Oral Answers to Questions

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Thursday 9th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paice]

The hon. Gentleman should be aware that until the Warwick agreement, when the trade unions forced the Labour party to back down, it was Labour party policy to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board. I should make the point that agriculture has changed dramatically in the 60 years since the board came into being. The previous Government did not reinstate any of the other wages boards when they had the chance to do so. Instead they instigated the Low Pay Commission, and we believe that that is the right body to manage agricultural wages, as it does everybody else’s wages.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

T4. Following the successful Nagoya conference on biodiversity and against the background of the current very important climate change conference in Cancun, can the Secretary of State tell us how she intends to take forward the protection of biodiversity, both in this country and internationally?

[Mrs Spelman]

As I said in response to an earlier question, the new biodiversity strategy for England will be published alongside the natural environment White Paper in the spring, to which we have had an astonishingly high number of contributions from the public: there have been in excess of 15,000.