Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Lord Cameron of Dillington Excerpts

Wednesday 1st December 2010 Lords Chamber

I hope the Government will seriously think again about this proposal. The total budget of the board is £481,000 a year to bring some sense and fairness into this industry. If the Government are committed to doing away with the Agricultural Wages Board, I hope they will try to persuade employers to establish a forum where these matters can be discussed sensibly between all those who work in the industry, employers and workers, to avoid the chaos and unfairness that is bound to happen unless that is done.

[Lord Cameron of Dillington]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a farmer and as an employer of staff in the West Country—not the county of Dorset, like the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, but next door in the county of Somerset. I had not really intended to get involved in this debate—I thought I would just let it wash on and see what came out—but I think that I should report to your Lordships from the real world of Somerset. If I was to reduce the wages paid on my farm down to the levels set by the Agricultural Wages Board, not the basic wage but the various craftsmen rates, I am fairly certain I would have a strike on my hands.

I rarely pay much attention to the Agricultural Wages Board or what it says. I can see that a guide on an annual percentage rise within the agricultural world is often quite useful. However, I dare say that in the absence of the Agricultural Wages Board there will be other means of arriving at such a benchmark system, and I am sure that the NFU and others will get together and provide us with one, if that is going to be needed.

[Lord Wedderburn of Charlton]

I, too, wish to support the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and the remarks made by several of my colleagues on these Benches. If this board was abolished in this rather casual way, without any suggestion of what should replace it, it would be regarded by writers in the future as a rather cruel joke, in view of the difficulty this area of the workforce has had to obtain normal collective bargaining resources. Now, fortunately, many workers belong to the union, UNITE, but there was a day when workers who wished to form trade unions in this vulnerable sector of the workforce were met by a very different response by their society.

This particular history does not die in the memories of those who are literate regarding trade union organisation. It is very surprising that the Government come forward with no suggestion of anything to replace this—one of the boards or councils set up in the early parts of this century to protect vulnerable sectors of the workforce that did not have the advantage of even the elements of collective bargaining. The existence of a minimum wage to cover the entire workforce is no argument at all. The Agricultural Wages Board can, and does, make very sensitive interventions, as my colleagues on these Benches have illustrated, with the modernisation of agriculture.

I very much hope that in reply the Minister does not resist the amendment—certainly not without any suggestion of what the Government foresee as the structure and protection of this area of the workforce. A raft of structures has been attached to the Agricultural Wages Board, such as the agricultural dwelling house advisory committees, as we have already discussed. I very much hope that the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, will be supported by this House in the interests not merely of labourers in agriculture but also of employers in the agricultural sector, who, as we have heard, also have an interest in the protection afforded by the Agricultural Wages Board.