Lord Deben
Main Page: Lord Deben (Conservative - Life peer)Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill
Lord Deben Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, I wish to focus my remarks on the R-word—redress—rather more than on the regulation side. Here before us, in the excellent amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, is an opportunity to do something simple but clearly important which should have been done years ago—that is, to close the redress loophole in property lettings and management. The more one reads and learns about this issue, the more surprised one is about how we got into this muddled position that we are in today, with one department—BIS—taking a different view from another—Communities and Local Government.
As we have heard, change will be achieved by bringing letting agents and those who manage leasehold property within the redress net of the Consumers, Estate Agents and Redress Act 2007 and the main provisions of the Estate Agents Act 1979. Those Acts are both BIS Acts but, of course, housing is a CLG responsibility. The key thing that they do is, first, require all sales agents to be a member of an approved redress scheme and, secondly, give the OFT negative licensing powers to ban or reprimand sales agents for any misdeeds. However, neither Act has any sway over letting or managing agents, despite them interacting with consumers to an even greater extent.
I do not think that we should see access to redress as regulation. It is a consumer right and one of the eight consumer principles. It is true that consumers who are unhappy with their lettings or managing agent could go to court to get access to redress. However, as we know, very few do. These amendments are about mandating an alternative to court—alternative dispute resolution—which means that letting and managing agents must offer independent ADR to tenants, landlords and leaseholders. Therefore, I strongly support the intent behind these proposed new clauses. From the consumer perspective, they would mean that consumers with a complaint, after exhausting any in-house complaints procedure, if there is one, can take that complaint to an independent body approved by the OFT or its successor. This ADR will most likely be an existing body such as the Property Ombudsman, which already covers most sales agents, although I believe that there are other schemes as well.
What is the impact of this loophole? Surely it does not make any sense that a consumer who has a problem with a sales agent when selling, or even buying, a house has access to an independent complaints body, but if that same consumer—landlord or tenant—has a complaint about a lettings agent over a rental property or a problem with a managing agent who looks after their block of flats, they may not have access to independent ADR. While it is true that many, possibly a majority, of lettings managing agents are voluntary members of the Property Ombudsman—we have heard that already from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter—there are around 6,000 firms of lettings agents that are not subject to it.
Why does it matter that we target them? One only has to read the briefing from Which?, along with that from many other organisations which have already been mentioned, to find the answer. The sector’s problems as outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and other speakers—and I am sure many others will continue in this vein—speak volumes. I shall not extend my time by reading out the Which? report giving various examples of landlords and tenants who have suffered in this way. Noble Lords will no doubt have a copy and can see for themselves.
I very much hope the Minister and the coalition Government will be able to accept the very reasonable and carefully defined amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, not least in view of what a Minister in his role—Mark Prisk, now the Housing Minister—tried to do on a previous occasion.
Lord Deben
My Lords, the longer one has been in this House—or, indeed, in the House of Commons—the more one believes that certain statements are made irrespective of the Government. Somehow or other Governments take on a particular view about certain things, and regulation is one of those things. It seems to me that Governments often take a very narrow view about regulation and seem to think that if they regulate at all, they will be accused of red tape, of stopping businesses and of every heinous offence. That is the reason why the previous Labour Government refused to do this and why the present Government have introduced this Bill without this clause.
I hope the Minister will take it from somebody who has been in elected and now non-elected public life for nearly 40 years that it is the duty of Ministers to stand up against that attitude, because here is an issue where everybody recognises that there is only one sensible answer. It is not sensible to have a situation in which those who sell houses have a code that is different from the code for those who rent houses, because those who buy or rent houses think that they are working in the same context. Indeed, as it becomes more natural to buy and to rent in equal terms—I do not mean in numbers, but that people make those decisions—we must help the consumer in a sensible way. The only sensible way is the way so eloquently put forward by the noble Baroness when she pointed out that this is not regulation but consumer rights. It is the possibility of a consumer having a perfectly reasonable way of ensuring that they get fair do’s when they go to court.
It is very important for us to press this. I am speaking because I am a strong deregulator. I do not believe in the degrees of bureaucracy that we have managed to land on business. In my own business, I am conscious that there is a whole series of rules and regulations that restrict the number of people you take on and certainly stop the expansion of British industry and a lot of things that can be done. This has nothing to do with that. The only people who can dislike this light regulation are those who have every intention of misbehaving. When one reads that list of people who are supporting this, it is very hard to think of any responsible, respectable body, apart from the Caged Birds Society, that is opposed to this proposal.
I say this to my noble friend. Whatever is in his speaking notes—and I have a horrible feeling that I could write those notes, because there is a kind of parallelism with what I myself was given in the past, and was often willing to ignore—I hope that he will say to himself, “Least said soonest mended if I can’t give way”. If he cannot give way, some anodyne references would enable him to go back and say to the powers that be, “This won’t go. This isn’t acceptable”.
We must find a way to ensure that rogue letting agents do not get away with it any more. There is no argument that can be put up by BIS that can overcome the simple matter of the rights of the consumer. That is probably the elegant way through and I hope that he will be able to take it.
Lord Deben
My Lords, I declare an interest as the owner of a very small amount of agricultural land. I am also a former Minister of State for Agriculture. My only surprise is that it has taken so long to get to this point. It is unacceptable to say that the only people in the entire country who have to have a wages council after all the others have been abolished are we rural people. Actually, the insult is to us. The suggestion that there is only one group of people in the entire nation who need a wages board—because otherwise they will behave in a way that is wholly unacceptable—is offensive. It is offensive to my neighbours, it is offensive to rural people and it is not acceptable. That is the first thing.
Secondly, earlier I was rather tough with the Minister about what he may have written down. I could have written all the speeches on the other side quite simply because they have been said for the past 50 years. It is always the same thing—this argument that somehow or other people are out to do people down in an industry that is the most co-operative industry we have. You cannot run a farming enterprise—I do not run one but I see them all around me, and I was Minister for Agriculture and deputy Minister for the longest period of anybody—unless farmer and farm worker work together.
Thirdly, it is incredible to see the ignorance of what is happening in the industry, to hear speeches that assume that the industry today is like it was 50 years ago. Most people involved in the industry, by any proper measure, do not find themselves subject to the Agricultural Wages Board because the way farming is now organised and run is wholly different. Have we had a great campaign from Unite to say that the board has to be extended? Have we had trade unionists stamping in the street? Of course not, because they know perfectly well that this is an out-of-date mechanism which they do not want to bring back in any of the areas where it has been abolished. The previous Government had 13 years to do something, but they did not.
Lord Knight of Weymouth
I would like to revisit history very briefly. As I understand it, the wages councils for every other sector were abolished in 1993, the same year that the noble Lord finished being Minister of State for Agriculture. He must have been part of the discussions held then as to whether or not the Agricultural Wages Board should be abolished along with the others. Can he explain why he chose not to abolish it then?
Lord Deben
First, I do not remember whether I was still there or not because it was the year in which I moved. Secondly, I have always been opposed to the Agricultural Wages Board and have always said so because it has never seemed to apply to the industry that I know. It may have applied in 1930. It may have applied in the long-distant past in 1830, although we did not have the board in those days. This is what worries me about the speeches from the other side. I do not feel that they understand how agriculture works.
The former Member for Newport talks about agricultural workers in Newport. I must say that my mother was brought up there and there must be a pretty exiguous collection of people in Newport. However I say this: those of us who live in agricultural areas, care about agriculture and have spent a lifetime dealing with it have to say that the speeches from the other side have no connection with reality at all.
Baroness Turner of Camden
Is the noble Lord not aware that other employers in the industry feel very differently and find the Agricultural Wages Board useful and helpful? I was speaking to one such, a noble Lord, on precisely that point today. I do not know very much about agriculture, but I know quite a bit about employment rights, and I happened to mention this matter to a friend—not a noble friend but a friend—who is involved in agriculture in a large way. He told me that he respected the Agricultural Wages Board. He had always found it useful and was surprised that the Government were moving in the direction of abolition. It was clear that there had not been overall consultation. This is apparent from a number of the contributions today; there has been no real, deep consultation on the amendment.
Lord Deben
I am sure that the noble Baroness would agree from her long history of trade union negotiations that you can always find someone who takes a differing view. However, I have to tell her that if one talks to farmers throughout the country and to large numbers of farm workers their view is simple: this board has been an irrelevance for a very long time. Many of them feel it to be an insult to suggest that this portion of humanity, this group of people, should be singled out and defended on the basis that they cannot be trusted to run their businesses or to negotiate in the way that everyone else in Britain does.
I particularly objected, if I may say so, to the comments of the noble Lord who suggested that it would be much easier to keep the wages board because it is too complicated for farmers and farm workers to negotiate. My goodness, what a miserable society it is in which we have to have things done on a collective basis because individuals who work with, talk to and care about each other are unable, too stupid or do not have the time to work out the relationships between them, both financial and in terms of employment. It is a harking-back occasion. This Committee often reminds me of discussions—
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, the noble Lord has mentioned me, and it would only be courtesy to let me—
Lord Deben
I have made it quite clear that I will give way, but I should have a chance to finish my sentence before I do. I am very happy to give way to the noble Lord, who I much respect.
I was saying merely that before we indulge in historical references, we ought to remember that we are talking about people working today, who are employing today, who are alive today, who listen to these comments and who recognise in them a kind of attitude of superiority to rural people that many townspeople appear to have by believing that they are not fit to run their own lives like townspeople can.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way because he mentioned me as the noble Lord who had referred to problems in reading legislation. The Bill is called the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill. The Minister told us that it would be great to get rid of the Agricultural Wages Board because it will remove a whole raft of regulations from the industry. The point I am making is that the regulatory impact assessment produced by the Minister’s own department has a wonderful phrase that,
“employers will need to familiarise themselves with relevant legislation instead of the Agricultural Wages Board Order. Workers and employers will need to spend time on negotiations to agree pay levels and other terms and conditions individually”.
My point is that far from easing regulatory burdens, this will increase the burdens in an area of industry that is characterised by many small employers with a limited number of employees. I would argue in favour of the simplicity and straightforwardness of the order, which is incredibly easy to understand and well written. I know that if I was a small employer, I would welcome it. The current arrangements are much less of a burden than having to refer to dozens of Acts of Parliament, which the noble Lord’s department seems to think will have to be done in the future.
Lord Deben
I have listened carefully to the noble Lord, as I have on other occasions, and I think that he is missing the point. Indeed, he has revealed exactly the kind of concern that I have. Most of the employers of agricultural workers are larger employers because most of the smaller concerns do not employ any longer. That is one of the issues. To talk about the agricultural industry from that point of view is to talk about an industry which has passed. Ever since the passing of the Hunting Act we have gone through periods of listening to townspeople who do not know about the countryside talking about it in a way that they would find insulting if we who live in the country talked in the same way about the towns.
I say this to noble Lords opposite. It is impossible to defend an argument which says that uniquely among all jobs and professions, uniquely among all employers and uniquely among all employees, the small part of the agriculture and food industry to which this wages board applies has to be protected because it cannot otherwise stand up for itself. That is manifestly untrue, and it is insulting to a large section of the population. It also means that those of us who live in the countryside must again remember that people in this House and in the other place often debate our future with exiguous knowledge of what actually goes on Britain’s rural areas. I shall give way to the former Member for Newport.
Lord Howarth of Newport
I am grateful to the noble Lord who knows my former constituency so much better than I and who insists that although I represented a rural constituency for 15 years, I know nothing about agriculture. I represented farmers and farm workers for many years.
The noble Lord has still not answered the question put to him by my noble friend. Why, when he was the Secretary of State for Agriculture, did he omit to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board?
Lord Deben
First, I think I did say that I could not remember whether the decision to do the wages board came before or after I ceased to be the Agriculture Minister. I am being absolutely truthful about that. Secondly, I was never in favour of the Agricultural Wages Board, but I also remind the noble Lord that the decision to abolish these boards was taken as a whole. In those circumstances, I would have played a part, but, as a matter of fact, I do not think I did because the timing was rather different. I would just say to him that if I had had the opportunity, I would have done so. He might remember that I had a number of other things to deal with at the time, but we do not wish to go into that otherwise people will recall the photograph which was so widely used.
The issue I want to return to is this. I am not insulting the noble Lord. Of course he knows about agriculture because in a different guise he represented an agricultural constituency. I am merely saying that the language we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and those who spoke later, including even the upright defender of Cornwall, does not go down well with those in agricultural areas who want to be treated like everyone else: grown up and able to look after themselves. Their employment practices are decent and the relationships between employers and employees are particularly tight. The gangmaster regulations removed the only part of this which might have been argued, even though the agricultural workers regulations did not always cover the very people we wanted to help. I commend the previous Government for bringing that forward, and I am only sad to see that there is an innate conservatism in the trade union movement which makes it impossible for it to understand that the world has changed and with it we have to change our practices.
Lord Monks
My Lords, I respond, as a former general secretary of the TUC, to that last remark about the trade union movement. I cannot claim any rustic origins—I do not come from that part of the world—but I do claim some experience of rural life gleaned, at great expense, in various village pubs over the years, listening to what people say. While I accept that the degree of paternalism that often exists from the farmers’ and landowners’ side is often genuine and sincere, and we have heard some of that today, it is not the full story of rural life. It is not an idyll for everybody, some place where Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 wafts gently in the background and people are all very nice to each other. That is not the case. There are some dark sides and some problems which are not being faced up to on that side.
Over the years, I have not been a great fan of wages councils or the Agricultural Wages Board. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Plumb, that the National Farmers’ Union has plenty to do with the fact that it is very difficult to be proud of the Agricultural Wages Board because it is a very tough negotiator. It can always answer for itself. It is good at it. If anything is irrelevant, as the noble Earl, Lord Cathcart, suggested, it is often because the employers have not wanted the board to address some of the problems that were brought to their attention. I take a rounded view which is certainly not old-fashioned. Some of the rates of pay that have been contracted for people driving a machine worth £250,000 or whatever do not seem excessive. When I look at the figures for farm incomes, I accept that there are good years and bad years, but they went up by 25% in 2011. I did not see a trickledown effect in the Agricultural Wages Board or any of the other agreements which were around. Farmers were, no doubt, thankful for a good year after some bad ones, but they were not exactly shelling out the money generously to their staff.
I ask the NFU and others, and I look forward to what the noble Lord says on these things, whether where there are shortages in the industry and a reliance on migrant workers it could be because the wages and conditions are still too low? Could it be because it is not an attractive place for young people to go to work and the prospects for replacing the ageing workforce are not fantastically good? I look forward to what the Minister will say on these things. This debate is about pay and conditions in agriculture as well as about the wages board. The wages board, like the wages councils, was in the words of Winston Churchill, a floor beneath wages. They are not a restriction which stops you from paying more. They are simply a floor, and if you do not go below it, you are clean. However, there are plenty of people who do go below it. I could quote examples, particularly from the horticultural industry, where some quite substantial employers went below the wages council order and were in difficulty when they were caught.
I ask the Government to follow the wise advice that has been given by my noble friend Lord Whitty and take a longer, deeper look at this. I am not against change, reforming, making the thing more relevant and all the rest of it, but this industry has different features. There may be some other industries around that you can compare it with, but they are not on our agenda today. Rural life, close relationships, living cheek-by-jowl—not always, but often—make this a rather special place, and that justifies the continuation of the Agricultural Wages Board.
Lord Deben
First, I hope that the noble Lord will explain to the Committee that there is a distinction between the Farmers’ Union of Wales and the National Farmers Union of Wales, which of course voted in the opposite direction. There is a disagreement.
On the point that the noble Lord just raised, all those elements are in every other industry to which teachers might encourage people to move. Why would they not ask them to go into farming if there were no Agricultural Wages Board but would ask them to go into all these other industries that do not have a wages board? That does not stand up.
Lord Knight of Weymouth
I am afraid that I disagree with the noble Lord about the unique nature of agriculture. It is right that we have agricultural colleges giving specific training, specifically feeding an industry with the skills that are needed. People need to have that training and understanding of the unique way of life, in terms of working very anti-social hours at times and having to be highly flexible in the way that they work. Some 30% of farm workers have a boss who is also their landlord. There are a number of unique things about agriculture—he disagrees and I respect his disagreement—that I do not know of in other sectors.