UK Parliament / Open data

Agricultural Wages Board

Proceeding contribution from George Eustice (Conservative) in the House of Commons on Wednesday, 24 April 2013. It occurred during Opposition day on Agricultural Wages Board.

The group of people the hon. Gentleman is concerned about are protected by the minimum wage. That is already there and is set at roughly the same level as a grade 1 agricultural worker, so I do not think that that is an argument at all. What I am saying is that being too rigid can actually frustrate the development of more progressive pay policies.

The other point, which the Secretary of State touched on earlier—we had this in our farm business where some of the work was in pack houses—is that someone could be running a conveyor belt packing strawberries one minute and working in the field the next, with totally different wages rates applying. We ran a farm shop, in which different rates applied, even though there were sometimes shared staff.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
561 c953 
Session
2012-13
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
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