Oral Answers to Questions

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Thursday 25th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paterson]

The hon. Gentleman makes a highly pertinent point. The statement of principles is not working at present, and affordability is a key part of that. I have meetings coming up shortly with the Association of British Insurers and I will establish its latest figures, but we want to resolve this: we are determined to get to the bottom of it, because I totally sympathise with people such as the hon. Gentleman’s constituent.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

Can the Minister confirm that the moneys available in the rural community broadband fund that come from the European Union will not be subject to European state aid rules?

[Richard Benyon]

We hope in the next few weeks to make an announcement about satisfactory conclusions in respect of negotiations with the European Commission. That will be a major step forward.

Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Wednesday 20th June 2012 Westminster Hall

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Gordon Henderson) on his wisdom and prescience in calling for this debate today. I am sure you are aware, Mr Dobbin, that in fact Worcestershire is the garden of England, although the branding needs to catch up a bit. It has a fantastic horticultural industry. Not only are we known for pears—the county emblem includes a pear—but we grow apples, soft fruit, tomatoes, carrots and potatoes. You name it, it is grown in Worcestershire, and it is delicious. I invite you, Mr Dobbin, and other hon. Members to the Worcestershire food day that will be held in Westminster Hall on 27 June, which is one week today. I hope that hon. Members will mark their diaries.

Seasonal agricultural work has been raised with me by farmers in my constituency, and this is a good time for the country to be thinking about it. Despite today’s welcome news that employment has risen by 166,000 in the past three months, 2.61 million people in this country are still not working, and according to the International Labour Organisation’s measure, about 1 million of that 2.61 million are young people under the age of 24. Like my hon. Friend, when I was a student, I earned money by picking fruit during the summer holidays. It is hard work and the hours are long, but it is a good source of income for students. Of the 1 million young people who are not working, about 230,000 are in full-time education, but have signed on because they want to find part-time or temporary work.

We certainly have a pool of labour in this country, yet farmers widely acknowledge that they have relied on seasonal agricultural workers, who since 2008 have come in from Bulgaria and Romania, and that they have used the whole quota. Farmers can provide many case studies and much anecdotal evidence showing what a struggle it is for them to source local labour.

For a number of reasons, it would be wise of the Government—the Minister and his colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions and the Home Office—to start planning ahead. The seasonal agricultural workers scheme will run to the end of 2013. By the time the 2014 picking season starts and thereafter, there will have been an incredibly important change in the benefits system in this country: universal credit will have come into force. That will do exactly what my hon. Friend described: it will allow people to take on seasonal or part-time work and, in terms of the impact on their benefits, the first few thousand pounds will be disregarded. They will not run into today’s absurd situation of their housing and council tax benefit being withdrawn pound for pound. The benefits system will have changed when we come to the 2014 season, and that will change other things.

Something else that has changed since 2007-08 when the current scheme was implemented is unemployment throughout Europe. At the moment, 20,000 or 21,000 people come here from Bulgaria and Romania under the scheme. Are we really saying that by 2014 we will be unable to find enough people among the 400 million in Europe to pick the crops on our farms? The Government have a political mandate to reduce immigration from outside the EU and to try to create more employment in this country. I take a different view from that of my hon. Friend. I believe we must now make the most of the changes to the benefits system and the fact that we will be able to reward people for such work without them losing their benefits. We must start now to plan for a seasonal agricultural workers scheme for British workers.

The National Farmers Union, which does a fantastic job in lobbying for its members, suggests that as part of this scheme it should introduce education certifications such as level 1 food hygiene certificates and health and safety or first aid qualifications. These are skilled jobs. I will never forget going to the asparagus packing plant at Birlingham in my constituency and finding that, rather than asparagus being bundled with an elastic band, as found in the supermarkets, a £250,000 laser machine sorted the asparagus into 22 different grades to meet contracts from different supermarkets. These are high-tech businesses that require a level of skill. Surely it is not beyond the wit of the Government to work with providers of the Work programme and some of the sector skills bodies to come up with a package that would allow young people in this country to gain work experience, skills, qualifications and, most important, a lump sum of money to take home to their communities in another part of the United Kingdom.

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Gordon Henderson) on securing the debate. I, too, remember picking and gathering fruit, although to look at me one might think I ate more than I put into batches. The hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) mentioned machinery that can perform certain tasks. I find, however, that as well as difficulties with employment, farmers in Northern Ireland and throughout the United Kingdom are finding it difficult to get planning permission to diversify and help them to grow their businesses, which would create more employment.

[Harriett Baldwin]

I know that farmers across the country share that experience, and I thank the hon. Gentleman for his observation.

The Department for Work and Pensions agreed with the Minister to meet growers from my constituency. As a result of that meeting, we have set up a working group that will plan ahead with the DWP to see how we as a country can create a seasonal agricultural workers scheme for British workers. I look forward to the day when I can go into a British supermarket and put Worcestershire-grown horticultural items in my basket, knowing that those British fruit and vegetables were picked by British workers and that the money they were paid has stayed within Britain.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Weir]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend, who makes a point that I was about to come to. This is not just about the experience that workers gain when they go to Scotland. They will be great friends of Scotland and the rest of the UK in the future as their states accede to the EU. I know that some on the Conservative Benches may wish that that were not the case, but there you go. What we are debating is not a new phenomenon. Some of us have talked about how we picked fruit and vegetables in our youth, but I remember that when I was at university way back in the 1970s, many of my friends went abroad to do such jobs—for example, picking grapes in France. There has always been an exchange of young people, particularly students, doing seasonal work across Europe. That has contributed to an understanding and friendships across borders in Europe, and we should not lightly throw it away.

The hon. Member for West Worcestershire talked getting local people to do this work. Many growers have made great efforts to get local people to do the work. It is not as though they are simply relying on migrant labour. In my area, for example, in conjunction with the local authority, they set up the “berry scheme”, with the aim of providing opportunities for the long-term unemployed. It was not, I have to say, particularly successful, but I agree with the hon. Lady’s argument that we must encourage people to consider horticulture as a career, because it is an important industry.

[Harriett Baldwin]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that some of the migration that might have to occur might be people moving for a seasonal period from pockets of high unemployment in this country, rather than his local growers and farmers looking exclusively in the Angus area?

[Mr Weir]

I think there are particular difficulties with that. Under SAWS, the farmer must pay the minimum wage and provide living quarters for the migrant labour. It might be more difficult to do that within the UK because of the structure of the benefits system in the UK, as the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey said. Everything is worth looking at, but we must remember that much of the labour in agriculture is very hard and not everyone who is long-term unemployed would be able to undertake it, although undoubtedly some would.

Environmental Protection and Green Growth

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

I shall make a little progress and I will give way again.

Today we see open warfare breaking out between Government Departments over mixed messages to UK plc, with the headline in The Independent, “Osborne’s anti-green agenda splits Coalition” and today the speech from the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change and snub to the Chancellor to cheers from a business audience. The only people who benefit from such Cabinet warfare are the climate sceptics at the Treasury and the Cabinet Office, who want us to do less.

Our motion today expresses our concern at this internecine warfare and proposes three steps that the Department can take now to restore business confidence in the green agenda: bringing forward infrastructure spending on flood defence and broadband, as suggested in Labour’s five-point plan for growth; committing to mandatory carbon reporting to stimulate green innovation; and higher waste targets to drive private sector job creation. I shall address each of those in turn.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I represent a flood-hit constituency in the Severn valley. We had serious floods in 1998, 2000 and 2007. Since May 2010, Pershore, Powick, Uckinghall, Kempsey and two schemes in Upton-upon-Severn have been started or completed, compared with the record under the hon. Lady’s Government, where we got one scheme in 13 years.

[Mary Creagh]

That is an honourable intervention from the hon. Lady. I think it was The Guardian that reported that around 500 flood defence schemes are currently in abeyance. I am keen to hear from the Minister about the future of those schemes.

In the last two years of the Labour Government, spending on flood defences rose by 33%. We know that flooding and other extreme weather events are likely to increase with global warming. We saw only yesterday the devastation that floods can cause, and I know that the thoughts of the whole House will be with the families of the angler who was swept into the sea at Redcar and the two people who died in Ireland. We saw the heartache and the huge cost of flooding in Cornwall and Cumbria in 2009 and in Yorkshire and Gloucestershire in 2007. In this country 5 million homes are at risk from flooding.

In opposition, the Prime Minister called for extra funding for the flood defences budget—hear, hear. Under Labour the budget rose, but the Under-Secretary has cut spending on this essential part of our infrastructure from £354 million in 2010 to just £259 million this year and every year until 2015, which is a 27% cut. Nearly £500 million has been taken out of flood defences.

Communities at risk from flooding need a strong advocate arguing their case at the heart of Government. The Environment Agency tells us that the cost-benefit ratio of all flood defence schemes means that for every £1 we put in we get £8 back. That is money saved on public safety by the Home Office, on lost hours in the NHS, on disruption to transport and on the cost to the Department for Communities and Local Government of clean-up and re-housing people.

The Environment Agency has told us that many of the flood schemes have been deferred indefinitely, but the Minister says that they have merely been postponed, so we hope that he will clarify that today. We call on him to bring forward the planned flood defence investment to create the private sector construction and engineering employment that the country needs and to ensure that towns and cities that need flood protection get it as soon as possible.

Oral Answers to Questions

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

The right hon. Gentleman is right; we expect the paper to be published on 13 July and we will debate it at the next Council meeting on 19 July. We pushed very hard for regionalisation. He is absolutely right to say that the system is ludicrous. One of the many failures of the common fisheries policy is that factors such as net sizes are decided in Brussels, whereas they should be decided at least on a sea basin basis, if not at member state level. We are still pushing hard for regionalisation. There are counter-arguments about the legality and what other countries want, but I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that we are really pushing for this, as we believe it to be an important way forward.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

12. What recent assessment she has made of the spread of bovine tuberculosis in wildlife in the West Worcestershire constituency; and if she will make a statement.

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr James Paice)]

The most recent information we have is from the randomised badger-culling trial, in which badgers were culled annually in an area west of Malvern between 2002 and 2005. The average TB prevalence in badgers culled in that area was then 28%. We also know that TB in cattle is linked to TB in wildlife. I can tell my hon. Friend that there was an increase in the number of new herds disclosed with TB in Hereford and Worcester in 2010 compared with 2009, and a corresponding increase in herd incidence over the same period.

[Harriett Baldwin]

Wildlife in my constituency is suffering from tuberculosis, a lingering death. Cattle are being slaughtered, and farmers are lying awake at night worried that their herd might be next. Will the Minister update us on what further steps the Government could take to bring the disease under control?

[Mr Paice]

My hon. Friend is right to stress the need for further policies to control TB. As I said earlier, we will make announcements fairly soon—before the House rises, we hope—on our proposals regarding badgers, and about wider cattle-to-cattle measures. I assure my hon. Friend and the House that the status quo, do-nothing agenda is not acceptable. Calculations show that if we do nothing and things stay as they are, it will cost the taxpayer £1 billion over the next 10 years.

Waste Review

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Spelman]

I have made it clear that energy from waste has its place in turning waste into resources. I have also made it crystal clear today that the Government are committed to helping local authorities that want to use anaerobic digestion, and we will make funds available to achieve that.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State congratulate Malvern Hills district council and Wychavon district council? The former kept weekly bin collections, the latter moved to two-weekly bin collections, and both were recently soundly re-elected as Conservative councils for a further four-year term.

[Mrs Spelman]

That demonstrates that good local authorities that respond to the wishes and needs of their residents and supply refuse collection services of good quality and sufficient frequency receive their reward through the ballot box and are returned to office.

Oral Answers to Questions

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Spelman]

The hon. Gentleman was perhaps not in the House last night, so allow me just to remind him that, in the last few months before the general election, the party of which he is a member published when in government an operational efficiency programme setting out the case for long-term leases of the public forest estate and for getting

“greater commercial benefit from the public forest estate”.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I have had more representations on this issue than on any other since I was elected—probably about 500 so far. If I send them on to the consultation with a covering letter, can the Secretary of State reassure my constituents that they will all be counted as individual submissions?

[Mrs Spelman]

I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. All hon. Members should actively encourage their constituents to read the genuine consultation document. There has been an awful lot of mythology in the press, and we would welcome responses to the genuine consultation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Thursday 4th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paice]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, children below the age of 13 are not permitted to work other than in certain parts of the entertainment industry. He will also know that restrictions apply to the number of hours that 13 to 16-year-olds can work and that a licence must be obtained from the local authority before such employment begins. Let us therefore be under no doubt that if children are employed in agriculture, they are employed illegally, unless they are licensed in the way I described.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the remoteness of much agricultural activity. I entirely understand his point, but I do not think that we should allow that incident—I cannot comment on the detail—to make us think that such practices are rife all over the country. The vast majority of farmers and fruit and vegetable growers behave properly towards their work force and ensure that they comply with employment legislation. We need to ensure that breaches in the law, as might have happened in that case, are dealt with appropriately.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

The Romanian children were found working in my constituency. Many of the local farmers use migrant labourers. Has the Minister any general advice for those farmers on the employment of migrant labour?

[Mr Paice]

I can say to my hon. Friend quite clearly that the most important thing that anybody who wants to employ migrant labour—or, indeed, any non-local labour—should do is ensure that they are dealing with a licensed gangmaster. They should ask to see the certificate or licence of the gangmaster proposing to bring the labour on to the farm. That way they can all be reassured they are doing the right thing.

Oral Answers to Questions

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Thursday 24th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Spelman]

Of course I can give the hon. Gentleman that assurance. I just said that I was seeking to get a better deal for farmers, consumers, taxpayers and the environment, and he can be assured of that. DEFRA is an economic Department with a very clear role in the economic recovery that this country needs. It is absolutely at one with the objectives set out by the Treasury in that regard.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

15. What recent discussions she has had with the farming industry and other interested parties on the Animal Health Agency; and if she will make a statement.

[The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr James Paice)]

As has been mentioned already, the most urgent issue in animal health and welfare is bovine TB. I have reviewed the badger vaccine deployment project and have decided to proceed with one area near Stroud for the time being, in order to help maintain the capacity to train lay vaccinators. Badger sett surveys will also be completed in the Gloucester area, near Cheltenham. That change reflects the need to consider all our public expenditure carefully.

The previous Government appointed Rosemary Radcliffe to examine options for responsibility and cost-sharing for animal disease control. Unlike that Government, though, we will await the outcome of that report, as it may well include options for the agency’s future. I have had a number of discussions regarding that review.

[Harriett Baldwin]

I thank the Minister for that answer, and may I also add my welcome to some fellow meat-eaters in the Front Bench team for this particular portfolio? I want to emphasise how important animal welfare is for farmers in West Worcestershire. A vet came to my constituency surgery recently and highlighted the fact that, while the AHA seemed to have spent a lot of time on management, computer systems and office work, it was not placing enough emphasis on its veterinary function. Does the Minister have any plans to tackle that?

[Mr Paice]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I welcome her to this question session. She is absolutely right and, as part of our overall review of all arm’s length bodies, we are looking for the sorts of efficiencies to which she has referred. However, I can tell her that the AHA has already instituted a road map for change that should deliver a significant tranche of savings, and a much more efficient business as well.