UK Steel Industry

Debate between Huw Irranca-Davies and Tom Blenkinsop

Thursday 21st January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Indeed; my hon. Friend makes a wise point. I commend the Government for their high-level negotiations at COP21 in Paris—tremendous. The UK led the high-level coalition of ambition. The EU led as well, and yet we could end up in a situation in which we are not only offshoring jobs, but offshoring them to countries that do not have the same standards of energy efficiency that we have at Tata Steel in Port Talbot and throughout the UK. It is in the interests of the climate to keep those jobs here in this country.

[Tom Blenkinsop]

There is another interesting factor here because if we look at Tata’s profits right up until the financial year 2007-08, nearly every slab coming off each site that Tata owned was being absorbed by the world market. China was consuming so much steel during the 12% to 13% growth period that the argument that China has been eroding British jobs over the past 20 or 30 years is false. This is a very recent phenomenon—it is in the past four years—and measures need to be taken now.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Indeed. I believe that if any Government Minister could batter down doors and argue for a fully engaged, fully proactive and serious strategy that looks at the steel industry five, 10 and 20 years hence, this Minister could do it. I sense she is trying to do her best, but I suspect she is having some arguments thrown back in her face by others.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Blenkinsop]

rose—

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

rose—

Public Bodies Bill [Lords]

Debate between Huw Irranca-Davies and Tom Blenkinsop

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[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.