Agricultural Wages Board

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

I start by declaring an interest: as deputy general secretary of the old Transport and General Workers Union and then Unite, I represented agricultural workers for much of my working life, and was proud so to do.

I start by celebrating England’s green and pleasant land—our hills, our valleys, our forests, our farms, our rivers and our seashores, captured in that great hymn to the countryside, Linden Lea:

“Within the woodlands, flow’ry gladed,

By the oak tree’s mossy moot,

The shining grass-blades, timber-shaded,

Now do quiver under foot…

And brown-leaved fruits a-turning red,

In cloudless sunshine, overhead…

To where, for me, the apple tree

Do lean down low in Linden Lea.”

But elsewhere in that great hymn to the English countryside it reads:

“I don’t dread a peevish master;

Though no man may heed my frowns”.

That great hymn captured both the beauty of our countryside and another reality, which is that all too often the countryside has been scarred by the unfair treatment of workers and rural poverty. I have worked with farmers all my working life, so I am the first to acknowledge the changes in the industry and the many very good farming industry employers, but there remain to this day real problems.

The 19th century, from Tolpuddle onwards, was a century of struggle, with real progress being made in the 20th century, but before anyone argues today that exploitation in the countryside is a thing of the past, let me say this. I listened to the Prime Minister at Prime Minister’s Question Time speaking, and rightly so, about modern-day slavery. Some of the worst examples of slavery, historically and in the modern day, were practised by gangmasters, as was seen at its most obscene in the tragic death of 22 young Chinese cockle-pickers on the bleak, cold shores of Morecambe bay.

As a consequence of that incident, I chaired the coalition of support that brought the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004 into law. It was a private Member’s Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Jim Sheridan). There was a remarkable coalition from plough to plate, from the National Farmers Union to the supermarkets. I shared platforms with Baroness Gillian Shepherd, and we stood together, arguing for a measure that was essential to tackle some of the most obscene practices in the world of work in our country. Sadly, now, we are seeing, on the one hand, the scaling back of the operation of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority and, on the other hand, the proposed abolition of the AWB.

It was Winston Churchill who first took action, as President of the Board of Trade, in 1908. He argued then that we needed fair treatment and to act to keep labour on the land. That was legislated for by the Attlee Government and championed by Harold Macmillan. That is 100 years of history now about to be torn up. I absolutely do not accept the argument that the Agricultural Wages Board is no longer relevant in modern times.

[Mr Bellingham]

The hon. Gentleman obviously has a great deal of expertise, and I agree entirely with his points about the Gangmasters Licensing Authority. I supported that Bill, as did a number of my colleagues, when we were in opposition. After the war, many farmers employed perhaps 50 or 60 people on what would now be considered a smallish family farm, and there was of course a need for a trade union and for the Agricultural Wages Board. It would have been difficult for those farmers to negotiate with their farm workers without such a board. Now, however, those farmers employ a tiny number of people who are much better paid because of the relationship between the farmer and the workers which never existed in the past.

[Jack Dromey]

We have an atomised work force. There has been a progressive change in employment patterns from what was typically the case 50 years ago to smaller, more flexible work forces with a lot of contract labour and very few people being permanently employed on farms. Having said that, the statistics show that the majority of those covered by the AWB still need the minimum standards that the board lays down. I will come to that point in a moment.

I do not accept that the board is an historical anachronism—far from it—not least because half the work force is aged 55 and over and we still need to recruit and retain people to work on the land. Nor is it true to suggest that the board was set in aspic and never changed. Over the years, as a consequence of some very good dialogue, a modernisation process took place.

The proposal for the AWB’s abolition is fundamentally wrong for four reasons. The first involves fair treatment. This is not just about minimum standards. Crucially, it is also about other conditions of employment, which really matter. The simple reality is that the difference between the statutory arrangements and the board’s arrangements will be that, in future, it will be possible for a farmer to pay someone who is off sick £81.60 a week less. Farming is a dangerous occupation for some, and we often see high levels of sickness as a consequence of the work.

Secondly, abolishing the AWB is an inefficient way of proceeding. I asked the House of Commons Library to research the costs of the board, and I was surprised by the answer. I knew that it was lean and effective, but even I was surprised to learn that its administrative costs were £179,000 a year and its enforcement costs were £150,000. That fully functioning Agricultural Wages Board therefore cost a grand total of £329,000.

Now, however, we shall see tens of thousands of negotiations taking place throughout the agriculture sector. I accept that, depending on the nature of the employment pattern, people can often get paid more than the level strictly laid down by the AWB. That happens all the time, as a result of a demand for a particular skill. However, the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) was right to say that, other than in circumstances of exceptional demand, it is convenient for farmers to use the framework laid down by the board. Farmers have said that to me, too. In future, however, we shall see negotiation after negotiation consuming the time and effort of our farmers.

[Andrew George]

My hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) suggested earlier that farmers were used to sitting down and negotiating with suppliers of feed, seeds and so on, but there is of course a framework involved in those cases as well, and those farmers know what the framework is when they commence their negotiations. If there is a total free-for-all, we run the risk of creating a race to the bottom.

[Jack Dromey]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to be concerned about a race to the bottom. There are tens of millions of people on the continent who are desperate for work, and the last thing we want to see as a consequence of these proposals is a race to the bottom. My experience suggests that even where farmers depart from the AWB rates of pay—and they often do—it is helpful to have a clear framework and starting point, varied as appropriate in particular circumstances, depending on the skill level required, for example. Something very similar to that was put to me.

My third concern is the impact on local economies. There is no question but that we run the risk of taking out badly needed spending power from our hard-pressed local economies. It is interesting to note the Department’s impact assessment of the costs over a 10-year period: £260 million was, I think, the figure referred to.

Fourthly, we have heard time and again that “other wages councils have been abolished, have they not, and have not been reinstated”. This board is, however, unique in terms of its scope—including, crucially, the issue of tied accommodation. I repeat what my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) said earlier about the criteria: fit for human habitation, safe and secure, a bed for sole use, drinking water and sanitation. Some might say that all that sounds a bit 19th century, particularly the idea of a bed for one’s own use. They would not say that if they had seen the sort of places I saw when I was deputy general secretary of the old T and G and then of Unite. I saw some of the most shameful accommodation—and not just for those employed by gangmasters, as it was sometimes for those employed by farmers. The great thing about the Agricultural Wages Board is that it lays down very clear basic minimum standards for the kind of accommodation that I hope we would all like to see agricultural workers occupying in our countryside.

[Peter Luff (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

I am most grateful, particularly as I was not able to be here for the opening speeches. I agree with the hon. Gentleman about rural poverty, and I strongly support the Gangmasters Licensing Authority, as I campaigned for its existence and it is doing great work in my constituency. In a genuine spirit of curiosity, I ask the hon. Gentleman whether he is saying that farmers are uniquely incapable or uniquely exploitative so that they alone require the Agricultural Wages Board to regulate their behaviour, while every other boss in Britain does not. Is that what he is saying?

--- Later in debate ---

[Jack Dromey]

The board was born out of the experience of the agricultural economies. I have already said that, mercifully, our country has many good farmers who are dealing with changing patterns of mechanisation, the demand for greater skill levels and so forth. Pretending, however, that the exploitation of agricultural workers in the past is somehow simply a problem of the past and not still a problem to this day is not to live in the real world that I have lived in for many years.

Winston Churchill must be turning in his grave. Dare I say it, the two parties of which he was a member have come together to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board for which he laid the path. The Prime Minister has said, after all, that he is proud to be a member of the union—not the Transport and General Workers Union or Unite, but the National Farmers Union. His position, then, is not surprising. It is astonishing, however, that the Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath), who has talked in recent years—not 50 or 100 years ago—about the need not to impoverish the rural working class should now, presumably following a Damascene conversion, talk about the need to get rid of the Agricultural Wages Board as a burdensome anomaly. Perhaps he will explain later how he squares those statements.

In conclusion, this issue is above all about what is in the best interests of the countryside. The question we need to ask ourselves is what kind of country and what kind of countryside we want to live in. I could put it no better than the hon. Member for St Ives did when he spoke earlier about the meaning of us all being “in it together” in circumstances where a £1 million cheque can go to a big farmer on the one hand, while the Agricultural Wages Board is abolished on the other hand. That is why we are unashamedly standing up for the best traditions of our country and the best traditions of our countryside—and the best traditions of our countryside are best served by a fair deal for our countryside.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

The hon. Lady says she has been contacted by just three, but three is three, and I know for a fact that a large number of Members—many of whom are, for understandable reasons, not present for this debate, but who will, I assume, be passing through the voting Lobby—have been extensively lobbied by agricultural workers in their communities. The question is this: how will they vote today?

In the midst of the economic gloom of Osbornomics—that is a commentators’ phrase—with the economy flat-lining and the rural economy suffering too, the Government’s own figures show that more than a quarter of a billion pounds could be taken out of the rural economy following abolition of the AWB, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) pointed out, we could well add to the burden by increasing rural poverty and the in-work benefits bill to the taxpayer. This is, indeed, the world turned upside down.

[Jack Dromey]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. Members on the Government Benches have asked what Labour would do when in power in 2015. I know how difficult it will be to pick up the pieces of this appalling mess, but would my hon. Friend care to comment on that?

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I welcome the opportunity to do so, because it has wrongly been said that we have already made up our mind not to re-establish the AWB. When the AWB is abolished, it will, in effect, be shattered into little pieces. Its mechanisms will be entirely taken away, but I will tell my hon. Friend what we will do: Labour has already made clear its proposals under the Fair Work Commission—which I hope Members on the Government Benches will support, even though they opposed the work of the Low Pay Commission, which resulted in the national minimum wage, which they have been praising today. There will be a new commission that will consider our emerging proposals on the rural living wage, extending the remit of gangmaster legislation and tackling the agency workers question, and thereby addressing the undercutting of pay and conditions in local areas. That will no doubt be the arena in which our response to the abolition of the AWB will be developed. I suspect—in fact I can guarantee—that the Government parties will not be carrying out any similar piece of work. [Interruption.]

Any pretensions to respect—[Interruption.] I think Government Members want to know whether we would put the egg together again after they have broken it into a thousand pieces. I hope they understand from what I have just said that many of the proposals we already have in relation to the Fair Pay Commission run completely contrary to the free market, deregulatory ideology, and therefore both the Conservative Secretary of State and the Liberal Democrat Minister would oppose them, but I suspect many of the Minister’s Liberal Democrat friends would support them.

Any pretensions of respect for the views of this democratically elected House and the Welsh Government were ripped apart by this coalition Government when they sought at every opportunity to bypass votes and debate in this House. This proposal should have been taken through in full in what was then the Public Bodies Bill, and then brought back here and fully debated at length in this Chamber—and the issue of the legitimate right of the Welsh Government to be heard should also have been discussed. Instead, the proposal was rushed through a pitiful four-week consultation after the new Secretary of State arrived in post. The majority of respondents to that consultation in England and Wales opposed the abolition of the AWB, but that was ignored.

The proposal was then snuck into Committee in the other place in a different Bill, the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, which had already left the Commons, thus avoiding the need for any awkward debate here. After heated exchanges, and opposition from bishops, Labour peers and some Cross Benchers, the Lords eventually supported the abolition. When the proposal returned to this House as Lords amendments, we were denied the time and the opportunity to debate it or even to vote on it. So here we are today, in a debate brought by the Labour Opposition.

As we debate this matter today, therefore, the Government have conspired to abolish the AWB through the unelected House of Lords. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State for Education says “Hear, hear.” He may regard democratically elected representatives so lightly, but we do not; we like to have a say on behalf of our rural, and other, constituents. I ask the Government to think again.

I appeal to all parliamentarians who support the abolition to think again. My right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) appealed to Unionist Conservatives who are concerned about taking a cross-England and Wales approach and about cross-border issues to maintain the AWB. In no way is the hon. Member for St Ives somehow in hoc with union paymasters—contrary to the allegations that have been made against Members this afternoon—or acting at someone else’s behest. He speaks independently as the lead voice for the Liberal Democrat party, as opposed to the Minister, on rural issues. On that basis, what we are seeing is quite fascinating.

My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop) called this a living standards debate. He is quite right. He said the proposal did not make economic or moral sense in the 1980s, under former Prime Minister Thatcher, and it does not make sense now either. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) brought some poetry and morality to the debate. He raised the real alternative to abolition, which is further modernisation, which has happened before—a point made also by my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods)—and asked the fundamental question: what type of countryside do we want?

My hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) said that fairness was about not just the groceries code adjudicator, but fair pay and conditions. My hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) cited Churchill in defence of the Agricultural Wages Board. As we noted earlier in the debate, even former Prime Minister Thatcher stayed away from abolishing the AWB. There were also great contributions from my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass), the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) and others.

I appeal to all those Lib Dem parliamentarians who long held this as a point of principle and who have been lobbied by their constituents. They should stand with their constituents and with us, support low-paid workers and smaller farmers and stand against rural poverty. I appeal to Conservative MPs who want to speak up for all their constituents, small farmers as well as large, low-paid as well as wealthy. They should be compassionate, one nation Tories, not just the representatives of the wealthy and the powerful in the countryside. If I cannot appeal to their better nature, let me appeal to their baser political instinct—not least those whose parliamentary majorities are smaller than the number of agricultural workers in the constituencies affected, such as the hon. Members for Sherwood (Mr Spencer) and for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), and many others.

I am glad we have had this debate. Some have commented that it is like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. That is no fault of ours, but when the vote comes, people will see where Members stand on a fair rural community, fair wages and fair conditions for everyone.

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

The hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) did the House a service by pointing out the disparity between last night’s excellent debate in the name of the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies)—in which we heard contributions from all parts of the House, from Members who knew rural areas, knew the agricultural industry, were deeply committed to it and understood what the implications were—and today’s debate, which sadly has on occasions fallen short of that ideal.

That is not to say that there are not Members present who very much understand rural areas and represent their constituents, but that is not how I would characterise the opening speech from the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh), representing Islington Labour and its deeply patronising view of what happens in rural areas and the capabilities of people who work in rural areas. I resent that in the same way that the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) did. However, we welcome the fact that the hon. Lady has finally returned to the Chamber to hear the conclusion, if not the substance, of the debate that she called.

Let us deal with the issues raised, the first of which is the lack of debate on this issue. I am extremely sorry: I regret that there have not been debates on the precise motions that came from the other place last week. However, to say that there has been no debate on the issue is nonsense. Over the last three years I have debated this subject for hours with Members represented in this debate. We have had endless debates on a subject on which everybody knew every side of the argument, so that claim is nonsense. We could even have addressed it—I say this to my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George), who made the point of order—when we had the debate on the Lords amendments the other day. Indeed, had the shadow Business Secretary, the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna)—whom we are always glad to see in this country from his clubbing expeditions abroad—decided that this issue needed to be debated, as colleagues say it does, he could have done so. There was time to debate it but he chose to make speeches on other subjects instead. That is why we had no debate.

The hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) said that there was no meaningful consultation and that we did not notify people. I sent 13,000 letters to every single person or organisation covered by the order on agricultural wages, explaining what was to be done and asking for comments. That is unprecedented. It did not happen under the Labour Government but we did it because we wanted to ensure that people had the opportunity to respond.

The issue of Wales was raised. Let me let the House into a secret: I did not produce the legislation that provided for the devolution settlement in Wales, and Labour’s devolution settlement did not devolve employment issues to the Welsh Assembly Government. That is why such matters remain an issue for this House and this Government. No amount of argument from Welsh Ministers will change that settlement, only a change in the statutory format for the devolution settlement, which I do not believe the Labour party supports.

Let us consider the substance of this case, which is the crux of the matter.

[Jack Dromey]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Heath]

I will because the hon. Gentleman has some knowledge on this subject and I therefore welcome his views.

[Jack Dromey]

Will the Minister tell the House at what point and why he moved from believing that the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board would

“impoverish the rural working class”

to his current position of saying that it must be abolished as it is a “burdensome anomaly”?

[Mr Heath]

There were a number of points. There was the introduction of the Part-time Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2000, the Employment Act 2002, the Fixed-term Employees (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Regulations 2002, the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004, the Pensions Act 2008, the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009, and the Agency Workers Regulations 2010. All those provided the protections that I wanted for rural workers. They exist, and that is why we no longer need the Agricultural Wages Board, because it duplicates that position. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and I am glad he asked me that question.

In reality, when we debated these issues, Labour Members in support of the Labour Government resisted me when I spoke about rural poverty and denied that the biggest single removal of money from rural areas was the fuel escalator, which far outweighed anything that could possibly happen through the provision under discussion. They resisted my Fuel Poverty Bill applying to rural areas; they would not even allow for the existence of rural poverty, yet now they have the nerve to lecture the Government about what happens in rural areas.

Let me be clear because misinformation—deliberate I think—is being spread about some areas of this subject. There is a suggestion that people who work in the agriculture industry will no longer have any protection, which is absolute nonsense. The national minimum wage affects 99.5% of all workers in this country but is apparently hopelessly inadequate for the other 0.5%. However, I believe that the national minimum wage—which after the recent settlement is now well ahead of the first grade of pay for agricultural workers—is a valuable protection.

Every single worker who is currently paid under the protection of the Agricultural Wages Board will continue to receive that protection and to enjoy every aspect of their pay and conditions, and we shall ensure that they receive the benefit of legislative protection on that.