I will give way later, but I would like to make some progress.
The Government’s own figures suggest that up to £280 million could be lost over 10 years in wages and in holiday and sick pay—a quarter of a billion pounds taken out of areas represented mainly by the parties on the Government Benches, where the cost of living is estimated to be approximately £3,000 more than for those living in urban areas. Up to £35 million a year could be lost in wages alone—again, those figures are taken from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills impact assessment.
I want to know what happens when money is taken from rural families on the breadline. Who will pick up the tab? People with children will have recourse to income-related benefits, such as tax credits, council tax benefit and housing benefit. Reducing rural workers to the poverty line will take money out of workers’ pockets and transfer it directly to their employers. We, the taxpayer, will pick up the in-work welfare bill. That will add to the deficit. As a strategy for rural growth and deficit reduction, this thoughtless abolition will be catastrophic.
My second point is that the abolition will be bad for the food industry; it goes against business needs. Britain’s biggest manufacturing industry, the food production sector, needs more skilled workers. Instead, the Government are encouraging employers to race to the bottom on pay. That will see skilled workers turn their backs on the industry—and become MPs instead!
There are 2.5 million unemployed people in the United Kingdom, 1 million of whom are young people. There are 25 million unemployed people in the European Union, yet the horticulture industry still says that it needs to bring in workers under the seasonal agricultural workers scheme because it cannot find reliable British workers. It simply defies economic logic to suggest that a race to the bottom on pay is the way to attract the skilled new entrants that the industry needs.