Visas: Domestic Workers

Debate between Lord Henley and Lord Lea of Crondall

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I accept what the noble Lord has to say about domestic workers being particularly open to abuse. That is why we want to get the right balance. However, I think the noble Lord would also agree that we need an immigration system that is fairer and more honest and commands public confidence. We want to get the right balance; that is what is behind the consultation and that is what we will be looking at in the responses.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

My Lords, would the Minister say a little more about the complaints procedure whereby, when many of these workers who work under slave labour conditions—and that is the word that has to be used when you look at some of the horrendous things that go on—try to make a complaint, they can lose their status and so on. Could the Minister say a little more about how people can be safeguarded if they want to make a complaint?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I cannot say that at this stage because that is the point behind the consultation. We want to consider all the responses to that consultation. But what I tried to make clear earlier, and what I will repeat to the noble Lord, is that we want to make sure that we get the right balance by providing the appropriate safeguards while making sure that we have the right safeguards against unnecessary immigration.

Agriculture: Dairy Industry

Debate between Lord Henley and Lord Lea of Crondall

Monday 7th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I ought to make it clear that prices have in fact gone up somewhat. The average price in December was 26.4 pence per litre, which was a 5.8 per cent increase on a year ago. However, I appreciate that other prices for dairy producers have gone up just as fast and that they are facing quite severe problems. As regards the work being done in the EU, I think that the right reverend Prelate referred to the High Level Group on dairy. We will certainly be making appropriate comments on that and feeding in our views to what the Commission is proposing.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

As I understand it, there are 17,000 dairy farms in this country and the average dairy farm gets a subsidy of £30,000 a year, which by my arithmetic is £500 million. There are 2 million cows, so each cow gets £250. I am sure the NFU will say that the cow does not get it and that the farmer does not get it. So who does get it? Could it be that the processors get it, the supermarkets get it, or the consumer gets it? Somebody must get it, so should there not be something like the Office for Budget Responsibility or the new adjudicator to clarify analytically who does get it?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I cannot confirm or deny the figures produced by the noble Lord, but I can give him an assurance that subsidies go to the farmers and not to the cows as I imagine that the cows do not have bank accounts.

Foxes

Debate between Lord Henley and Lord Lea of Crondall

Thursday 17th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I am sure that foxes going into another place are a matter for another place. It might be that they are less keen on coming into this House. As regards my noble friend’s question about food, she is absolutely correct: if less food were left around, we would have less of a problem with urban foxes.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

Will the Minister take into consideration a recent event in Crondall when we had a power cut? It was established that it was due to a short-circuit caused by a fox. The consequence was, of course, the demise of the fox. Could this idea not be developed, saving electricity at the same time?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I was not aware of the incident to which the noble Lord refers. I certainly think that it could be built on and I am sure that all local authorities will study with great care what the noble Lord has had to say.

Queen's Speech

Debate between Lord Henley and Lord Lea of Crondall

Wednesday 2nd June 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Henley)]

My Lords, it has been quite a long time since my noble friend Lady Wilcox opened the debate, since when we have heard from some 52 or 53 speakers. As the noble Baroness, Lady Kingsmill, said, we have seen the House of Lords possibly at its best and certainly at its widest in terms of the number of subjects we have covered. It is now my job to try to respond to the wide range of subjects before us, covering a whole array of different departments: the Treasury, transport, energy and climate change, business and my own department, Defra, which I shall get on to in due course.

I shall start by offering my commiserations to the noble Lord, Lord Myners, because he told us that this was his swansong on the Front Bench. As many other noble Lords have said, we will miss him and we look forward to seeing him on the Back Benches. I think it was his noble friend Lady McIntosh who suggested that possibly it was the first of many swansongs and that he was going to become the veritable Frank Sinatra of the Opposition Front Bench by making repeated final speeches. I look forward to those. I also offer my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, who offered me some very useful advice from Defra, the department in which he has held office, as has the Lord Speaker and the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. The noble Lord made the simple point that nothing is quite as complicated as people tell him.

I shall start by saying a word or two about my own department. As my noble friend Lady Wilcox emphasised in her opening speech, it is the Prime Minister’s ambition that this Government should be the greenest Government ever. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, care for the environment and understanding the value of our natural resources should inform all that we do, and it is the responsibility of Defra to ensure that this imperative is understood by government and all others. We are there to explain and promote the economic value of natural resources so that they are managed better and so that those who come after us do not face hardship and disaster through their growing scarcity. We work to ensure a thriving biodiversity and wildlife by preventing habitat loss and degradation; we act to prevent deforestation and to protect the marine environment; we help businesses and communities to adapt to the effects of a changing climate; and we help those sectors for which we are responsible to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and to contribute to the fight against climate change.

However, Defra is not only concerned with the environment; it is also an economic department. In fact, our departmental remit shows that you cannot separate the two. Therefore perhaps our most important job is to show just how the economics and the environment are intertwined.

During the course of the debate I heard repeatedly from this or that noble Lord that they hoped the Minister would in due course comment on their own particular issue. However, that will simply not be possible. I jotted down a range of different subjects, some of which were raised repeatedly, and I hope I will be able to comment on some of the bigger issues. I think noble Lords will understand that I shall not be able to answer every question that was put to me but, as the noble Lord, Lord Myners, put it, I shall do my best to write to all noble Lords—as I did in my previous incarnation as a Minister and as I am sure all Ministers do—in due course when I have collated all the responses from the different departments. However, as I said, I shall try to deal with one or two of the concerns that have been raised today.

I shall start with the Office for Budget Responsibility because that is where the noble Lord, Lord Myners, started. He asked a number of detailed questions which he would not expect me to answer at this stage and which I shall deal with by correspondence. However, I can give him the assurance that it will be independent—that is important—and that independence will derive from it having complete control over the forecasts it will produce. I was grateful that the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, saw that that was a positive step. On the detailed questions, as I said, I shall write to the noble Lord.

Turning to the deficit, the subject most mentioned by noble Lords—indeed, so many noble Lords raised the subject that I cannot list all their names—there were varied views on what to do about it but everyone accepted that it had to be tackled. Even the noble Lord, Lord Myners, accepted that the deficit had to be tackled but felt, as did others—but by no means the majority—that it should not be tackled too quickly. I shall quote the views of the Governor of the Bank of England on this subject. He said:

“The bigger risk at present would be for a new Government not to put in place clear and credible measures to deal with the deficit”.

We are currently running one of the largest deficits in the world. That is simply not sustainable and the longer we delay action the greater the risk of a loss of market confidence, which would mean higher interest rates for all.

I will give way to the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, just this once, but it is his third intervention in the course of the debate.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

It is an important question. Perhaps the Minister could write to me and put his reply in the Library. Is he talking about the complete deficit or about a recession-adjusted deficit? How has it suddenly become a recession-related deficit of 11.1 per cent when it was only 2.5 per cent 18 months ago?

[Lord Henley]

That is a question that the noble Lord will have to put to the previous Government, who saw it rise to that level. I shall of course write to him in due course and, as I always do, put a copy of the letter in the Library.

The longer that we delay action on the deficit, the greater is the risk of that loss of market confidence. As I said, that would mean higher interest rates for all, stifling recovery and making challenges ahead even harder.