My Lords, I declare an interest as a farmer and someone who has employed farm workers over a considerable number of years. It is for that reason that I am more interested in the substantive points made by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, than in the procedural points. The procedural points he raised are worthy of some examination and I am sure that the Minister takes all that on board. The substantive points are what really matter—how people react to whatever decision is taken in the proposed removal of the Agricultural Wages Board.
I also declare an interest as, many years ago, a member of that board. I served on it for a while so I have some recognition of what it does and the importance of the workers, farmers and independents who served on the board—as they do now—who had the responsibility of trying to reach a fair conclusion in the interests of both parties.
I particularly remember when we had the threat of a farm workers’ strike, which had never been heard of in history. It became quite serious because the noises were coming from East Anglia when we were about to start sugar beet harvesting and potato picking and so on, and it was spreading across the country. I always encouraged my workers to become members of their own union; I was a member of a union and the leader of a union and told them that they had the same responsibility.
I remember saying to my herdsman, who had a pretty substantial responsibility looking after a lot of animals, “You are a very keen member of the NFU. Have you heard about this strike?”. He said, “Of course we have heard of this strike. We had a meeting last Wednesday night. Of course we have to join them—solidarity and all that”. I said, “What are we going to do? If you are going to join this strike, have I got to come home and do the milking?”. He said, “No, we will manage”. I said, “How can we manage if you are on strike?”. He said, “I will get up a bit early and do the milking, then I will have a bit of a strike and then I will do the milking in the afternoon”.
That story sums up very fairly the relationship between the farmer and the worker. They live and work shoulder to shoulder. They can discuss things that are not normally discussed between industrialists and their workers, because of the numbers and relationships and so forth, which are very different.
I assure the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, that I am a bit nearer to farmers than he is. I have talked to the workers and to the farmers. When they see that the difference between the national minimum wage and the agricultural minimum wage is 2p an hour, they say, “What are we keeping it for? It is plain daft to try to keep something going just for the sake of keeping it going”. What is the cost of keeping it? Is it £50,000? The figures will come forward, I think, but we know that a considerable amount is spent every year on running the various meetings, let alone the buildings, the staff and the offices.
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The Minister has explained very clearly how one sees the difficulty between packaging livestock, poultry and so on. If packaging is done on a farm, the prices paid are different from abattoir prices, which are paid at the national minimum wage. All this is hindering business and restricting jobs. It will not cut jobs, as you say; it will increase jobs.
I have recently set up a foundation to encourage young people into the agricultural industry, and am absolutely amazed at the number of under-25s who are now saying that they want to apply to the foundation for help to get into the industry. There is no problem for them of what they are going to get when they get there; they just want help to get into the industry and are happy with their prospects in British agriculture and with their prospects for specialising in different areas. That, of course, is the world we are in. We are not living in the past or in a situation in which we have to have these arrangements—arrangements that are therefore seen to be conditioned to be suitable for the past, certainly not for the future.
I have information here from the NFU. The NFU view—and it is a unanimous view, as I understand it, from its council—is that the AWB should be abolished because, it claims, the board is a waste of time and public money. The AWB costs about £500,000 a year to run, which, in the context of public spending cuts, the NFU claims is unjustifiable. There is little evidence to suggest that the farming sector represents a special case.