-based strategy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. We will obviously analyse the reasons the panel puts forth in its report. He asks a hypothetical question, and all I can say is that we just have to look at other countries. There is no doubt that if we look at Australia, the scientific evidence shows that it is now TB free. We can look at the United States and the white-tailed deer, the brushtail possum in New Zealand, or Ireland, which I have just cited. The Republic of Ireland is a scientific, practical example because by bearing down on the disease in cattle and in wildlife, it has got it down to the lowest level since records began. We will follow its example.

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

5. What progress he has made in requiring water companies to introduce social tariffs; and if he will make a statement.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr Owen Paterson)]

The Government do not require water companies to introduce a social tariff. Water companies are best placed to take decisions on the design of social tariffs as part of their charges schemes, in consultation with their customers. Social tariffs are funded by cross-subsidy between customers, so it is vital that they take account of local circumstances and the views of local people. Most water companies will have a social tariff in place by 2015-16.

[Grahame M. Morris]

I am grateful to the Minister for that answer but I draw his attention to the fact that a cost of living crisis is affecting about 2 million households in England and Wales who are classed as living in water poverty, which means they are paying at least 3% of their household income in water bills. Will the Government think again and consider supporting Labour’s proposals to introduce a reduced social tariff to help families who are struggling to pay their water bills?

[Dan Rogerson]

As I made absolutely clear to the hon. Gentleman in my previous answer, many water companies are now taking such action, but there are other things we can do to help people who are struggling with their water bills. The biggest thing we can do is to ensure that we bear down on charges for everybody. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has been clear in his expectations, Ofwat has been clear in the way it has entered into the price review period and companies are now responding. We will see, in the vast majority of cases, bills going with inflation or even perhaps, in some cases, going below inflation. That is a real improvement on the last price review period, given the opportunities companies have had with low borrowing.

Oral Answers to Questions

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2013 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

As the UK Government, we have had to take an approach that is fair to all parts of the UK. The reality is that farms in Scotland tend to be larger and the per hectare rate has been lower historically because the land is less productive, but the average farmer in Scotland receives about £25,000 a year, the average farmer in England receives approximately £17,000 and the average farmer in Northern Ireland receives less than £8,000. On that basis, Scottish farmers are getting more than farmers elsewhere in the UK.

Topical Questions

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr Owen Paterson)]

DEFRA’s priorities are growing the rural economy, improving the environment and safeguarding animal and plant health. As part of our determination to leave the natural environment in a better state than the one we inherited, I am pleased to announce today the designation of 27 marine conservation zones in the waters off the English coast. The new MCZs will protect nationally important habitat for species and build on the 30,000 sq km of inshore and offshore waters that are already protected. Since 2010, the area of inshore marine sites surrounding them has increased substantially. With the MCZs designated today, just under 25% of English inshore waters are now within protected areas.

[Grahame M. Morris]

I would like to draw the Secretary of State’s attention to an outbreak of bovine TB in my constituency in County Durham this month. Will he explain how badgers are the cause of the spread of bovine TB in my region?

[Mr Paterson]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise the fact that this disease is spreading and it allows me to draw attention to the fact that we are bringing in even more rigorous cattle movement controls. We know perfectly well that the disease is spread by cattle. It is also spread by wildlife, and that is why we are going to bear down on both, and we will make an announcement shortly on cattle movement.

Oral Answers to Questions

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dan Rogerson]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his post and look forward to debating these issues with him. As we look at the regime the Bill is seeking to bring in, we can discuss some of these issues, although there are probably other key areas we will want to focus on. The issue of corporation tax is crucial across many industries and I look forward to hearing what the hon. Gentleman has to say on the subject as we move forward.

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr Owen Paterson)]

DEFRA’s priorities are growing the rural economy, improving the environment and safeguarding animal and plant health, and I am today pleased to announce £3 million of funding from the anaerobic digestion loan fund, which will enable farmers to obtain funding to set up small-scale anaerobic digestion plants. The technology will not only save farmers money on energy costs, but will provide them with the opportunity to boost their income by exporting electricity to the grid. It will also help them cut waste and reduce the amount of artificial fertilisers they use. This funding is an example of this Government’s commitment to sustainable economic growth and environmental improvement. The two are not mutually exclusive.

[Grahame M. Morris]

I want to ask about food banks and, in particular, about the answers the Minister gave a few moments ago in response to questions from my hon. Friends the Members for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) and for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger). I understand that in April 2013 DEFRA commissioned important research to review evidence on the landscape of food provision and access. Given that this information and research will be very helpful to Government in targeting policy to the most needy, why is it not being published? I know the Minister is new in post, but can he expedite this, because a promise was made that it would be posted on the Department’s website?

[Mr Paterson]

I am happy to answer the hon. Gentleman’s question. We undertake research on a whole range of areas and this obviously cuts across a number of different Departments, with whom we are consulting.

Oral Answers to Questions

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

I am delighted that things are moving on in Gloucestershire. Of the 44 county projects, 27 are now contracted and the remainder will be by September. We will start to see fibre being laid in huge quantities around rural Britain, and it will be as easy to run a creative industry firm in a converted farm building in my hon. Friend’s constituency as it would be in the middle of Gloucester.

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

Has the Minister carried out any assessment of the impact of digital exclusion on deprived communities such as mine, particularly for young people, who increasingly need internet connections to complete schoolwork, apply for jobs and so on?

[Richard Benyon]

We have indeed. We know, for example, from the work that PricewaterhouseCoopers has done that there is an average benefit of £365 a year to families who have proper digital access, for precisely the reasons that the hon. Gentleman gives. I was at a remote location in Northumberland national park the other day seeing a satellite solution that was providing an extraordinary benefit to the eight houses at the end of a long valley, so I am well aware of the points that he makes.

Agricultural Wages Board

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend is right and underlines my point that the GLA has made the AWB ever more redundant. Those at the bottom on those low incomes have new protections.

One big thing in this debate compared with the last one—it is important to recognise this—is that the National Farmers Union is on the right side. For once, it is saying that we should get rid of the AWB because it is out of date. In 1993, the NFU let down its members. David Naish, the then president, supported the retention of the AWB, and he was wrong to do so. The NFU board of directors at the time was out of touch and behind the curve, but the NFU now recognises that things need to change and fully supports and endorses the abolition of the AWB. If even the NFU supports the abolition of the AWB, it is time to act. Another big change since 1993 is, as many hon. Members have said, the introduction of the minimum wage, which is yet another measure that makes the AWB out of date and no longer necessary.

How does the AWB frustrate rather than improve career development in the agricultural sector? The most important thing is the huge lack of flexibility. The board is based on old-style wage grade rates dating from the ’60s and ’70s, and completely ignores the fact that, in the most progressive farm businesses, many people are paid a salary and have management responsibilities. The best farm businesses have profit shares and payment by results. Piece rates are increasingly used when people earn far in excess of the minimum wage rates. Those modern day pay practices are completely ignored by the agricultural wages order, which can frustrate the development of more progressive pay policies in the farming industry and keep it trapped in a 1950s mindset.

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I am following the hon. Gentleman’s argument closely, but cannot understand why anyone would want to do away with the minimum. He suggests that, in many sectors of the agriculture industry, people are highly skilled and receive higher remuneration than would be set as a minimum by the AWB, but why argue for its abolition if it does not affect those people? Surely the AWB protects a group of people who do not receive such higher remuneration.

[George Eustice]

The group of people the hon. Gentleman is concerned about are protected by the minimum wage. That is already there and is set at roughly the same level as a grade 1 agricultural worker, so I do not think that that is an argument at all. What I am saying is that being too rigid can actually frustrate the development of more progressive pay policies.

The other point, which the Secretary of State touched on earlier—we had this in our farm business where some of the work was in pack houses—is that someone could be running a conveyor belt packing strawberries one minute and working in the field the next, with totally different wages rates applying. We ran a farm shop, in which different rates applied, even though there were sometimes shared staff.

--- Later in debate ---

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I support the Opposition motion to resist the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board. Government Members have accused us of waging class war, but this is an issue of social justice and if that means that it is also an issue of class, I make no apology.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) quoted Winston Churchill, who, amazingly, has been quoted three or four times by some surprising sources in this place over the past couple of weeks. I looked up Mr Churchill’s quote, and hon. Members might be interested to know that he spoke in class terms:

“It is a serious national evil that any class of His Majesty’s subjects should receive less than a living wage in return for their utmost exertions…where you have what we call sweated trades”.

There are no bankers or accountants present on the Government Benches, but there are some farmers and others associated with the industry. They will know what sweated trades are, so I do not need to explain that to them. On sweated trades, Churchill said that

“you have no organisation, no parity of bargaining, the good employer is undercut by the bad, and the bad employer is undercut by the worst…where those conditions prevail you have not a condition of progress, but a condition of progressive degeneration.”—[Official Report, 28 April 1909; Vol. 4, c. 388.]

That was Winston Churchill arguing for the establishment of the Agricultural Wages Board, so who am I, as a socialist, to argue with Winston Churchill? He was absolutely right.

In his excellent speech the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) spoke of how the industry has developed and how farming has morphed into large agri-businesses and the food trade has gone global, and how that has put particular pressures on rural workers.

We on the Opposition Benches are concerned that the living standards for rural workers will go backwards. It is scandalous that last week we were not even afforded the courtesy of a debate, let alone a vote. The Government should think a thousand shames that they whisked through their plans to not just dismantle, but to abolish the AWB. It was disgraceful that Parliament was disregarded by a Government in a hurry to sweep away 100 years of workers’ rights and a century of consensus on rural living wages and housing standards.

Members keep asking why those rights should apply to rural workers and not to other groups of workers. As we have heard from a number of Members, the answer relates to tied accommodation, training and compassionate leave. The provisions also apply to workers who have to have dogs, presumably for sheep farming, so the AWB is different and there is a strong case for retaining it.

We saw just this week in The Sunday Times rich list that there is still massive personal wealth in the United Kingdom. Among those who are doing the best and who are luxuriating in extreme largesse are a number of UK food manufacturers—not large farmers—including Morrisons, Sainsbury’s and 2 Sisters, which is one of the biggest food processing companies in Europe. At No. 80 in the rich list is Lord Vestey, the owner of Stowell Park, which is one of the businesses that lobbied for the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board.

Government Members accuse Labour Members of arguing the case of the trade unions. I am a proud member of Unite the Union and make no apology for that. If standing up for agricultural workers is a sin, I am guilty and unrepentant. However, it is also clear who is behind the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board. It is the big businesses that are tightening their grip on the food industry that lobbied for its abolition.

The abolition will affect 150,000 people in England and Wales and about 5,500 agricultural workers in my region. I have discovered that 55 families in my constituency will be affected. We have heard about the history of the establishment of the Agricultural Wages Board, so I will not rehearse it.

I was intrigued when my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) mentioned that the Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), used to be a vociferous supporter of the retention of the Agricultural Wages Board. Early-day motion 892 of the 1999 to 2000 Session, which he supported, stated that

“any weakening of the Agricultural Wages Board or its abolition would further impoverish the rural working class, exacerbating social deprivation and the undesirable indicators associated with social exclusion”.

What has changed? Is it that the AWB is outdated and bureaucratic? Have the conditions of agricultural workers changed so much that we do not need it? I do not think that that is the case.

The third of agricultural workers who live in tied accommodation will no longer be protected by a cap on the amount that their employers can charge them for accommodation. They would risk losing their homes if they rejected downgraded contracts. That implication of the abolition was raised with me by an agricultural worker. We have also heard that the abolition will potentially cost agricultural workers £260 million in lost sick pay and holiday pay over the next 10 years.

Although the Government’s mantra is that they want to make work pay, the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board will lead to a race to the bottom in wages and terms and conditions for agricultural workers, and will therefore make work pay less. If wage protections are abolished, agricultural workers will see their terms and conditions squeezed. Nobody is tarring all farmers with the brush of being unscrupulous employers and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington was at pains to point out that many of the farmers he came across were very good employers, but there will be some who pass the pressure from the supermarkets on to their workers. That is a real concern.

Costs are much higher in rural areas than in urban areas. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation found in 2010 that people living in rural areas spent between 10% and 20% more on everyday needs than those in urban areas. The Office for National Statistics estimates that the weekly spending of rural households is more than £50 higher than that of urban households, which must be a problem for a rural workers.

It would not have been acceptable not to have a debate, and it is not acceptable for the Government to ignore the outcome of the consultation; let us put it on the record that it indicated that the board should be retained. They are facilitating the redistribution of income away from some of the most vulnerable workers in the land to some of the wealthiest private individuals in the land. That is why the Opposition motion and the debate are to be welcomed.

I ask the Government to show the same care and attention to the living standards and wages of the poorest as they have to the richest 1%, who are now enjoying a top rate tax cut. If they wanted to protect the living standards and wages of the poorest in society, they could make a good start today by not abolishing the Agricultural Wages Board and by allowing trade unions, employers and independent representatives to continue to negotiate fair terms and conditions for vulnerable workers.

Horsemeat

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Heath]

I do not resile from the fact that phenylbutazone should not be present in horsemeat that is presented for human consumption; let us be absolutely clear. However, my right hon. Friend is right to say that the actions that have now been put in place—my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is at this moment at Europol and Eurojust in The Hague, securing police and justice co-ordination on this matter—are unprecedented. It is extremely welcome that European authorities are now getting to grips with the problem.

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

It is interesting that the Minister’s attitude has changed since the statement on Monday, when he was at pains to say that there was no risk to public health and that this was an issue of mislabelling and fraud. Clearly, when bute enters the food chain, it is a public health issue, and given that a very small percentage—1%—of carcases were tested, should not the Minister make an apology to the House?

[Mr Heath]

What I said, and have repeatedly said, is that there is no evidence of material that is harmful to human health having been put on sale in this country. That is still the case, and I am very glad that that is the case. We are testing for bute. That is the prime responsibility of the Food Standards Agency. It worries me sometimes that people seem to think that food safety is a secondary issue. It is not. It is the prime responsibility.

Horsemeat (Food Fraud)

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

That is a very important question. We have no evidence that any other meat product is being used to adulterate bovine, or processed bovine, products.

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State has told us that this is an issue of fraud and mislabelling, but how can he be sure, given that the random testing seems to have involved only about 1.5% of horse carcases? How can he state so categorically that there is no health issue? If more comprehensive testing by the FSA proves that there is a health issue, will he then act unilaterally?

[Mr Paterson]

I think I have made clear twice that from now on all horse carcases will be tested, and that none will be released until they are proved to be clear.

Oral Answers to Questions

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

I wholeheartedly concur with my hon. Friend’s comments about the real difficulties faced in Malmesbury, which was visited by my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State.

The first meeting I had outside the office was with the ABI in September, and we have been working closely in recent weeks. We are involved in detailed negotiations, as the statement of principles was always going to come to an end in 2013. We want to achieve a better system of insurance that is as comprehensive as possible, provides affordability, and is not a huge burden on the taxpayer. Those detailed negotiations are continuing. The ball is in the ABI’s court and we look forward to hearing from it shortly.

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

13. The floods in the past few weeks have highlighted the importance of affordable home insurance for home owners in constituencies such as Easington, Wansbeck, and across the north-east and the whole country. We were promised a deal on flood insurance by July this year. We heard from the Prime Minister that Oliver Letwin is in charge of the negotiations. Will the Secretary of State tell us why this policy has been so badly delayed? Will he clarify the position to the House?

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman was referring to the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr Letwin).

[Grahame M. Morris]

I apologise.

[Mr Paterson]

I remind the hon. Gentleman that the statement of principles was always going to run out in 2013. That was confirmed in 2008, and we inherited absolutely nothing from his Government. We have been working closely with the ABI. We are in detailed negotiations and I totally agree with him that we want to achieve a system that is affordable and as comprehensive as possible, and which is not a burden on the taxpayer. We are working towards that. These are detailed negotiations, but I cannot conduct them in public or on the Floor of the House of Commons.

Flooding

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Monday 26th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

That is why we are putting this huge sum of money into flood defence schemes and encouraging partnerships with local government and, on the ground, with individuals and farmers, such as the one my hon. Friend cites, working with local drainage boards and councils to ensure that there is a co-ordinated approach.

[Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

I would like to thank the Secretary of State for not blaming Opposition Members for the weather and join him in paying tribute to the emergency services, especially the fire and rescue services in the north-east, particularly in Durham and Teesside, who have been doing such a terrific job. Does he share my concern that in areas such as my constituency we are gradually losing resilience due to cuts in front-line fire and rescue budgets at a time when floods are becoming an increasingly common phenomenon?