Gangmasters Licensing Authority

Huw Irranca-Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

I am pleased to speak in this timely debate. I thank all hon. Members for their contributions to it, and I particularly thank my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) for introducing it. The red tape review is going on, and the Minister will have taken note of the passion and expertise among Opposition Members, who have spoken strongly of the support across parties and across civic society for the introduction of the original legislation, and I am sure that that support remains. He will have taken note of the genuine ambition that he should ensure that there is no diminution, weakening or dilution of the GLA as currently structured, and that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) said, the licensing regime’s proactive enforcement is not watered down.

We have had a good debate about where we go from here. That has been the nature of the debate; we are not trying to find the be-all and end-all solution. I hope officials and the Minister, in carrying out his departmental responsibilities and in his wider discussions across Whitehall, will take some of our messages away with them.

My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South made an all-encompassing and powerful contribution. He put the case exceptionally well, and I will come back in a moment to some of his points. My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) referred to his role as chair of the PCS union group; I have previously engaged with him in that role. I commend him on his work, and on the constructive way in which he has always represented the interests of PCS union members. As my hon. Friend has shown, they can make a contribution to ensuring that we have better workplaces and better ways of working.

My hon. Friend referred to the criteria by which we could judge whether the GLA should move into other sectors. That is the sort of issue we need to debate. Under what circumstances, and judged against what criteria, could we say that the GLA’s great success, testified to today, could be replicated in other areas into which the evidence leads it?

My hon. Friend referred to the fact that licensing and enforcement powers are critical, wherever they are located in government. There is an active debate about what the most appropriate place is—concerns have been raised about whether the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills would be the right place—and whether the GLA’s core values would be best preserved in a Department that is simultaneously trying to drive down regulation.

The point was well made in the debate that there is good regulation as well as bad regulation. The great benefit of the way the GLA has been constructed and the way it has acted over the past few years is that it does the right thing in the right place at the right time. If hon. Members will excuse the comparison, it punches like a good Welsh bantam-weight—well above its weight. It has relatively few resources, it is very fleet of foot and it really packs a clout.

Tribute has rightly been paid to my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Jim Sheridan) for introducing the original private Member’s Bill, and for the work that he and others did to build tremendous consensus, which is sustained today. He referred to the necessity of proactive enforcement, and that is key. He put the case very well.

My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington, has a great background in this issue, not as a Member of Parliament, but as part of the wider civic engagement through the trade union movement. He reminded us that behind all the debates about where the GLA goes is the human tragedy that inspired it, and that necessitates its continuation in a dynamic, proactive form. He talked about support extending from plough to plate, across all parties and across society. He also said that we can look at using the model we have to end the scourge of modern slavery, which still exists.

The GLA, which was established in 2004, was designed to do a number of things. One was to establish a level playing field across industry, so that we could avoid undercutting and take out rogue operators. It was about improving the working lives of the vulnerable, and its success in doing that has been proved. It was also about assisting in the battle against criminality and human trafficking.

It is important to set out the GLA’s successes, and we heard earlier about its measurable, tangible successes. The annual report for 2010-11 showed that 845 cases of worker exploitation were identified in that year. Some 91%—that is, 78 cases—of the GLA’s intelligence-driven operations identified serious cases of non-compliance. Thirty-six cases of unlicensed activity were uncovered, and 33 licences were revoked, with 12 successful prosecutions. The case for the GLA continuing its work is therefore still crystal clear; abuses are still happening. Even with the GLA’s dynamic, fleet-of-foot approach and proactive enforcement, there are still cases out there to be pursued and prosecuted.

The GLA has had a significant wider impact because of its deliberate efforts to go after high-profile cases with a high media impact to get the message out to rogue employers that they cannot continue doing what they are doing. That has been very successful.

There has been continuing support for the GLA. When surveyed in 2008, eight out of 10 respondents said they were in favour of licensing, while seven out of 10 felt the GLA was doing a good job. Only 18% described contact with the GLA as being in any way burdensome.

In that respect, does the Minister have a view about the GLA’s role on forestry? There has been great discussion with forestry employers and unions about whether forestry needs to be retained in the remit of the GLA as currently structured. Some have put forward the view that certification means it is very difficult to find unregulated, rogue operators in the forestry regime. Does the Minister think there might not be a case for forestry remaining in the current structure? I would be interested to hear his views on the issue, and particularly what discussions he has had on it with the unions.

Let me turn to the question of whether the GLA is efficient as well as effective. There is no doubt that it is effective. As to whether it is efficient, the organisations using the GLA as an example of how to implement an efficient regulatory control framework include not only the TUC, but the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, with its research reports, the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, Oxfam, the Wilberforce Institute for the study of Slavery and Emancipation, the International Labour Organisation, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Dutch national rapporteur on trafficking and the Harvard university programme. One after the other, they line up to say that the GLA is not only effective, but efficient. It does what it does leanly and with minimal resources. If it works so well, my question to the Minister is: why would the Government tinker with it without a darn good reason?

That is before we look at the issue of where the GLA should go now. In one sense, the debate is about the future of the GLA as currently formed and in the sectors it currently looks after. In another sense, it is about where the GLA goes from here. As we have heard from hon. Members, the TUC and others believe that there is a strong case for extending the GLA licensing scheme, and the Select Committee on Home Affairs said the same in its report on the issue.

Baroness Kennedy’s report for the Equality and Human Rights Commission commented:

“Another problem is that the remit of the GLA is currently confined to the oversight of labour in the food and agricultural sectors, while exploited foreign labour may now be found in the service and construction industries as well as in care homes. In our evidence-gathering it became clear to us that there seemed to be no good reason for the vital work of the GLA not being expanded to include these other sectors and to cover other forms of contract employment and outsourced work, and that employers who used such labour should hold some responsibility for wages and conditions.”

There have been other reports, such as Oxfam’s “Turning the Tide: How to best protect workers employed by gangmasters, five years after Morecambe Bay”. We have also had the TUC’s commission on vulnerable employees and the Health and Safety Executive’s report on deaths in construction, “One Death is too Many”. They all proposed that the scope of the sectors covered by the GLA should be under consideration for extension.

Finally, I recommend that the Minister reads, if he has not done so, the report by the TUC and the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians, “The Hidden Workforce Building Britain”. One of the many examples in it concerns a UCATT investigation in July 2008, which showed that on a private finance initiative hospital site in Mansfield, workers were being paid a total of £8.80 for a complete 40-hour week. The union took the case to the employment tribunal. It was contested. The company is a large one, by the way, which carries out many large public sector contracts throughout the UK. It, of course, insisted that the workers were self-employed and did not come under the national minimum wage regulations. On and on it went. The GLA would be effective for that sort of anomaly.

The debate is a genuine one. We want the GLA to be safe in its current form, not weakened; and we want to ask what consideration is being given in government and Whitehall to extending its remit, and how that would happen. Where would that remit go, and is anything happening at the moment? There is strong support for the Minister to take the matter forward proactively, rather than simply putting it under the banner of the red tape review so that the GLA becomes diminished without our even considering its success and whether it should be taken further.

Food Prices and Food Poverty

Huw Irranca-Davies Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

This has been a very good and wide-ranging debate, and all in all I think that we have had 12 speakers, if my maths is good—although maths is not my strong point.

The hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) spoke eloquently on behalf of farmers, and pressed the Government on farmers’ genuine concerns about currency and exchange rates and rising costs. She spoke also of, in her phrase, “the climate of fear” in the supply chain, and we recognise that. She pushed the Government, as she has in her role as Chair of the excellent Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, to give real teeth and power to the adjudicator. She also almost referred to “good” and “bad” retailers, so I look forward to her contribution to the Labour left review or to Progress magazine.

The hon. Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys) also spoke well, and said that the era of cheap food is coming to an end. Perhaps it is, but if so I am sure we all agree that we need the fairest prices for consumers and fairness throughout the food chain. She mentioned her involvement with, if this is correct, “Tasty but ugly like you.” I do not mean you, Mr Deputy Speaker, of course. I hesitate to lay the words “tasty” or “ugly” on you—[Interruption.] No, I will stop there.

The hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), who represents a lovely part of the world which I know well, made a very good contribution that could have been called, “The Plot Thickens”. She talked about the importance of grow your own, and I too stress the role of allotments—given that the chair of the National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners, a very good gardener, lives in my constituency—and the need to protect and enhance them. The hon. Lady talked of giant leeks, which we see also at Wales rugby matches, and she advocated growing produce in one’s garden or in one’s neighbour’s garden—although in the latter case it is always best to ask permission.

The hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) said that there was no mention of “food poverty” in the motion. There is: it is in the title. The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) recognised the real problem of food poverty, on which I congratulate him, and he took issue with his hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) about the nature and purpose of the adjudicator, on which we agree. There was also a thoughtful contribution from the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston).

The hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) made a good contribution. He welcomed much of our motion and many of our remarks. I can clarify that we want the adjudicator in the next parliamentary Session. Will he support us? He should not let a drafting error get in the way of our emerging coalition on this matter.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) spoke extremely well for his constituents, describing a “heat or eat” scenario—or, worse, neither heat nor eat. He went into detail on food banks and mentioned clearly that they did not exist in great numbers under Labour because there was not the need for them on the scale at which they are now emerging.

My hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) spoke powerfully for farmers in her area and the early introduction of a powerful groceries code adjudicator in the next parliamentary Session. We agree. “Fairness across the food chain”—her phrase—is a good rallying cry. My hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) paid tribute to the work of our hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) on the groceries code adjudicator and called for an urgent introduction of an adjudicator with clout. She said, stirringly, that it is a disgrace that anyone should have to rely on charity to feed their family.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) focused expertly on food poverty, the growth in the number of food banks in Bristol and the work being done to mitigate the problem of food poverty. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) described the national scandal of rising food poverty, coupled with the rise in broad poverty issues throughout the UK. She gave direct evidence of the human tragedy for her own constituents, not least because of the late payment of benefits, something echoed by my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin).

The Secretary of State talked widely about global issues, but did not focus on the particulars of food poverty and food banks. Labour Members picked up on astonishing complacency. She described food banks as a triumph for the big society, rather than a tragedy caused by the Government’s social and economic policy. How many more food banks do we need before we can proclaim the big society a resounding success?

[Mrs Spelman]

When the hon. Gentleman checks Hansard tomorrow, he will see that I did not use the word “triumph”. Opposition Members have failed to observe that, for many decades, many institutions in this country have helped the poor and needy. If he has never been to a harvest festival and understood that churches collect food to distribute among those in their community who really need it, he is not alert to how much that is part of British culture.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Charitable effort has indeed always been part of this country, before the phrase “big society” was invented, but never with the proliferation that we currently see. It is a tragedy.

Let me relate a direct story about one not unusual family of four in England today. One parent is out of work and the other is in a low-paid job. Before Christmas, they found themselves behind on their mortgage, with their council tax debt racking up and the gas and electricity meters running out of money. They receive working tax credit and child tax credit, both of which will soon be cut by the Government. Their home is increasingly cold and dark and the only things in their cupboards are food parcels from the local food bank. The right hon. Lady shakes her head, but they buy what fresh food they can when they can, but without the support and kindness of local people, they would simply go hungry. We would love that to be fiction, but such are now the facts of life for too many families.

Into that harsh reality stumbles a throwback to the 1980s—a former Conservative Minister who was then the hon. Member for South Derbyshire. When confronted recently with that dire social and economic regression, she boldly answered:

“Are you telling me people in this country are going hungry? Seriously? Seriously?”

Yes, seriously—former Conservative Ministers might not want to believe it, but it is a searing indictment of the Government that more and more people across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland find themselves relying on food banks, one of which was opening every week last year. Those people depend on the generosity of others to get by.

Last year, 60,000 people received help from a food bank, a figure that the Trussell Trust predicts will rise to 130,000 in the next year. For all those impoverished families who now need a voice in the Chamber, the words and sentiment of the former Member for Ebbw Vale echo down the years: this is their truth, our truth—tell me yours. What is true across the UK is true in my constituency and neighbouring constituencies. From Llanharan to Gilfach Goch, and Maesteg to Pontycymmer, and all points between, food banks proliferate.

We should pay tribute to the many volunteers and organisations involved, such as the Bridgend food bank and the Pontyclun food bank, but the issue is a terrible indictment of the economic misery inflicted on families under this failing coalition Government. I challenge the Minister and the Government to dispute that stark reality. The Government’s failing policies and inaction on the economy mean that families are finding it hard to make ends meet and struggling to cope with rising living costs, higher energy, housing and food bills, and the constant fear that they could lose their jobs—if they have them—at any time.

For too many, eating is losing out to heating and housing costs. Charities warn that having a job is now no protection; an estimated 10% of food bank recipients are middle earners whose salaries have been cut or frozen or who have recently lost their jobs. Food prices rose by more than 4% last year. Lower-income families are eating less fresh fruit and vegetables. They spend more than 15% of their income on food. In real terms, it comes down to a couple with two young children spending an extra £233 on their annual food bill.

When surveyed by Which? in the last year, more than half of consumers said that increasing prices made it difficult to eat healthily. Nearly 90% genuinely fear the increasing cost of food. Those are startling figures. However, when people need help, the Government seem torn between prevarication and paralysis when it comes to taking action that will go some way towards easing the pressure on people’s wallets—not least by assisting farmers and manufacturers of the food we eat with the retail and financial challenges that they face.

When in government, Labour took action after the hike in food prices in 2008 to address that challenge and to produce more food sustainably. In 2010, we published the first Government food strategy for 60 years and our priority was a sustainable, affordable competitive food sector. We gained cross-party support for the supermarket ombudsman—to ensure a fair deal for farmers and food producers, who still need a fair deal from major retailers—and for the implementation of the groceries supply code of practice in February 2010.

Yes, there was more to be done, but the creation of an ombudsman—the groceries adjudicator—to enforce and monitor the code of practice was a recommendation of the Competition Commission and is supported by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and Business, Innovation and Skills Committees. It would do a great deal for farmers, food manufacturers and the public. It was not just us asking for it.

[Andrew George]

I have to put the hon. Gentleman right. The Competition Commission was empowered and used its power to introduce the groceries supply code of practice; it was not the last Labour Government. Will he retract that claim?

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I am happy to say that the code is in place, and that happened while the Labour party was in government. I agreed with the hon. Gentleman when he said last September:

“Every week the government fails to act, farmers are finding themselves in more difficulty.”

So let us get on with it.

We do not want bluff and bluster; we do need action. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) said, we ignore the perfect storm of rising prices, falling incomes and food poverty at our peril. I urge the House to support the motion.

Oral Answers to Questions

Huw Irranca-Davies Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paice]

As the hon. Lady will appreciate, I cannot give any absolute answer because I fear that the negotiations will take another 18 months to reach a conclusion, but there is no doubt that the single farm payment or a form of direct payment, whatever it is called, will continue. I cannot tell her what the exact rates will be, because obviously we have not seen any budgets yet. She will be aware that the proposal we support is that all member states and regions should move towards an area-based system, which Scotland has not yet done, so it will face that challenge, as will all the devolved regions. I can assure her that we will do our very best to negotiate on behalf of the whole United Kingdom to get the best deal for British farmers and the British taxpayer.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Mr Speaker, I join the Minister in saying to you: llongyfarchiadau.

With strong cross-party support, Labour introduced the Gangmasters Licensing Authority in response to wide public outrage at the deaths of Chinese cockle pickers in Morecambe bay in 2004. It is an example of good regulation and enforcement, which only last year resulted in 12 high-profile operations and prosecutions and the identification of nearly 850 exploited workers, despite budget cuts. While the exploitation of workers continues, the need for the GLA is as great as ever. Will the Minister guarantee that the red tape challenge will not be used to water down the GLA’s powers and successes and that he will work with us to improve and strengthen it, including through more flexible fines and civil penalties? No one wants a return to the horrors of Morecambe bay or to see the sickening exploitation and trafficking of people by criminal gangs continue.

[Mr Paice]

I am sure the whole House agrees with the hon. Gentleman that we do not want a return to that. We are looking at the issue of civil penalties, which he has just described, and at fines. Nevertheless, there is some concern that the GLA has broadened its perspective way beyond the sectors that it was originally intended, rightly, to cover. It had all-party support and still does. I will not deny that we are looking at whether there are aspects of its activities that could be altered, but we will make those announcements as part of the response to Macdonald in a month’s time. The GLA’s core responsibility to protect vulnerable workers must be retained and will be.

Welfare of Laying Hens Directive

Huw Irranca-Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Westminster Hall

[Neil Parish]

I am sure the Minister will cover this matter in his summing up, because it relates to legal advice. As my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton said, one can get two or three lawyers in a room and have two or three opinions. I am interested to hear what the Minister has to say on legality.

I still maintain that we must look at the market; otherwise we will be left with inferior eggs produced under lower welfare standards. From a food point of view, there is probably nothing wrong with the eggs, but they are not compliant. We must ensure that they are driven down in price, so that it is uneconomic for farms to produce them across Europe, and in the end that becomes a matter of the market. If we can drive those prices down, so that those eggs are only worth half a grade A egg, it will not take too long. Farmers may be many things but they usually work out the law of economics, and they will soon find that it is uneconomic to produce those eggs, especially with the high cereal prices at the moment. That must be our main goal. I am happy to slate supermarkets when they do not get it right, but they have got it right in this instance.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful contribution to the debate. Assuming that the Minister will not say that he has found alternative legal advice and that we can have a unilateral ban, does the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) agree that it is right to have a live updated rolling register positively identifying those supermarkets that comply with the Minister’s request and, by implication, identifying those that do not? The only way to do this through a market as opposed to a legal mechanism is to name and shame, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies). Let us recognise the good producers and processors and vilify those who do not maintain the highest standards of animal welfare and British food production.

[Neil Parish]

I could not agree more with the shadow Minister; it is a case of name and shame, and we need to know where the eggs have come from. I have looked at where all the beef, lamb and so on in supermarkets comes from. It would be good to discover not only the method by which the eggs have been produced, but where they have come from. I believe that the British public are more and more interested in where their food comes from and are keen that it is produced not only under higher welfare standards, but in this country. It would be a double-edged sword: we would look at not only non-compliant eggs, but where they were produced. That could be very good.

--- Later in debate ---

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

I will do my best to fill the available time, Mr Chairman, and will happily take interventions. This is a good chance to have a detailed debate.

I welcome the debate, and I genuinely congratulate the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) on securing it, in her role both as a constituency MP and as Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee. I also congratulate the members of the Committee on making this very much a live issue. It should be attracting the attention of parliamentarians and the wider public, and I will consider in a moment how we should deal with the consumer and market issues. I also welcome the expert, knowledgeable and detailed way in which the hon. Lady introduced the debate, and I note—as the Minister will have done—the significant differences that have emerged between her, as Chair of the Committee, and the Government, even though their positions support each other in many ways.

I very much welcome the comments from other contributors, including the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford). Am I pronouncing the constituency name correctly?

[Dr Whiteford]

It is Buchan.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Ah, it is a Welsh pronunciation, with the “ch” sound. I am dying to see how Hansard transcribes that. The hon. Lady mentioned the importance of recognising and rewarding good producers and the investment they have made, and that has been a common theme of the debate.

The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) made a very good contribution about how UK producers’ investment should bear fruit, or at least produce good eggs. He was certainly supportive of the idea, and I saw nodding heads on both sides of the House, of clearly identifying which producers, processors, retailers, supermarkets and restaurants use not only good shell eggs but good liquefied and other processed eggs, and which do not. There is some scope for the Minister. We might have a way forward, together with the UK egg producers and the various representative organisations.

The hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) spoke very well about his experience with free-range hens. My household has always had a few, just for our own consumption. It has been a long-standing tradition on our smallholding, but I cannot compete with the hon. Gentleman’s much more extensive expertise. He rightly pointed out that we could do a lot with the power of consumers and the markets, but we have a heck of a long way to go.

I draw parliamentarians’ attention to research by YouGov and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The RSPCA would like to go even further towards free range and away from any sort of caging, but it has done an interesting analysis, which the Minister might not be aware of because it has, I think, come out only in the past few days. It looked at people’s awareness of the legislation, and at their buying power as consumers; 69% of them wrongly assumed what the law would mean for hens and animal welfare. A further 19% had not heard about the legislation at all. A fifth wrongly assumed that all battery cages would now be banned; 8% thought that all hens would now be free range and 1% thought it was something to do with farmers having to play music to their hens. We have a long way to go, not only in working with the retail sector, including supermarkets, but in highlighting the issue to consumers so that they can genuinely drive change in the market, but that is not all that I shall talk about today.

[Glyn Davies]

I cannot allow that 1% figure about playing music to hens to pass without comment. I may be the only person here who has been a farmer, with 20,000 battery cages. It was unheard of not to play music. The whole point is that opening a door should not surprise the hens and make them jump around, so playing music in battery cages is common practice.

--- Later in debate ---

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I will not exhaust your attention, Mr Chairman, by asking what music the hon. Gentleman played. As an ex-punk, I think my taste in music might startle the hens, but I am glad to hear that music is played. Was it classical?

[Glyn Davies]

Springsteen.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

As we know, Council directive 1999/74/EC will make it illegal to have laying hens in conventional battery cages across the EU from 1 January 2012, after which date egg production will be allowed only in enriched colony or non-cage systems; for example, free range, barn or organic. We have heard today that Members on both sides of the House agree that that is appropriate, and there has been none of the discussion about gold-plating that we often have with EU regulations. The directive has been welcomed, both for animal welfare and for food production standards, and it might well benefit UK production and producers, if we can get it right. It is also good for the quality of the eggs and egg products that we eat every day. The significant problem is that not every EU nation will comply with the directive—13 of them will not—which poses enormous challenges for the UK egg industry. The industry’s response to the Minister’s written ministerial statement on 6 December 2011 was that it feels “totally let down” by Ministers on this important matter, and I want to look today at why it feels that way and at what must be done.

I compliment the UK egg industry on its responsible approach to the directive over a number of years, with investment in the region of £400 million to convert conventional cages to enriched ones. The capital cost of an enriched colony unit is between £20 and £24 per bird place, and the National Farmers Union has stated that for a producer with a medium-sized cage unit of about 100,000 birds the cost of erecting the new units is, on average, in excess of £2 million—not an insignificant amount. Free-range egg producers have also invested heavily in preparation for the directive, and that has been a draw on the industry, which, as has been mentioned, is a competitive market that does not receive EU support. The NFU has also stated that the majority of birds in the UK will be in enriched cages by January 2012, which is to be welcomed, and that all lion scheme producers will be converted in time.

A lot of work has been going on over recent years, with many people investing heavily to comply, but the problem is that the UK is not self-sufficient in eggs and egg products. We import 15% of our egg requirements, and valid concerns remain about whether imports from January 2012 onwards will come from EU nations that comply with the directive, and about the possible impact on the UK egg industry, including on prices. One of the industry’s fears is that prices will be driven down, with cheaper eggs and lower standards.

In a move that was openly welcomed by the UK egg industry, the Minister recently dangled the potential for a unilateral ban on eggs from EU nations that do not comply. However, in his statement last week, he decided that it was “not a realistic option”. Having raised that possibility, why can the Minister not now deliver it? It will leave many egg farmers feeling that he failed them.

What has the Minister delivered? He has given an unequivocal assurance that DEFRA and the devolved Administrations will enforce the conventional cage ban from 1 January 2012. I think that everybody in this debate will welcome that and how the industry, the devolved Administrations and DEFRA have risen to the challenge. He also stated that a risk-based surveillance scheme would be introduced to ensure that imported shell eggs from other member states produced in compliance with the cage ban would be in place from 1 January 2012. [Interruption.] He is nodding.

The Minister also said that Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency surveillance would be conducted on imports of shell eggs, using ultraviolet light analysis, to identify batches of caged eggs that are not from an enriched environment. However, he also acknowledged that due to the loophole in the egg marketing regulations, he could not prohibit the marketing of egg products from conventional cages sent for processing, nor could he prohibit the use of products made from such eggs. That is a significant loophole.

However, the Minister made the welcome announcement that retailers, food manufacturers, food service companies and processors have come out in public support of the UK egg industry. I do not make many puns in debates such as this, but those good eggs, reflecting earlier campaigns on the issue, are to be complimented on the steps that they have taken and will take. The British Retail Consortium, whose members include McDonald’s, Starbucks, the four major supermarkets and many other brand names, will ensure that they do not buy conventional caged eggs or use them in their products. Furthermore, he outlined that the Government would make necessary changes to the Government buying standards’ mandatory criteria to ensure that eggs produced in conventional cages are not used in any form, whether fresh, powdered or liquid.

After that seemingly wide-ranging set of measures, why does nobody in the industry seem happy? I suggest to the Minister that it may be a case of trying to look busy while failing to deliver the one thing that he strongly hinted was possible, a unilateral ban. The industry is now being overwhelmed with many different initiatives as a diversion. Perhaps they will forget the fact that they think they have been led up the garden path. It is a classic case of over-promising and under-delivering, which is never a good strategy.

[Sandra Osborne in the Chair]

The British Egg Industry Council says that the measures are not good enough and that the Government could have introduced a complete ban on all illegal products in the UK. Its chief executive, Mark Williams, said:

“The UK egg industry feels totally let down by the Government. Whilst we have received repeated platitudes of support from DEFRA, it has failed to back these up with any real action. Our legal advice has confirmed that the UK Government is able to enforce UK and EU law by banning illegal eggs and egg products, so why have they chickened out?”

That is his pun, not mine.

Although the National Farmers Union has welcomed the measures taken by Government, it has stated categorically that

“our members will certainly be bitterly disappointed that it has not been possible to take tougher action.”

One British egg farmer, Duncan Priestner, echoed the concerns of many, including the NFU, when he said this week that he feared some food producers would be tempted to buy eggs from illegal systems in Europe, because they will be cheaper. He said:

“It will drive down the prices that farmers get. Like the pig industry”,

which has been referred to,

“that will put us in a very difficult financial position."

[Mr Spencer]

The UK is clearly not the only country in the EU that will be compliant on 1 January. Does the shadow Minister know of any other Ministers in the European Union who will take unilateral action within their own country?

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

The hon. Gentleman raises a good point. I will come to that, if he will bear with me. There is a case, if not for unilateral action, then for doing what the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee suggested and considering the possibility that like-minded countries might take multilateral action to enforce the EU directive much more rigorously and aggressively and in a joined-up way. There are like-minded countries out there. With my limited experience of EU negotiations, I suggest to the Minister that that is a fruitful way forward. We should be sitting down with those of the same mind and discussing how to work within the EU directive after 1 January. Even if we cannot do it unilaterally—I will ask about the legal advice in a moment—we could do it in a joined-up way with like-minded countries. As I have given him that forewarning, I am sure that he will be able to tell me what discussions are occurring.

The good work of the NFU Poultry Board has been referred to. Its chairman, Charles Bournes, said:

“We are concerned that although the Government has repeatedly pledged its support for the industry, it cannot prohibit the use of illegal egg products and food manufactured from such products.”

On the back of those comments, I have a series of questions for the Minister.

Given that the British Egg Industry Council and others have stated that their legal advice is that a unilateral ban is possible, will the Minister publish the legal advice that he received on whether the Government would be able to enforce a unilateral ban on the import of conventional caged eggs? As he knows, we requested that advice in a written parliamentary question last week. We expect the Department’s reply any day now, if not today.

In response to the intervention by the hon. Member for Sherwood, will the Minister update us on whether he intends to work with like-minded countries to see whether a rigorous form of enforcement or a multilateral ban could be employed by other countries that have complied with the directive and are concerned for their own industries? It is not only about supporting British industry; it is also about supporting higher animal welfare standards. I am sure that those countries would be willing to work on that, with some good negotiation and persuasion from the Minister.

In the absence of full compliance from 1 January, will the Minister commit to making a quarterly statement to the House about the progress he is making within the EU on negotiations, particularly on getting the 13 other members to implement the directive fully, and on what additional work he as a Minister, his officials at DEFRA and UKRep are undertaking to level up the playing field promptly? Will he also update Parliament on the level of non-compliant imports? I think that we will all be extremely concerned if, as a result of the non-level playing field after 1 January, imports increase, particularly eggs and egg products from non-conventional and enriched cages.

We have all seen the recent furore under this Government over humans arriving in airports and ports and being waved through. What hope is there for eggs? What assurance can the Minister give people who are sceptical that imports can be checked for compliance with the EU directive? As an hon. Member said in the debate earlier, what specific additional resources will the Minister make available for policing the directive, and at what cost?

AHVLA surveillance of imports of shell eggs will use ultraviolet light analysis. I understand that the method has not been used specifically to identify different types of caged egg production, although it has been used to identify eggs from alternative systems. What assurance can the Minister give that that type of monitoring is 100% effective? If it is not 100% effective, what level of surety do we have that it is an effective way to monitor and police egg imports? His recent statement made little mention of powdered or liquefied egg. What assurance can he give that imported powdered or liquefied egg will not come from hens in conventional cages?

Will the Minister push the European Commission to take swift action with meaningful financial penalties against any country guilty of non-compliance on shell eggs or egg products after 1 January? Will he take a hard line in discussions with the European Commission on non-compliant countries? That would give some assurance to egg producers in this country that there was at least an attempt, in the way we know other countries do with us, to try and level up the playing field rapidly. What can the Minister do to ensure that the UK egg industry will not be undercut on price by eggs and egg products from conventional cages from any of those 13 non-compliant states? We welcome the Government’s commitment to introduce changes to the Government buying standards mandatory criteria, but why did it take so long to produce them? Why were they so late? Will he guarantee that the changes will be completed and enforced by 1 January 2012, and that all Departments, without fail, will not be using, in this context, conventionally caged eggs in any form—shell, liquid or powdered? It would be wholly inappropriate for the Government to fail to introduce these measures properly, and to fail their own standards, after asking much of the egg industry and many retailers—food manufacturers, food service companies and processors—to invest heavily in preparation for the ban.

Given that the UK’s enforcement strategy is to ensure that all those in the industry have stringent traceability tests in place to ensure that they are not using conventional cage eggs, what assistance is the Minister giving them—not policing, but giving the industry—to ensure that they are fully prepared? Are there additional costs that the industry will now have to take on to ensure compliance, and what assistance is the Minister giving if that is the case? Is he undertaking further action to assist our whole supply chain in the UK to prepare for this directive, or is that now it? They are ready, up and running, and it is a competitive market.

The Minister promised much, but the results have fallen short, as we have heard from the industry. In EU negotiations, there was a failure to level the playing field upwards in favour of higher animal welfare standards, and, I have to say, in favour of UK producers and jobs. However, he had a plan B, which was nothing to do with walking out on negotiations; it was actually to impose a UK unilateral ban. Despite the good promises and the fine words, I wonder whether he has been “Sir Humphried” by his officials on internal legal advice. We must now rely on voluntary enforcement—a sort of big society approach to welfare in UK food production. Perhaps I could suggest to him a reliance on the good and bad in business, highlighted by the Leader of the Opposition in recent contributions.

Finally, when all else has failed, will the Minister work with the industry, hon. Members here today and us to produce a definitive and up to date rolling register of all those who source shell, powder and liquefied eggs from enriched cages? Food processors, retailers, restaurants and others on the list would be demonstrably good eggs, and by implication everybody else would be bad eggs. We would support the Minister strongly in that, but anything else will be seen as a slap in the face for the UK egg industry.

I have already written to all those in the supply chain in the UK, asking in detail what they are doing to comply with the EU directive, both those on the list produced by the Minister and all other significant players. I guarantee our support if the Minister produces a live rolling register, because that seems to be the only tool left in the box at the moment. We have a lot of work to do, as I alluded to with the findings of the RSPCA, and we will do it. If the Minister does not, I am convinced that the industry will do it separately and alone, and we will work with them.

This is by no means a complete list of questions or of the concerns of many inside and outside the UK egg industry, but they are some of the key questions left to be answered by the Minister. I hope that he can provide the assurances that many are seeking—in the industry and in the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, which has done such good work on this—so that we can drive up animal welfare standards and the protection of the very best in UK food production, as I know he is convinced we must do.

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

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) for securing the debate and for the way in which she introduced it.

Obviously, I am aware of the importance of this issue. Hon. Members from all parts of the House have written to me about it in the past year to 18 months. Indeed, as I shall come to describe, it is something with which I have been closely involved ever since I took up my ministerial responsibilities. There is much on which I think we can all agree. However, before launching into that, I want to put on the record that I strongly resent and resist accusations that I have done nothing—as my hon. Friend suggested, when she said that I could do nothing, as was clear in my statement. I also reject the hysterical comments that have been made by those who allegedly represent the industry. They are not constructive, and they are not factual in a number of cases.

As hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies), have clearly stated, the provision has been in existence for 12 years, since the 1999 directive that bans the keeping of hens in conventional battery cages from 1 January. It has been widely welcomed on all sides of the debate, even from those who would prefer it to go further, as the hon. Gentleman has said. I have said in the Agriculture Council and in this country that every country has had 12 years to prepare. Even the newer member states, which were not members at that time, knew what they were signing up to. There is no excuse, in the Government’s view, for any country not to have done everything it could to ensure that its producers comply.

Clearly, the directive is a huge challenge and great concern to the industry. I join my hon. Friends and hon. Members from other parties in congratulating the producers who have invested approximately £400 million in preparing for the ban by converting either to the enriched systems or to other systems. We know that the vast majority of UK producers will be compliant by 1 January. Of the remainder, we expect many of them will be leaving the industry at the end of the year or shortly after that, as soon as they can get their hens into an abattoir. As has been said, there is a different picture across Europe, with 13 of the 27 member states saying that they will not be ready. It has taken a long while for the Commission to get that information. As several hon. Members have said, there could be approximately 50 million hens in conventional cages across the EU. On 1 January, those will be unacceptable conditions.

We have been working hard to try to protect our producers, who have invested £400 million. As my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) has said, that works out at about £25 per hen. I have said several times to the industry, and I do not resile from this, that we will do all that we can to protect it. I believe that we have done that within the bounds of legislation, and I shall come on to that. Alongside what we could be thinking about doing in this country, we are still pursuing the UK’s interests in Brussels. Despite the fact that it is not satisfactory, we have made some steps forward.

It is more than a year ago now—in fact, it was September 2010—when Commissioner Dalli visited this country and came to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. At that stage, I said to him that we were very concerned that member states would not be compliant. At that stage, the Commission felt that it would be “all right on the night”. However, early this year it began to realise that that might not be the case. It asked all member states for a status report by the end of April. Not all member states complied, but it has recently received more information, to which I will refer, and which is the origin of the 50 million figure that I mentioned just now.

We have had a number of further discussions, both privately between myself and the Commissioner and at Council meetings. In September, the Secretary of State wrote jointly with nine other concerned member states to the Commission, urging it to act quickly. However, at the October Agriculture Council—this is very important in light of what my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton has said—the Commission ruled out the option of an inter-community trade ban, which it said is not legally possible. That is clearly on the record as a result of that Council meeting. I have to emphasise that it has warned member states not to do so individually. The Commission has told us clearly that there is no legal basis for a ban.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I thank the Minister for clarifying that point. Have he and his officials accepted that, or have they challenged it and sought alternative legal advice to take back to the Commissioner?

[Mr Paice]

I assure the hon. Gentleman that, of course, we have sought our own legal advice. I was going to mention that issue later, but I am happy to address it now. Please forgive me, Ms Osborne, if I read from my notes verbatim, but I need to get it right. I must stress that I am not reading out direct legal advice. Perhaps I can use this opportunity to say to him that I have answered his parliamentary question and that I suspect that he will get the answer today. As I am sure that he knows, I am afraid that the answer is no. Governments do not publish legal advice given to Ministers. That was not the case under the previous Government, and it is not the case under this Government.

The treaty on the functioning of the EU prohibits quantitative restrictions on imports between member states and all measures that have a similar effect, with limited exceptions to that general rule, including where they are necessary on animal health or human health grounds. The advice that we have received shows that it is extremely unlikely that a court would extend those exceptions to animal welfare grounds in these circumstances. The treaty also states that any restriction of trade must not constitute arbitrary discrimination.

Given the traceability issues around distinguishing between imported eggs that have been reared in conventional cages in other member states and those that have not—I will come back to traceability in a moment—any ban would have to be on imports of all eggs from a particular country, whether reared in conventional cages or not. That would clearly penalise compliant producers in other member states, which runs contrary to the principle of the free movement of goods. The hon. Member for Ogmore and my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton raised the ban on sow stalls, which we implemented a long time ago in this country. If we apply the logic of the argument that we are discussing to that, we would have had to introduce a ban on all pigmeat, including that not introduced in sow stalls. Neither the Government at the time nor the previous Labour Government believed that they had the power to do that. It is quite clear that we do not have the legal basis to take such action.

[Mr Paice]

My hon. Friend is right, but she needs to read that legal instrument to see what powers it gives member states to introduce a ban. The fact is that it does not give those powers. The Commissioner has been through this over and over again. I have had private meetings with him and with others as well. He is absolutely adamant that there are no powers available to him or member states to introduce the ban in the way in which my hon. Friend has advocated

I hope that I can clarify the matter by coming to traceability, which is right at the heart of the issue. Before getting to that, I shall finish my point about the Commission’s role. Once Commissioner Dalli realised that there was going to be a big problem, the Commission started looking for a robust enforcement approach that would avoid a large number of producers having to close down their operations. More importantly, as my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton has said, the Commissioner also wanted to avoid the destruction of millions and millions of eggs, which clearly would not have been right when many people are struggling to make ends meet.

At the same time, the Commissioner wanted to protect producers who have complied with the ban. He came up with the concept of what has been described as a gentlemen’s agreement, which does not have a legal basis. Most of those member states who were expecting to be compliant did not like the idea. Those who were not compliant reluctantly agreed to the idea. I took the view that, although we did not want any slippage in the timetable, we had to face up to the reality that there would be non-compliant eggs and therefore something had to be done. In fact, the gentlemen’s agreement died. There was clearly no prospect of a gentlemen’s agreement, and it has not been progressed.

The Commission has acted on the practical things for which the UK has been pressing. As several hon. Members have said, it has begun pre-infraction procedures. More importantly, it has also asked for the action plans from all non-compliant member states to contain measures to accelerate compliance. In answer to the hon. Member for Ogmore, its intention is for a monthly report of those plans to be given to the Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health, which is known as SCoFCAH for short.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Once again, I thank the Minister for clarification on those points. Returning to the legal advice, has he sought clarification from his officials on the risk of the UK being found guilty and prosecuted for infraction for trying to abide by the very standards that the EU Commissioner wants to apply eventually throughout Europe? Considering the backdrop he has just explained about the EU Commission driving forward pre-infraction procedures, if the UK or other countries were to go for a unilateral ban or a multilateral ban with like-minded countries, what is the likelihood of the UK facing infraction? If a country is infracted for not doing something, it is different from being infracted for doing the very thing the EU wants countries to do.

[Mr Paice]

The hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly reasonable suggestion. Obviously, I cannot tell him what the risk is. This is an extremely important point and, to go back in history, his Government took such a view about earlier issues when the boot was on the other foot. It is very difficult for someone to argue that other people are not complying with the law if they then proceed to break it themselves. Someone would lose a great deal of moral standing if they did that.

I want to make a final point about the Commission before I come back to the key issues. The Commission’s Food and Veterinary Office missions will be targeted from the beginning of 2012 at non-compliant member states and, to help that, all member states have been asked to submit lists of compliant producers. We have asked for all those measures, because they will give some protection to compliant producers in the UK and across the EU. Clearly, that is not enough, which is why we have said that we reserve the right to take our own actions. Yes, we have thoroughly investigated the possibility of unilateral action and, when I have said in the past that we were considering the matter, I was saying it exactly as it was. I think that hon. Members who know me well enough will know that I would be keen to take action, but, unfortunately, the legal advice that I have had from within, plus the statements from the Commission to which I have referred, have led me to believe that we cannot do so. That is partly because of the practical issues and difficulties in enforcing such an approach.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Paice]

They are European regulations—there is no question about that—as I am sure the advisers to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee will have confirmed to my hon. Friend. We have, in recent months, asked the Commission—and we will continue to ask it—to amend those regulations. That has not happened so far, and I must confess that the Commission officials with whom we have had detailed discussions do not seem overly keen on the idea, so we are faced with having to operate within the existing legislation.

On the issue of what exactly is an offence, it will be an offence to keep hens in those cages, and we would prosecute under the Animal Welfare Act 2006. That is clear. However, it will not necessarily be an offence to be in possession of an egg from an illegal cage, but it would be an offence to try to pass it off as an egg from a legal cage. It is important to be clear about that.

On the efforts that we have made within the constraints, the hon. Member for Ogmore challenged me about the Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency and my description of the use of ultraviolet light. He is right that the technique has never been used directly in the way that we propose, but, as he has also said, it has been used to identify eggs from caged hens within batches that have been described as free range or barn eggs. Not until now has it been specifically used to identify different types of caged egg production, but we have had it independently validated, and I have looked at it myself. When an egg is laid, the shell is momentarily a bit soft and takes an imprint of the material on which it is laid. If it is laid on wire, it comes through clearly under ultraviolet light, which is obvious. If it is laid on any sort of softer egg-laying surface, which is a requirement of an enriched cage, that comes through as a completely different pattern.

I must also make it clear, however, that the use of ultraviolet light is simply a marker for us and would not, by itself, be the basis of prosecution. If any suspect eggs are found, we will ask the country of origin to confirm our suspicions about whether the producer—do not forget that the information will be on the egg—is compliant or not. That is how the system will operate. If the eggs are found to be from an illegal system, they will be prevented from being marketed as class A eggs and sent for processing—that is, as I have said, downgraded to class B. I have now explained the point about marketing regulations.

As of today, as far as we can establish, the average price per dozen of class A caged eggs, which are, of course, legal at the moment, is about 54p, while the average price per dozen of class B eggs is 29.4p. That is nearly 25p per dozen cheaper, which is close to 50% of the price. That is a massive price differential. I cannot believe that anybody will seek to import eggs from non-compliant cages and risk losing half the value of the eggs if we detect them. We have to be sensible. The economic impact on anybody who has their eggs downgraded will be absolutely massive, and I do not believe that they would risk it happening. As far as shell eggs are concerned, our measures will be sufficient.

Let me turn to the understandably more concerning issue of processed eggs, which, as has rightly been said, represent about half the imports of egg and egg products into this country and approximately 9% of total consumption. As I have said, they are much less easy to trace, because the eggs are not required to carry any identification. That loophole causes us immense problems, which is why we have been pressing, and will continue to press, to get it closed. In the absence of that, we have had to use what opportunity we have, which, as I have said, is to work with the industry. The hon. Member for Ogmore is right and that is why I published a list in my statement, and was happy to do so, unusually, on the basis of name and shame. I am happy to update the list and, as of today, can add two more processors—Bumble Hole Foods Ltd and D Wise Ltd. That now means that nine of the major processors are on board, reducing still further the likelihood of eggs from conventional cages or their products being imported.

That is the situation. I am approaching the end of my allocated time and have almost finished addressing the issues, but I am conscious that I also need to respond to a number of questions. In the absence of the ability to instigate a ban, we have tried, as I have explained, to throttle the market. That is what it boils down to—we have tried to make sure that there is no market in the UK for illegally produced eggs or egg products.

I have dealt with the issue of legal advice. To return to my earlier intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton, I have been in contact with like-minded countries in the EU. In the week before I made the statement, I telephoned them myself and not one of them is proposing any action yet. As far as we can establish, we are the only country proposing any measures from 1 January. Of course, I continue to work with them and, if there are prospects for more unified action, I will take it, but, as I have said, they are not minded to take action.

I have mentioned the regular monthly updates to the Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health and, in response to a question asked by the hon. Member for Ogmore, I will ensure that, somehow, that is brought to the House’s attention. I cannot give him the information about non-compliant imports, because of the issue of traceability, which I have mentioned. We do not know whether such imports are non-compliant, and we are trying to ensure that they are not. The European Commission cannot impose financial penalties, which is a matter for the courts following infraction proceedings. On the industry’s issues, it has not provided us with any form of costings. We are open about that. I am sure that if the costings had been onerous, the industry would have been quick to tell us.

Finally, I fully understand the importance of the issue. We have tried very hard to use the weapons available to us.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Paice]

I am sorry, but I must finish. The fact that I have been able to list not just retailers, but all the major bakery brands, such as the producers of Mr Kipling and all sorts of biscuits, and the major caterers, such as Compass Group, BaxterStorey, Sodexo, and a number of, if not all, the major importers of egg products, demonstrates that we have gone a long way to throttling the marketplace in this country for eggs from non-compliant cages. My final point for anybody who tells me that it is too difficult and that the eggs cannot be traced is that the importers of processed eggs have their own traceability systems, because that is what they are trying to do and, they have assured us, what they will do. However, when we are faced with an egg that has no indication of where it came from, we cannot trace it, which is the harsh fact. I hope that the House will accept that the Government are doing all that we can to protect our producers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Huw Irranca-Davies Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Spelman]

When we announced our £26 million uplands package, one of the things we said we would do is give priority to uplands farmers who want to take up entry level schemes. We specifically spoke about the need for landlords to back their tenant farmers who want to take advantage of the scheme.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

Public procurement is a key way of supporting British food production and high food standards, yet the Department for Work and Pensions sources only 11% of its food from UK producers, DEFRA is failing on its own policy for sourcing sustainable fish and the new ethical standards for food served in public institutions were ridiculed in a report this week for being even weaker than those at McDonald’s. Will the Secretary of State please stop clowning around with food standards and UK food production jobs and at least try to keep up with Ronald McDonald?

[Mrs Spelman]

There is no question but that the Government, through procurement choices, can make a big difference to the food and drink industry, which is one of the reasons we set additional requirements on all Departments to buy to higher standards, including sustainable fish, when we announced the guidelines for Government buying standards in September. We do not yet have figures for the most recent month, and no doubt it will take time to adapt to the changes, but the point is that there is a commitment right across central Government to buy to the highest standards that we expect from British food producers.

Environmental Protection and Green Growth

Huw Irranca-Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

On naked cucumbers? [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. There is so much chuntering going on that I cannot hear about these naked cucumbers through all the noise.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Benyon]

Before the election, the previous Chancellor announced that there would be a 50% cut in DEFRA’s capital spend. If Labour had won that election, it might have said that it would not cut flood protection, but in that case, what would it have cut? The hon. Member for Wakefield used the tired old argument that if we are to compare apples with apples, we must compare this Government with the last two years of the previous one. However, in this four years, there is an 8% cut compared with the previous four years. Bearing in mind the cuts across the Government and the appalling legacy that we were left, we have made flooding an absolute priority.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I thank the Minister for giving way so early on. Will he correct the supposition of the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) that the previous Government said anything about cutting flood defence spending? We did not say that. I shall put that on the record again. The Minister is right that we would have to find the cuts somewhere, but we never indicated that they would come from flood defence, because of the impact that would have on people’s businesses, homes and, potentially, lives.

--- Later in debate ---

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

This has been a very good debate in which Members in all parts of the House have made powerful and passionate points. One powerful point made by the Minister, with which I strongly agreed, concerned the welcome news of the publication of the national ecosystems services. I know that he will want to commend that worthy project, and to recognise that it was inspired and developed by Labour. I congratulate him on having brought it to fruition.

The Minister mentioned the fourth carbon budget, which Labour developed under the Climate Change Act 2009. It, too, is welcome, but there are two little opt-outs, to which the Chancellor referred in his review. We shall see how that proceeds.

I commend the Minister for his work with the International Whaling Commission. It is good to know that that work is continuing, and I know that he is committed to it. We have always had a cross-party view on that, and it I am pleased to note that he is still standing firm.

I think that every Member present will welcome the £100 million to protect the rainforest. Curiously and coincidentally, the Minister planned to raise the same amount from selling our forests.

Having heaped praise on our motion, the Minister then said that he would oppose it. I assumed from his praise that he would support it; perhaps he will change his mind.

The hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) made a very good speech. He spoke well about the need for a focus on biosecurity and cattle movements as a solution to the problem of bovine tuberculosis, and criticised the “Cornwall approach”—much, I think, to the consternation of the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George).

The hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) welcomed the number of Labour Members attending the debate, as do I. The Chamber has been full of Labour Members today. In contrast, at one point during yesterday’s debate on the important issue of the Agricultural Wages Board no Conservative Members were present, and then just one was present.

I must correct the hon. Lady on one point. Her long litany of Labour councils included my local council, Bridgend. Bridgend’s recycling rate is not 33%. It was 33% at the end of the rainbow coalition of Plaid Cymru, Tories and Liberal Democrats, but when Labour took control it rose to 51%, the highest in any local authority in Wales. I suggest that the hon. Lady check her figures and ensure that they are up to date. As for the average rate in Wales, it is 45%. She might wish to correct the record at some point.

The hon. Member for St Ives said it was too early to judge this Government, as they have been in office for only 18 months. I refer him to the report by 29 wildlife and countryside charities condemning this Government’s record so far.

I welcome the concept of cross-party engagement. When I was in the Government, we held two cross-party flood summits to work through the issues. That has not happened under the current Government, and I ask the Minister to invite my colleagues to attend such meetings. [Interruption.] He says that has happened, and I accept his assurance, but it is not my understanding.

The hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) painted a very rosy picture of the Government’s green record, but we beg to differ. He talked about the green deal; we hope for the best, but we fear the worst.

I thank the hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) for acknowledging my party’s leadership on groundbreaking national and international legislation and obligations, and I extrapolate from his remarks on the slow progress made in the previous decade on renewables, and especially wind, that he supports the building of more onshore wind farms to meet the renewables obligations. I must say, however, that not many of his colleagues share that view.

The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) questioned the Government’s commitment to the green agenda, and she also questioned Labour’s commitment; I agree with the former remark, but dispute and refute the latter. She accused us and the Government of collective amnesia, but if that is the case it must be catching, as in respect of world leadership on these issues, the Climate Change Act 2008, the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 and much else besides were introduced under a Labour Government.

My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) observed that what matters is not what we say, but what we do, and I agree. She drew attention to the low ambition shown by the Government and the high ambition on recycling shown in Wales, and said that the Government had missed an opportunity.

My hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) mentioned farmers’ concerns about the delays in dealing with, and diminishing responsibilities of, the groceries code adjudicator, and we agree.

My hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) told Members on the Government Benches to stop obsessing about weekly bin collections and to focus instead on recycling, and she rightly expressed the concerns of her constituents about insurance for flood victims.

My hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) has great commitment and expertise in this area, including through his work with the Environment Agency. He expressed regret about the Government’s lack of ambition, which was, indeed, a general theme in the debate.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) picked up on the comments made from the Government Benches that this issue should not be political. However, it is political, of course, by its very nature and because it is very important.

There is a delicious irony in the phrase, “the greenest Government ever”, which was uttered so easily during the coalition’s fleeting embrace of the green movement. It is so easy to say, “I love you”, in the midst of tender fervour. Yet the morning after come the bitter recriminations, the shame and the feeling of being used.

I know that the Minister’s heart is in the right place, so let me direct the following comments to the Secretary of State, who must take personal responsibility for the actions of the Government. If they were a business, they would have been referred to trading standards by now; they would have featured on “Rogue Traders” for ripping off the British public and stealing their votes with their false and overblown promises to be the greenest Government ever.

On forests, the public saw earlier this year how the Government tried to rip them off: coalition failure; on the cuts to flood defences, wasting an opportunity for green growth and jobs, and putting at risk homes, businesses and people: failure; on finding a ban on wild animals in circuses just too difficult: failure; on relegating England to the lowest recycling targets in the UK, missing chances for jobs and new green industries: failure; on their slippy-slidey back-tracking on plans for mandatory reporting of carbon emissions: failure; on the delay to Labour’s plan for universal broadband by 2012: failure; on the delays and the castration of the groceries code adjudicator, letting down farmers and the consumer: failure; on ignoring Labour’s food strategy for 2030, to the consternation of the National Farmers Union and others: failure; on abolishing the Sustainable Development Commission, curtailing independent scrutiny of the Government’s appalling record: failure; on achieving a green light in only two out of 16 traffic lights in the “Nature Check” report by the Wildlife and Countryside Link: failure; and on the Chancellor of the Exchequer commandeering the Government’s green agenda in place of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and then killing it: failure—abject, pitiful, supine, green growth and environmental failure. Fail, fail and fail again; there is a bit of a pattern here.

However, the Government have had success in one area. They have succeeded in splitting the Cabinet from top to toe on their green agenda, with the Chancellor boldly championing the climate-sceptics and deniers, and the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change pitching his shaky, leaky leadership tent in opposition. The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs seems to be wholly absent from the battlefield, and after a lovely photo-shoot with a husky the Prime Minister has shot and eaten the poor creature. Since then, there has, understandably, not even been a whimper from the husky, but, more surprisingly, the incredible silence of the Prime Minister on all issues green since the election has been deafening. After a brief pre-election love-in, he never phones. Why does the Prime Minister not just admit it: the love affair is over, he was never serious anyway and it was just a fling? “Get over it” he might as well say.

This Tory-led coalition Government risk being an environmental and economic catastrophe for this country. Over the past 18 months, when we should have been using green growth to stimulate our flagging economy and to lead on the environmental agenda, as Labour did when we were in government, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has instead allowed her Department to be steamrollered by the Chancellor and ignored by an indifferent Prime Minister. This is not a green agenda. This is a not a growth agenda. It is an agenda of despair. It is not a vision of hope for jobs and nature, but one of hopelessness. We do not have a Department driving forward on Labour’s legacy, but one that is actually in reverse. In place of ambition, we see abject surrender.

Even if they have given up on green growth and the environment, at least the Conservatives can repeat their claim to be the natural party of the countryside and still get away with it, can they not? They cannot after yesterday, when they voted to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board, thus weakening protections for farm workers. There was one—just one—principled Lib Dem Member who participated fully in that debate, changed his mind, to his credit, and voted with our amendment. But the combined weight of fellow Lib Dems and Tories, with one notable exception, defeated us and they defeated farm workers. So who speaks for the countryside, for green growth and for the environment? Labour does, as it always has and always will.

I say to those on the not-so-green Benches opposite that owning large parts of the countryside is not the same as speaking for the countryside. Saying that they are green does not make them green. Talking up green growth is no substitute for making it happen with green jobs and skills, training, innovation and investment. This Government are failing. DEFRA Ministers are failing. Green growth and the natural environment will fail with them. I say to Ministers and the Government that they should change course now and up their game, because the country now and in future generations will not forgive a Government who, at a crucial moment, walked away from the environment and from the opportunities for green growth, upon which the health and wealth of this nation depend. If they are not up to the job, they should walk away from government—we will do it for them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Benyon]

No, I will not give way.

We welcome the “Nature Check” report. It is very important that the organisations that took part in it have an edgy relationship with government. They frequently come to the Department and we work closely with them, and we will get green lights on the items as we progress. When that report was produced we had been in government for 15 months, dealing with abject failures created by the hon. Member for Ogmore and the Labour party in government, for which he has to take responsibility.

Let me deal with some of the excellent points made in the debate. The hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore) was missing the point. Just dealing with recycling does not deal with the whole waste problem; we need to look at this the whole way up the waste hierarchy. Unlike her Government, we will introduce proposals to ban wood from landfill next year.

I compliment my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) on a customary visionary speech. The leadership he is giving in his community on broadband, on local housing initiatives and on improving mobile coverage for his constituents is matched by this Government’s commitment to do the same for rural areas right across this country.

The hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) again showed that Labour Members just do not get the whole waste issue. I urge him to look at our waste review and see what we are achieving.

My hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) made an excellent speech in which she pointed out the failure of Labour councils. It is councils that deliver and it is coalition party councils that are achieving.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Will the Minister give way?

[Richard Benyon]

I shall not give way because the hon. Gentleman has had his time. [Interruption.]

When we consider flooding, the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal is in my head because it has proved that there are other ways—[Interruption.]

Public Bodies Bill [Lords]

Huw Irranca-Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andrew George]

It is up to the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues on the very Back Bench of the Labour party to consider the demeanour they wish to adopt in this debate. Given that we share concerns about a relatively small and vulnerable group of about 150,000 isolated rural workers, many of whom are working on the lowest wages possible in that sector, I should have thought that a better demeanour would be to try and build bridges and find ways forward where we can adopt common ground in order to protect those workers, rather than making what I am sorry to say are rather cheap party political points.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

As a compromise, does new clause 7 weaken in any way the protections for agricultural workers? If so, is that not completely contrary not only to the Liberal Democrats’ historical position on the Agricultural Wages Board, but to an early-day motion tabled in 1990 when the last attempt was made to abolish the board? Not only the hon. Gentleman but every Liberal Democrat Member was a signatory to that motion, which stressed that we did not want any weakening of the board whatsoever.

[Andrew George]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his research, but it must be incorrect because I was not in the House in 1990, so it must have been another date. On the question about the potential weakening of the protections available to agricultural workers, of course, if I thought that the new clause in any way significantly weakened the board’s role in protecting agricultural workers and ensuring that they had a decent baseline and a progression, or in any way jeopardised the terms and conditions that have been secured for them over many years, I would accept what the hon. Gentleman says.

I have had discussions with the Low Pay Commission on the issue. All that it will say is that it is up to Parliament to decide what regulations the commission should adopt, but they need to be enforced. Under the present regulations, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs clearly has the ultimate responsibility for enforcing those.

--- Later in debate ---

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

The hon. Gentleman rightly corrected me: it was in 2000, but I was completely accurate in what I was saying. So may I ask him one more time? If the Minister is unable to reassure him that, in whatever compromise new clause is brought forward, not simply will basic pay be protected, but so will holidays and sick pay, overtime and bereavement leave, rent protection and security of tenure in farm cottages, as they are under the Agricultural Wages Board provisions, will he support the Opposition’s amendment, not his new clause?

[Andrew George]

I agree. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his correction. I was here then and it is for the hon. Gentleman and his party to reflect on why we thought at that stage that the board might have been under threat. I entirely agree with him about the full raft of protections that should be available to agricultural workers. If I thought those protections were being significantly undermined, I would certainly not pursue the new clause in this manner. I emphasise that I do not feel precious about a particular quango; it is the protections I am most concerned about. I hope to hold out an olive branch to Ministers and say to them, “I agree with the principle underlying the Bill, which is to try to rationalise, amalgamate and abolish where that is necessary. Here is an example where we want the protections, but the small quangos that have proliferated can be amalgamated.” I am meeting them halfway and saying, “Let’s keep these protections.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew George]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I must admit that I am not fully aware of such surveys. As I said in response to an earlier intervention, the view is not universally held across all agricultural employers, some of whom have privately explained to me that they find that the framework that the AWB provides creates inefficiency in how they negotiate and establish agreements, sometimes admittedly verbal, with their work force.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that many farmers welcome the stability that is given them in their relationships, as they can avoid doing individual farm-by-farm, person-by-person negotiations. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) said, that is the view of the Farmers Union of Wales. The hon. Gentleman may be interested to know that it is also the view of the Welsh Government. The Minister will be able to confirm later that the Welsh Government have been in correspondence with DEFRA seeking to avoid today’s scenario of the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board because they want to retain its functions within Wales.

[Andrew George]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that important point. We are part of a United Kingdom and, in spite of some hon. Members, a European Union in which the work force can migrate. The protections that an Agricultural Wages Board provides, which may be lost from England and Wales—and, I emphasise, from Cornwall—will not be lost in Scotland and Northern Ireland as a result of the Bill. Those who support the Bill’s measures on behalf of the agricultural sector argue that agricultural workers are highly prized. If the Agricultural Wages Board is withdrawn, there is a risk, certainly in the north of England, that agricultural workers will migrate north of the border, where their pay and conditions might be rather better. That will happen over time. The Minister looks at me in a rather quizzical and critical manner. Although it is true that the pay grades and terms and conditions of agricultural workers will not immediately be withdrawn as a result of the abolition of the board, for new entrants to agriculture the only protection similar to the regulations that will be jettisoned will be the application of the national minimum wage.

[Andrew George]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for making that point. The initial defence that Ministers gave for their proposal was that it is okay because there is a national minimum wage. The last Conservative Government did not consider such a proposal because there was no national minimum wage, but now that there is, they say that there is no fear because it provides a safety net for agricultural workers.

There are six grades of pay, from grade 1, which is only 2p above the national minimum wage, up to grade 6 which is—I do not have the figure in front of me, but I am sure the Minister will tell me it—about £8.80 an hour. Grade 6 is paid to farm managers and equivalent positions. I do not think that that is a lot to pay a farm manager. It is important to acknowledge that as little as 20% of the agricultural work force are paid at the grade 1 level. Therefore, 80% are paid above the grade 1 level. That helps to emphasise the point that it is vital to retain those grades.

It is not only the grades that are vital, but the conditions on holidays, sick pay, retention to be available on duty, standing pay, payment for the retention of a dog, and tied accommodation. About 30% of agricultural workers have tied accommodation. The regulations that apply to that are important because once somebody is in tied accommodation, they have a rather different relationship with their employer.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

The hon. Gentleman is actually making some good points in defence of Labour’s amendment 32, not his new clause per se, because it will be not only new employees who are affected but contracted employees and casual workers renegotiating their contracts. I understand that 32,000 of those workers are in England and Wales. Does he agree with the point that I made earlier that if the view of both the Farmers Union of Wales and the Welsh Government is that the Agricultural Wages Board should be retained in Wales, it is inappropriate under the current devolution settlement to outlaw, abandon and abolish it? The Bill provides the people of Wales with no facility whatever to exercise their democratic legitimacy and retain it, let alone the people of Cornwall; we have not even moved on to devolution for Cornwall yet.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Thomas]

The hon. Gentleman is undoubtedly right on this occasion. It is also worth noting that many small farmers also rely on providing their skills to other farmers, at Agricultural Wages Board rates, to ensure the viability of their businesses.

The Government made the important claim in Committee that the board’s abolition would not result in workers becoming worse off, and that minimum wage legislation and the European working time directive would protect their terms and conditions. I put it to the Minister, however, that once the Agricultural Wages board has gone, the 42,000 casual workers in the sector will see a drop in their wages as soon as they finish their next job. That point was also made by my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (David Wright). The other 110,000 workers could see their wages and conditions corroded over time.

Is it not spurious for Ministers to claim that farm workers will be protected by the minimum wage? As the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) said, only 20% of farm workers are on the Agricultural Wages Board’s grade 1, which is virtually equivalent to the current minimum wage. The rest earn considerably more than the minimum wage and will not enjoy the same protection as the board offers them now. Is it not true, too, that once the Agricultural Wages Board is abolished the right to overtime pay at current rates will disappear when a worker moves job? Is it not true, too, that once the board is abolished the right to sick pay will be at a substantially lower rate than at present for agricultural workers when they move jobs? Then there are children who do summer jobs or part-time work on the land; they usually live in rural villages themselves and often have aspirations to work on the land for a career once they are old enough to do so. They currently receive £3.05 an hour. They are not covered by the national minimum wage, so—if, indeed, the board is abolished—they will have no wage protection when they do holiday or weekend work.

Poverty in the countryside rarely receives the coverage or attention it should. Indeed, the extra costs of living and working in the countryside do not get the attention they should, so the work of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, in highlighting the extra 10% to 20% living costs that those in rural areas typically need to spend on everyday requirements in comparison with those living in urban areas, is surely significant. It should further challenge us to do more to combat low pay and poverty in the countryside and it surely poses the question of how the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board can possibly help in that important task. The board is also an important counterweight to the pressures from the food industry, particularly those from the supermarket chains, for ever lower costs of production to increase profitability.

I read through the comments that the Minister made in Committee. He cited how the Agricultural Wages Board's existence discourages the payment of annual salaries and the confusion with non-agricultural work that can occur. Those may or may not be genuine concerns. If they are—I take the Minister at his word—one would have thought that a reform agenda could explore those issues. Instead, the Government want to throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater, not thinking through the consequences for rural wages of the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board. With rural workers already facing a huge squeeze on their finances from higher energy prices, the increase in VAT and an economy that is being badly mismanaged by the Conservatives, the Government now want to risk rural workers’ wages.

We know from a leaked impact assessment on the abolition of the board that the impact of the loss of entitlement to agricultural sick pay compared with the lower-in-value statutory sick pay that will remain will be a

“transfer, a benefit to farmers and a cost to workers.”

The impact assessment estimates that the reduction in earnings for farm workers as a result of that measure alone will be some £9 million—£9 million out of the rural high street in lost earnings by workers. All those villages shops—vulnerable now because of the Government’s mishandling of the economy—are hardly going to be helped by yet another squeeze on the finances of those they want as their consumers.

If there is any doubt that the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board will damage the pay of rural workers, let us look at what happened in other parts of our economy when their wages councils were abolished. In evidence published as far back as September 1995, three in 10 jobs were paying less than they would have done if wages councils in the relevant sectors had not been abolished. The fall in pay in shops was particularly severe. A follow-up study one year later showed that half of all vacancies were paying below what they would have done if the wage councils had still existed. The situation had got worse. Such evidence explains why the Labour Government not only brought in the minimum wage, but reformed collective bargaining arrangements. It is also why we will tonight oppose the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board and why I will seek your leave, Madam Deputy Speaker, to divide the House.

Lastly, I draw attention to amendment 39, which was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) and other hon. Friends and which deals with the Commission for Rural Communities. The abolition of the CRC will leave rural communities without an independent voice, as the Government scrapped the Rural Advocate post last year. It raises the question of whether the Government are really committed to rural proofing Government policies. Indeed, the abolition of the CRC, along with—crucially—the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board, following on from the Government’s attempts to sell off the nation’s forests, is surely proof that the countryside is being let down by the coalition Government parties.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Thank you for calling me, Madam Deputy Speaker. I did not expect to be called so soon—I expected a Government Member to be called next—but, in the absence of any speakers on the Government Benches, I shall proceed with my speech.

This morning there was a very good lobby of agricultural workers, during which members of Unite, other union workers and MPs gathered outside Parliament to protest against the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board. Amendments 32 and 39, to which my name is attached, are intended to secure a fair deal for 152,000 farm workers in England and Wales, apprentices and farm managers alike. The amendments are intended to protect their basic pay, holidays, sick pay, overtime, bereavement leave, rent, and security of tenure in farm cottages. They are also intended to protect the compact between Government and farm workers that has existed for decades, since the Attlee Government of 1948, and which—here I echo the sentiments of the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George)—has recognised the enduring need to provide reasonable recompense for arduous and dangerous agricultural work, to promote food security, and to contribute to the tackling of rural poverty.

Members should be in no doubt about the fact that if the Government axe the Agricultural Wages Board, there will be severe repercussions. According to the Government’s own figures, £9 million will be removed from the rural economy every year, at a time when the Government are presiding over what is effectively a zero-growth economy. The Minister did his best on the radio today, saying that he did not expect any of those bad things to happen as a result of the board’s abolition. I did not expect Wales to go out of the semi-final of the rugby world cup, and the Government did not expect to see 80-odd of their Back Benchers in open rebellion last night, only 18 months into a new Administration, but, as the old saying goes, farmyard slurry happens.

More than 40,000 casual workers will experience a drop in their wages when their current jobs finish, and the wages of a further 110,000 will be eroded over time. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) has told us what happens when wages councils disappear, and has described the pattern of the effect on wages and salaries over a sustained period. What assessment has the Minister made of the cost to the taxpayer of the additional claim on that taxpayer through payments of child tax credit and other support for farm workers and their families when their wages and entitlements wither on the vine?

The House has a very long memory, and some Members have been here for many years longer than I have, but I do not think that any Member who is present today was present for the original debates on this subject in 1947 and 1948. Nevertheless, there is a strange echo down the years of the debates that took place both here and in the other place. Archer Baldwin, Conservative spokesman for agriculture, argued in defence of a policy of minimalist—not minimum—wage protection, remarking of the previous pitiful agricultural wages:

“The reason for those low wages was the low prices paid to the farmer, and we want to relate prices to wages.”—[Official Report, 22 January 1947; Vol. 432, c. 251.]

He wanted to relate farm gate prices to wages, rather than ensuring the farmer was given a proper price for his produce and was paid a proper living wage.

I remind Liberal Democrat Members who—again—are wondering which way to turn now that their Conservative bedfellows have once more stolen the duvet that, as I remarked earlier, there was a time when they were wholly against the proposal with which we are dealing today. It was the last time there was a review of the Agricultural Wages Board—not a threat to abolish it, just a review. The Government of the day did not proceed with any proposals to abolish, change, or transfer any functions from the board, because they were faced with a powerful combined front of Labour, Liberal Democrat and assorted other Members who opposed any proposal to change it.

I suggest to the hon. Member for St Ives, who has tried his hardest to make a good fist of putting forward an alternative compromise, that there is a danger that notwithstanding what was a very principled stance on that occasion, the Liberal Democrats will tonight go over to the dark side, or at least put one foot in both sides of the bed. Regardless of which side of the bed they are on—strong Liberal or weak Tory—that is what is proposed, in particular by new clause 7 tabled by the hon. Member for St Ives. I respect the hon. Gentleman. He is trying to do the right thing: he is trying not to upset his party’s coalition partners too much, and he is looking for a neat Lib Dem compromise, but it is a compromise. His proposals are a weak and unsatisfying brew compared with our full-strength amendment, which would truly protect the AWB.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Anderson]

Does my hon. Friend also agree that the hon. Gentleman was correct when he was quoted on 11 November last year in the Farmers Guardian as saying:

“If I thought that by following this policy farm workers would be better paid or have better conditions then I’d support it. But, I think we all know that the opposite is the most likely consequence”?

He was right then, and he is wrong tonight.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I agree with my hon. Friend, and I also agree with the hon. Gentleman, as his peroration was, in fact, an argument in favour of our amendment, not his new clause. I therefore say to him that he should by all means press his new clause to a Division, as if he does so the Government Front-Bench team will have to consider whether it supports him. However, if he is not minded to do so, I urge him to support our amendment, as it will do exactly what he has previously argued is right for poor rural farm workers.

[Andrew George]

The purpose of my new clause is to achieve the Government objective of saving money by doing away with unnecessary quangos and other NDPBs, while also retaining the protections for agricultural workers. It therefore achieves exactly the same outcome as the hon. Gentleman is claiming to want, while also saving public money.

--- Later in debate ---

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

The hon. Gentleman’s comments highlight the difference between our positions, as I do not think his new clause does anything of the sort. Instead, it weakens and threatens not only pay, but all the other terms and conditions of service that should be protected. His proposal is not an absolute guarantee; rather it is, in effect, a “maybe.” He and his colleagues have to consider tonight whether they are happy with the much more opaque and vague assurances that may come from the Government Front-Bench team.

As I said, the rural working class is watching, and so are people in Wales. The Farmers Union of Wales does not want the functions of the AWB to disappear, noting among its strengths the fact that, operating with few staff,

“the AWB is…an important means of avoiding potential conflict and lengthy negotiations with individual staff.”

As I mentioned, the Minister will doubtless want to confirm today that the Welsh Assembly Government have also indicated their desire to retain the functions of the AWB in Wales and are awaiting a response from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. So may I suggest to him that today is not the day to draw a shroud over the AWB, not least when to do so would be a clear rejection of the legitimate democratic voice of the Welsh people?

Finally, I draw the attention of the Minister and of Conservative Back Benchers—both of them—to the American poet, philosopher and polymath Henry David Thoreau, who asserted:

“Farmers are respectable and interesting to me in proportion as they are poor.”

Farm workers are going to be a whole lot more respectable, a whole lot more interesting and a darn sight poorer if the Government carry out this threat to abolish the AWB.

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

I rise to speak to amendments 32 and 39, and I do so as a rural trade unionist and a rural Labour MP. The AWB is not a quango; it involves the Secretary of State, independents, workers in the industry and employers meeting to negotiate pay, and terms and conditions. Its destruction undoes the rightful and valuable recognition of skilled labour in the food manufacturing sector. Its destruction only creates a disincentive to young workers to enter the industry by reducing skilled labour to the level of the national minimum wage. That is a general wage for general work and it should not be used as a general means for conducting pay negotiations across a whole industry.

The scrapping of the AWB will have significant consequences for the rent relationships of workers at their place of work. Furthermore, it will undermine overtime pay arrangements, as the national minimum wage carries no overtime rates. Without the AWB, agricultural workers will have no mechanism to pursue collective bargaining to improve their pay and terms and conditions, and thus pursue their aspirations and improve their lot, not only for themselves, but for their families and their communities—they can only just about afford to live in those. If the AWB is scrapped, they will no longer be able to pursue those things.

The destruction of the AWB is only one part of this Government’s attack on the countryside. If it were not for the national minimum wage, the AWB’s removal would definitely take industrial relations in the fields of our nation back to an appalling condition not seen since the time of the Tolpuddle martyrs. For many on the Government Benches, “The Hired Man” is not merely a fictional account based on our social history of more than 100 years ago, but an economic vision for the future, exploiting the worker in the field. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats cannot claim to be the parties of rural communities when the only part of rural society they want to talk to is the affluent one. The AWB provides a proper and efficient means for workers and employers to resolve human resources and industrial matters quickly. Its destruction only disfranchises workers—they will not have the right to negotiate a day’s pay—and complicates matters of negotiation. The move is divisive and will undoubtedly divide rural communities between employer and employee.

The destruction of the AWB has a cynical kernel at its heart. It implies that because of record levels of unemployment employers can drive down terms, conditions and pay on the assumption that people will simply be grateful for a job. In that sense, it is intended precisely to let the rural rich exploit the very rural working class who provide the food we eat and feed our families with.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Paice]

The hon. Gentleman knows full well that that is not what I said. This group of amendments deals with not only the Agricultural Wages Board, but the Commission for Rural Communities.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Paice]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman because I respect his integrity and his contribution on these issues in the past, although I did not agree with everything that he said.

As the hon. Members for St Ives (Andrew George) and for North Durham (Mr Jones) said, new clause 7 would transfer the Agricultural Wages Board’s powers to the Low Pay Commission and establish an advisory board of employees and employers to advise the commission. Clearly, amendment 32 would strike the whole issue from the Bill. Both provisions would continue the separate minimum wage regime for agricultural workers, although the mechanism would be different.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I want to shed some light, rather than heat. Of course, one of the Agricultural Wages Board’s functions relates to sick pay. How much is the statutory sick pay for grade 1 and grade 2 workers? How much would it be if the board were not there?

[Mr Paice]

All workers will have exactly the same entitlements as they currently have. Other hon. Members have made the point—I was going to make it later, but I emphasise it now, because there are a lot of myths about—that the Bill will not affect anyone in their current employment. They will be protected by their current terms and contract of employment, whether in relation to rates or conditions of pay.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gavin Shuker]

rose—

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Paice]

I will give way, but I will make a little progress first.

I need to emphasise that this is not some secretive plot, as some people would suggest—[Interruption]—or even an open one. Let us not be pedantic. It is not some plot to drive down wages or conditions for agricultural workers; quite the reverse. For many years, there has been widespread employment protection for workers in other sectors of the economy through the national minimum wage regime and working time regulations. Agriculture remains the only sector with a separate employment regime. The terms and conditions and the way that it operates are outdated and gold-plate the provisions of the national minimum wage legislation and working time regulations. There is, therefore, a heavy regulatory burden on employers, and we believe that it is hampering the industry from creating jobs and damaging long-term prosperity and sustainability.

The regime that we seek to abolish dates back to the bygone era that I referred to. It does not relate to today’s widespread legal protections. It no longer reflects modern employment practices. As has been mentioned, it discourages the payment of annual salaries, which is difficult for workers because they have no control over their own financial planning. By contrast, the national minimum wage legislation provides for the payment of annual salaries. I emphasise that all our evidence shows that the vast majority of agricultural workers are paid above the level dictated by their Agricultural Wages Board grades.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Paice]

It will not necessarily go down; it will react to the state of affairs.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

The Minister is being generous in giving way, but may I probe him again on my previous question, because he did not address those who change contracts? Can he confirm that most people are entitled to statutory sick pay of £81.60? Under AWB grade 1, the figure is £153.30. Under grade 2, it is £274.86. If we abolish the AWB and people go on to new contracts on those terms—I can pull out other examples—they will have substantially diminished terms and conditions. That is the reality that the Minister is painting for us.

[Mr Paice]

The hon. Gentleman does not seem to grasp that, if someone decides to change their job in the future, they will obviously want to take into account what terms and conditions the alternative is offering them. I will not dispute his figures, because they are the ones laid down at the moment, but anyone changing jobs will want to consider the options available to them.

Badgers and Bovine TB

Huw Irranca-Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Westminster Hall

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Lady’s excellent peroration. This has been an excellent debate, with passionate and well-informed contributions from all sides. There is great concern on the Opposition Benches about the efficacy and utility of the badger cull envisaged and designed by the Government. I therefore congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon) on securing the debate and on the eloquent manner in which she presented her case. There is definitely room in this debate for townies, as well as country folk and everybody in between, because this is a matter of national interest.

I might not be able to take interventions, because I have a series of questions for the Minister, so I apologise in advance. In the mass of statistics and counter-statistics, and arguments and counter-arguments, we must not forget the tragedy of stock destruction, including the emotional cost to farmers and their families, and hon. Members have reminded us of that. The fears and tears of those involved in stock husbandry are real, and many here, myself included, have witnessed them first hand.

Tackling this issue effectively is far more important than simply being seen to do something. Let us start where I hope we can agree: science and evidence must be the foundation when it comes to tackling this terrible disease. They are why the Opposition query the course of action the Government are embarked on, and I want to ask the Minister several key questions.

Let us start with the ISGC’s 2007 report entitled “Bovine TB: The Scientific Evidence”. Although we would all acknowledge that there are many considered nuances in the report, this 10-year-long, peer-reviewed, expert-led, science-based study concluded that

“badger culling cannot meaningfully contribute to the future control of cattle TB.”

It also noted—presciently, given the Government’s current proposals—

“we consider it likely that licensing farmers (or their appointees) to cull badgers would not only fail to achieve a beneficial effect, but would entail a substantial risk of increasing the incidence of cattle TB and spreading the disease in space, whether licences were issued to individual farmers or to groups.”

That is pretty categoric.

Will the Minister therefore explain why he now so firmly disagrees with those findings and on what scientific and unarguable evidence basis he now feels something must be done, against the advice of this 10-year study? Will he clarify to Members and the country why he has taken against a view that remains the prevailing consensus among those involved in the science and the evidence? Will he explain why the ISGC has taken issue with his claim that his proposals for a cull, which use a very different methodology and different controls from the ISGC trials, would result in a 16% decrease in cattle TB? Why does he have a different figure?

It is important accurately to read into the record the ISGC’s response to the consultation so that the Minister can directly and accurately respond. The ISCG says:

“We note that Defra’s prediction of a 16% overall reduction in cattle TB over a nine year period is extrapolated directly from RBCT findings. This extrapolation assumes that Defra’s proposed culling method would achieve the same outcomes as those of proactive culling as conducted in the RBCT. We have repeatedly cautioned that the outcomes of the RBCT reflected the methods used, most recently noting that ‘the effects described here relate only to culling as conducted in the RBCT, i.e. deployment of cage traps by highly trained staff in coordinated, large scale, simultaneous operations, repeated annually for five years and then halted’. It should not be assumed that farmer led culling, conducted primarily by shooting free ranging badgers, would achieve the same outcomes as RBCT proactive culling.”

Would the Minister also care to share his observations on the clear consensus among responses to his consultation?

[Ian Paisley]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

My apologies, but I am really up against time. I would love to have more time.

Will the Minister comment on the observation in the consultation document that

“culling predominantly by shooting free-ranging badgers would result in an increase in perturbation leading to an increase in herd breakdowns. This opinion was based on the assertion that shooting free-ranging badgers would be an ineffective method of control and that in practice farmers would not carry out the systematic, sustained and simultaneous cull that the RBCT proved was necessary to have a beneficial effect…A lack of hard boundaries and a robust means of ensuring compliance with licence criteria were key weaknesses raised with the Government’s preferred option”?

When the Minister answers that question, will he address the concerns of some that a lack of rigour in the methodology he prescribes under licence could actually be to the detriment of farmers and their herds? As the ISGC succinctly put it in its conclusions, it would be

“likely that licensing farmers (or their appointees) to cull badgers would not only fail to achieve a beneficial effect, but would entail a substantial risk of increasing the incidence of cattle TB and spreading the disease in space”.

What science and evidence does the Minister now have that contradicts that scientific evaluation of the increased risk of spreading the disease?

Linked to that, what assessment has the Minister made of the risk of farmers abandoning culling, especially if discouraged by an initial increase in the disease through the effects of perturbation, or as a result of farm abandonment, a change of ownership or many other scenarios? Assuming the Minister would wish to see the cull completed and would perhaps ask others to step in, what legal advice has he received on the ability to enforce a cull on privately owned land once it has commenced and been abandoned by the landowner? Would a group of farmers have to come forward collectively as a legal entity to be able to enforce a cull against the wishes, or following the withdrawal, of one of its members?

The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, among others, noted the desirability of vaccination buffer zones around highly infected areas to assist in controlling the spread of the disease. It added that this

“may require the Government to incentivise the process so as to ensure a high enough level of participation.”

What assessment has the Minister made of the necessity for, and cost of, such buffer zones? He will not want to say that he will not know until we have a licence application on the table, because that would be Humphreyesque. He and his officials must have examined the need for such buffer zones and the likely cost implications, and it would be useful for Parliament to have that on the record.

Sir David King wrote an article in July, entitled “If we want dairy farms, we must cull badgers”. The ISGC responded by saying that it

“contributes little scientific insight to the debate on controlling cattle TB. Defra has proposed that badger culls be initiated and funded by farmers themselves. Having overseen a decade-long programme of independently-audited and peer-reviewed research on this topic, we caution that such culls may not deliver the anticipated reductions in cattle TB. King previously agreed with our conclusion that—because of the way culling affects badgers’ ecology—only large-scale, highly coordinated, simultaneous and sustained culls could have positive impacts. Delivering and maintaining such culls would raise substantial challenges for farmers, with a risk of increasing, rather than reducing, disease incidence. Defra’s own assessments suggest that participating farmers will lose more, financially, than they gain. King asserts that shooting free-ranging badgers—Defra’s preferred culling method—‘would be an effective and considerably cheaper alternative’, but there are no empirical data on the cost or effectiveness (or indeed humaneness or safety) of controlling badgers by shooting, which has been illegal for decades. If the government decides to proceed with this untested and risky approach, it is vital that it also instigates well-designed monitoring of the consequences.”

I have some sympathy with the Minister, because the issue has been long debated, and the arguments have been heated and the science disputed. There has, for instance, long been disagreement between Sir David and the ISG. When the original ISG report was published in 2007, Professor John Bourne, its lead author, noted that Sir David’s response and subsequent recommendations in favour of a cull were not consistent with the scientific findings of his report but were

“consistent with the political need to do something about it”.

Why does that sound eerily familiar? Ah yes: “Something must be done. This is something. Therefore we must do it,” says Jim Hacker, in “Yes Minister”. It is not only animal welfare groups such as the Badger Trust and the RSPCA that demand answers; it is the general public. However, it is also on behalf of and in the best interest of farmers that I ask the Minister to answer the questions as fully and directly as possible. They need to be sure that they are not being sold a pup—a very expensive, incontinent and unruly pup that could do a lot more damage than good.

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

I shall try to answer most of the questions of the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) and, indeed, other hon. Members. I offer apologies to any hon. Member whom I do not answer fully. However, the answers to several of the hon. Gentleman’s questions are in the documents that we have published. He has asked me questions the answers to which he can discover, if he has not already read them.

I congratulate the hon. Member for North Tyneside (Mrs Glindon). I have several times appeared before the Select Committee of which she is a member, and I recognise her commitment to the issues. She began with a superb explanation of the situation, and said that levels of TB are unacceptable, and that badgers are widespread and densely populated, which is perfectly correct. Arguably, that population density is the kernel of the problem. She referred, as other hon. Members have done, to the random badger control trials and the independent scientific group. I should emphasise, of course, that it was the previous Conservative Government who appointed Lord Krebs to look into the issue. The setting up of the trials by the Labour Government was the result of his recommendation—it happened in a cross-electoral period.

Despite the jibes of the hon. Member for Ogmore about Jim Hacker—and I remind the hon. Gentleman that he went on to be Prime Minister—I do not believe that doing nothing should be an option. The hon. Member for North Tyneside rightly referred to the comment of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that if we do not do anything, the problem will cost us £1 billion in 10 years. That is the reality, but worse than the costs is the continued spread of the disease into parts of the country where currently it does not exist. That is the fundamental issue, which has not been addressed by anyone. The hon. Lady also referred to other countries, such as New Zealand and the United States; she did not mention Australia, where the same point is true: they are all working on vaccines. However, they have all culled the wildlife that was a reservoir of the disease.

Much has been made of the issue of the science and the ISG. I am sure that time will stop me going through all the detail, but let us be clear: the figure of 16% that has been mentioned has been signed up to in the document on the Government’s website. That is signed by Lord Krebs, Professor Christl Donnelly, Lord May and a number of other eminent scientists. They all agree about it. The document contains a clear statement about what happened in the cull zone. That is after nine and a half years, so, to answer the point made by the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) about there being no new science, there is new science, because we have measurements from beyond the end of the period in question, and beyond the point when the previous Secretary of State made his decision. The new science shows that the incidence of TB in the culling zones fell by up to 34%. As my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) mentioned, the incidence in the perturbation ring went up, but then went down and reverted to the norm. That is the new evidence we have.

It is perfectly true, as the document states and as has been repeated today, that we are not proposing simply to replicate the ISG approach, because we propose shooting, and we propose that farmers, while not literally doing the work themselves, should be responsible for having it done. The two are variations, and some scientists suggest that what is envisaged might not be as effective, but that is why we are conducting two pilots. We have announced—although we have not made the final decision yet—our proposal to conduct two pilots, to establish effectiveness: whether it is possible to cull 70% of badgers in a six-week period; and whether it is humane. I cannot remember which hon. Member challenged me on who would check what is going on; but there will be independent monitors on site, watching badgers being shot. There will be post mortems, so we shall examine the effectiveness and humanity of what happens, and of course safety. Those are the variations from the ISG, and that is why we should seriously consider conducting two trials.

The argument keeps coming back to the science, and the science is the results from the ISG. Everything else since then is conjecture, whether from Lord Krebs, me or any hon. Member. To answer the question about empirical evidence, there is no empirical evidence—but we are trying to find it. That is why we propose two trials. Lord Krebs has no more basis for his conjectures than I do.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

rose—

[Mr Paice]

No, I am sorry; I cannot give way.

I must emphasise to those hon. Members who challenged on the shooting issue that shooting wildlife, whether they agree with it or not—and let us not get into the emotions of it—is a common practice. Foxes and deer are commonly shot, and the surrounding animal communities are not shot in the process.

Oral Answers to Questions

Huw Irranca-Davies Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paice]

Obviously, punishment is precisely a matter for the courts, but I entirely agree with my hon. Friend’s sentiment, and the Home Office has fully taken that point on board.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

I am glad to be back, as proof that this Opposition are serious about recycling.

Far too many people, including children, are being needlessly killed or maimed by dangerous dogs, and the numbers are rising every single year. Twenty organisations, including the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the Kennel Club, the Guide Dogs for the Blind Association, Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, the Royal College of Nursing and the Police Federation, are calling for a change in the law. The Northern Ireland Assembly and the Scottish Parliament have already acted, so, 16 months after the end of the consultation and when the Minister said in July that the Government ruled nothing out, will he now rule something in and bring forward his proposals before Christmas at the very latest?

[Mr Paice]

There speaks the authentic voice of 13 years of inaction—and the hon. Gentleman now criticises us about 16 months. We have shadowed each other, and I respect his integrity and admire him, but he is really stretching credibility. I assure him that, as soon as the Home Office has finished considering its consultation, which finished only recently, we will come together to the House with our proposals as soon as possible.

Public Forest Estate (England)

Huw Irranca-Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Spelman]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, because it is important to note that when we published the consultation document on 27 January it was accompanied by a written ministerial statement. If Members would like to read it in conjunction with the consultation document, they will find an assurance on this point. We will introduce a general duty for Ministers

“to have regard to the maintenance of public benefits when exercising”

the forestry-related powers and the powers in the Public Bodies Bill. [Interruption.] I am sure that Labour Members would be interested to know what those additional powers of protection are, as they have been making a lot of noise about this.

Secondly, the statement mentions

“exempting the most iconic heritage forests from the full range of options so that”

they

“could only be transferred to a charitable organisation or remain in public ownership”. —[Official Report, 27 January 2011; Vol. 522, c. 17WS.]

That is far more protection than currently exists. If the Labour party would stop holding up the business in the other place, we might get those amendments on the statute book.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I read a document—“Operational Efficiency Programme: Asset Portfolio”, which was published by the previous Government just months before the election—and discovered, on page 54, an explicit reference to the case for the “long-term lease” of the public forestry estate. What about this document—the “Operational Efficiency Programme: final report”? It states clearly that “greater commercial benefit” could be obtained from the public forest estate. And what about this document—“A Strategy for England’s Trees, Woods and Forests”—published by none other than the right hon. Member for South Shields (David Miliband) when he was the Environment Secretary? It makes the case for local communities actively participating in the ownership and management of the public forest estate. Does that not lay completely bare the hypocrisy of the position now being taken by the Opposition? Their synthetic outrage cannot disguise the fact that they already had the public forest estate well and truly in their sights, so let us have no more of this self-righteous indignation.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Lady acknowledge that those options were ruled out of consideration and dismissed? They were dismissed for two very good reasons—first, because they did not add up economically or against cost-benefit analysis, and secondly, because they would not have been accepted by the great British public.

[Mrs Spelman]

And the hon. Gentleman’s party was not accepted by the great British public as being fit to govern this country for the time being.

--- Later in debate ---

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

I do not know where to start. When I was in the position—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. My apologies to the hon. Gentleman. Before he starts, I thought it might be a good time to remind Members that, on this debate as well, there is a time limit of six minutes, and it is from now. So, Huw Irranca-Davies, you have six minutes from now.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

A second start. Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker.

When I was in the privileged position of being the Minister for Marine and Natural Environment at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, one thing stood out about DEFRA: all the staff, agencies, green organisations and third sector organisations believed that they were on a mission in terms of the natural environment. We created national parks, protected wildlife, tackled wildlife crime, worked internationally to protect biodiversity and we increased access to the countryside and the quality of our uplands and seas. We also looked after the forests and promoted more woodland coverage, making steady strides to increase our poor showing among European nations.

I do not honestly believe that anybody from DEFRA, the Forestry Commission, Natural England or a host of other organisations, whose staff deeply care emotionally and intellectually about our woodlands and our natural environment, genuinely supports the policy. I do not believe that the Minister’s heart is in it; that might be the same for the Secretary of State, truth be told. I am sure that the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon) does not support it.

Interestingly, however, the hon. Gentleman does not have a say. He has most of my old responsibilities as a Minister for the environment, but with one hugely noticeable exception: forestry. Why? He still covers, as I did, everything else in the natural environment, but forestry has disappeared from the environment Minister’s remit. That is no slur on his abilities, because he is no fool, but it is telling that forestry has gone from the environment Minister’s portfolio. The message is quite simple: the forests and woodland, from the inception of this Government, were downgraded in importance; they were no longer part of the natural environment brief.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)]

I am very grateful to my predecessor for giving way. There is a very good reason why I do not have responsibility for forestry: I have some personal interests. I am happy to declare an interest now. My local village of Beenham had a small piece of Forestry Commission land in which my children and I bought small shares with the village as part of a community project. It is an absolute model, which we are trying to follow under the consultation before us.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

That is a very useful clarification, which I accept.

The former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), who is now shadow Leader of the House, was always clear about the Forestry Commission. He and generations of senior Ministers with the same responsibility held jealously to public ownership of the forest estate, because that was in the interests of the British people. Why? There are 13 million tonnes of carbon stored in the trees, 22 million tonnes in the ground and more than 100 million day visitors every year. Public access is protected under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, and the forest estate is the largest provider of green space around cities, including regeneration and growth areas such as Merseyside, Manchester and the Thames Gateway, with 3,500 hectares established over the 10 years to 2009 and more potential to expand that green infrastructure. Even then, only 10% of the population—notably, in disadvantaged areas—have access to any woodland within 500 metres of home. We are still way below the EU average.

[Bill Esterson]

My hon. Friend mentions Merseyside, and one of my constituents from Crosby, Kay Redmond, backs up what he says about keeping the forests in public ownership

“to maintain current access for the public and to protect the diverse wildlife found in forests”.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

My hon. Friend’s constituent is absolutely right. The issue is about not only timber production and public access, but biodiversity and locked-up carbon. It is about the 1.5 million tonnes of timber produced annually and sustainably; the £1.1 billion of economic value for £17 million in operating costs; the potential further restoration, which comes with the Forestry Commission, of ancient woodlands; and the £100 million of partnership funding in the 10 years to 2009. It is also about the commercial ventures, which were expanding, with the Caravan Club, Go Ape, forest concerts and the Forest Holidays company. In addition, parliamentary funding for the Forestry Commission dropped from 36% in 2003 to 24% in 2007. If that were not good enough, there was also potential for 200 MW of renewable wood fuel energy from managed forests, hydro, geothermal, and, if Ministers were so included, wind energy. I could go on and on.

All that is now at risk, despite reassurances from the Minister and the Secretary of State. Those sound to the public—and to an old sceptic and former Minister like me—like the reassuring words spoken at a deathbed, because that is what this is. It is the funeral of the publicly owned forestry estate. It is the death of the body of expertise and co-ordination that lies within the Forestry Commission. It is the killing off of jobs, skills and knowledge.

Public access is at risk, too. The post-war Labour Government brought in the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. We introduced the right to roam. Only recently, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central designated the South Downs national park, and I took through the provisions for the England coastal path in the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009. Since this Government came in, we have seen soft-pedalling on the England coastal path, and now we are seeing back-pedalling on access to our woodlands.

It does not even make economic sense, even by the Government’s own figures and the figures in the report mentioned by the Secretary of State. The cost in public goods lost far outweighs the benefits. The Treasury has not given thought to the fact that for every £100 million of woodlands sold off, £40 million will be lost in inheritance or other taxes, as companies and individuals buy woodland as tax write-offs. Are they going to look after it?

There is not enough time to say how the Government are now trashing the hard-won policy launched only last year which brought together, for the first time ever, carbon and climate change issues with biodiversity to improve the diversity of woodland habitats. There is the issue of climate change alone. I quote from our public service agreement 28—yes, we were the Government who had binding targets for ancient woodlands and priority habitats—which said:

“In the face of climate change, a successful strategy would require a landscape-scale approach, joining up the highly fragmented ownership pattern into a shared endeavour”.

The last and only other time this sell-off was contemplated was under John Major’s Conservative Government. Here we go again—back to the 1980s. If I have not made the Government think again, the public surely will.