Public Bodies Bill [Lords] (Programme) (No. 2)

I fully acknowledge that the NFU not only strongly supports the Government's proposals but perhaps drove those proposals in the first place. Although I share a good and strong platform with the NFU on many issues, we do not agree on this point. The implication of what my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Stephen Mosley) said is this: if these protections are not available in any other industry, why should they be available to agricultural workers? My answer is that we should not simply adopt a lowest common denominator approach, and that just because these protections do not apply to other industries, that does not mean that, in the interests of equality, agricultural workers should have them removed. Agricultural workers have proper protections, which need to be retained, and as a result of their doing so, it might be appropriate to look at extending those protections—I am not saying that agricultural workers are exceptionally exploited—to other industries where there are isolated workers in a similarly weak position who are possibly exploited.