Agricultural Wages Board

Tom Greatrex Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2012 Westminster Hall

[Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I was not intending to speak in the debate until I noticed today’s statement on the Order Paper, but now I want to make a couple of quick points.

I often agree with the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), so I will reciprocate by disagreeing with him in this debate. In Scotland, this area is devolved and a few years ago the Scottish National party—I am not surprised that no one from the SNP is present—sought to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board in Scotland. John Swinney, the Finance Minister, was pushing that. When the Scottish Government looked at the evidence and were responding to the issues, however, they realised that it was not the sensible thing to do. Given that, I now have a sense of déjà vu, as I do from one of my previous lives: 14 years ago I was an adviser in what was then the Ministry of Agriculture, just after the minimum wage was introduced, and there was an internal debate about whether the AWB should therefore continue. Again, after going through the evidence and looking at all the issues, it was concluded that it should.

The written ministerial statement talks about something being outdated, but what is outdated is the continual campaign to undermine the terms and conditions of people working in the agricultural sector. We are coming back to that. Unless spectacular new evidence is available, the case for the AWB in England is as strong as the case was for the AWB in Scotland a few years ago or throughout Britain pre-devolution, back in the 1980s and before.

I should have declared an interest in the sense that my father started his working life as a farm labourer in a part of Kent and he benefited from the AWB. It has a big impact on huge numbers of people throughout the UK—in this context, throughout England, in all regions.

I cannot see any new evidence that will change the position established each time that the AWB has come up for review. I understand that some people in Whitehall every now and again push the case for abolition—it has happened a number of times—but the arguments that my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Mr Reed) and others have made this morning are absolutely right.

It is a shame that the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) is no longer present. For the most recent reshuffle, part of the discussion among the Liberal Democrats was about recalibrating where they had Ministers in the coalition. They quite rightly saw that rural and environmental issues were important, so it is good that the Minister is in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, even if that means that the Liberal Democrats do not have Ministers in other Departments. Before there was a Liberal Democrat Minister, however, the hon. Member for St Ives spoke for his party on DEFRA issues, and less than a year ago he was arguing in correspondence—presumably to one of his constituents—against the idea that the national minimum wage is sufficient protection for people working in the rural economy:

“It would therefore be wrong in my view to conclude that National Minimum Wage legislation is sufficient to maintain these protections for agricultural workers. As already noted, a minority of agricultural workers are on grade 1 pay; the vast majority are on grade 2 and above, and as such on wages higher than the National Minimum Wage.”

A little more than a year ago, the hon. Gentleman made another point which he repeated in an intervention earlier in today’s debate:

“Rural workers are exceptionally isolated and in an exceptional position that I think justifies exceptional protections.”—[Official Report, 12 July 2011; Vol. 531, c. 270.]

That is absolutely correct.

Unless great new evidence suggests that such protections can be maintained through some body other than the AWB, the desire to abolish it—as originally legislated, with a whole load of other bodies—for the sake of what will probably work out at some £250,000 or just over will end up as a false economy, particularly for the many people who work in farms throughout Britain and especially, in this context, in England. My hon. Friend the Member for Copeland made it clear that the AWB is relied on by labourers for their wages; however, because of the often difficult nature of agriculture and farming, farmers, too, effectively contract out their services to others. Those are vital points. Any examination of the evidence suggests that pushing again for the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board is more outdated than the idea that it is an outdated institution.