Rural Economy

My Lords, I join others in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Miller of Chilthorne Domer, for initiating this debate. I am an urban person. I have never lived in the countryside, but developed a love for it many years ago in my days as a Girl Guide, when we used to annually go camping in what I thought of then as the far-flung reaches of the Sussex Downs. I have spent many happy and enjoyable hours since then walking and rambling and, when I was a little younger, even mountaineering. Such activities, while healthy and enjoyable, can lead to a rather romantic view of rural life. We do not note the isolation of many rural dwellers, often brought about by the paucity of public transport which, in turn, makes it difficult to access health and education services, and constrains employment choices. The impact of the second home culture on rural property prices particularly hits the younger generation, who are needed to remain and regenerate declining populations but are often forced out of their own environments in order to find somewhere affordable to live. We are all familiar with these issues; they have already been mentioned this morning. I shall concentrate, however, on two aspects of the rural world of work. I declare an interest as a member of the Transport and General Workers’ Union, which is in the forefront of representation for rural and agricultural workers. First, I was pleased by the Government’s sensible decision to maintain and support the Agricultural Wages Board structure and its protective mechanisms. There were some who said, when the national minimum wage was introduced, that the AWB was no longer necessary. However, the Agricultural Wages Board recognises careers paths and skills acquisition, and covers more than rates of pay. The availability of a statutory framework is valued in particular by employees in small farms or workplaces, where day-to-day relationships are key to survival and questions of personal pay can be tricky. Secondly—and I shall listen carefully to the Minister’s reply on this—there was much rejoicing, not only among rural workers and their representatives but from employers who play by the rules, supermarkets—who did not want to be seen to gain from the abject exploitation of vulnerable workers—and from the National Farmers’ Union, when the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004 was passed. The Morecambe Bay tragedy was the most vivid example of what can happen when greedy, ruthless characters play upon the weaknesses, lack of knowledge and lack of rights of those who are desperate for work and money. Too many other examples exist of under-payment of wages, illegal employment of children, bonded and forced labour, illegal employment of foreign workers and breaches of the law on hours worked. Each one of those misdemeanours by exploitative, uncaring gangmasters represents a story of human misery and often of fear. The Act is a good thing, introduced with cross-party support. Arising from the Act will be the establishment of a Gangmasters Licensing Authority, a non-departmental public body made up of key industry stakeholders and enforcement agency representatives. Part of its responsibility will be to enforce the licence conditions. What has not yet been decided are the sectors of the food and agricultural industries to be covered under the Act. There is a view in some government departments that so-called secondary processing should be excluded from coverage. If this view prevails, areas such as the sorting, cutting and packing of meat, vegetables and fruit will be excluded from the requirements to operate under licence and could be left open to the very exploitation which the Act is designed to eliminate. An audit was recently conducted by the Temporary Labour Working Group—a body made up of unions and businesses with a direct interest in this sector—of gangmasters supplying casual labour to the food and farming industry. Two hundred gangmasters voluntarily participated and the so far completed 164 reports show a whacking 90 per cent of them were operating outside the law, including one example of a 14-year old child driving a fork-lift truck. These, I point out again, were gangmasters who volunteered to be involved, so presumably thought they had nothing much to worry about. If that is the case in what we might call ““the better end of the market””, what is happening with those gangmasters who are not prepared to be open to scrutiny? These are the very areas of employment which the Act was designed to protect. These are the vulnerable people—the migrant labourers or simply the indigenous rural workers with few choices in the world of work—who need the cover of legislation, inspection and enforcement to prevent them suffering at the hands of rogue employers. I ask the noble Lord, Lord Bach, to give serious consideration to my comments so that the full intentions of this legislation can be realised.