My Lords, that was an interesting contribution from the noble Baroness, who speaks from experience, but there is no guarantee that farmers will do the right thing. My concern, apart
from the procedure, is that by removing the Agricultural Wages Board you are removing an essential safeguard. The noble Lord, Lord Plumb, also spoke with great experience. Both noble Lords gave us a rather warm-hearted view of how farmers will respond. Apparently, we can rely on them to do the right thing and pay much higher wages than are paid under either the minimum wage or the rates contained in the order issued by the Agricultural Wages Board—but I wonder.
If one looks at the evidence given during the very truncated consultation period, the fact is that the supermarkets will undoubtedly be looking to drive down those wages in order to ensure that they keep the profits themselves. That is the story in history of how the supermarkets have behaved time and again.
My principal reason for coming into this debate is that I, alongside my noble friend Lady Royall, led for the Opposition on the Public Bodies Bill. I find it extraordinary that we are debating the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board in this Bill. We spent hours debating the Public Bodies Bill. We had two very good debates on the Agricultural Wages Board in Committee and on Report during passage of the Bill, and in no way was there any suggestion by the Government that they would not be using the process laid out in what is now the Public Bodies Act to deal with the Agricultural Wages Board.
We have lost the super-affirmative procedure, which would have allowed for extensive engagement and consultation with stakeholders. It would have allowed noble Lords who had an interest to have taken part in extensive debate. Instead, we have had this remarkably truncated consultation—four weeks for England and one week for Wales—when many people are engaged in other activities during the winter period. We all welcome the Minister to his place but it is remarkable that in his introductory remarks he gave no explanation whatever about why this amendment was being introduced at this late stage, why the Public Bodies Bill procedure agreed by your Lordships' House is not being used and why such a short consultation period was agreed.
The consultation has been discussed very recently by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. It very helpfully undertook a review of the new approach to consultation by the Government. We have to go back only to November of last year when the Prime Minister made a speech to the CBI conference and said:
“When we came to power there had to be a three month consultation on everything and I mean everything”.
He continued:
“So we are saying to Ministers: here’s a revolutionary idea—you decide how long a consultation period this actually needs. If you can get it done properly in a fortnight, great, indeed the Department for Education has already had a consultation done and dusted in two weeks”.
We know where that has landed the Department for Education. The Prime Minister added:
“And we are going further, saying, if there is no need for a consultation, then don’t have one”,
at all.
We now have a remarkable situation now where, instead of having a well ordered process to consultation, it is entirely up to Ministers to decide how long it
should be. I should have thought that there will be the inverse rule of ministerial law which says that the more contentious the issue the shorter the consultation will be. Here we sit: one week in Wales on the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board when we know there is absolutely no support whatever for its abolition in Wales. No wonder it is a week. People should be grateful, should they not? Why not a day? Christmas Eve would no doubt have produced the result the Government wanted. The way the Minister’s department has acted is, frankly, a disgrace.
I refer the noble Lord to the evidence given to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. It received a lot of evidence and, unlike the summation of the evidence that Defra made of the consultation receipts, which I regard as wholly inadequate, this is a very well ordered summation. The committee report refers to a quote from the Academy of Medical Sciences, which said:
“‘We are concerned that if adopting a consultation response time of less than 12 weeks becomes the default, this may prevent expert membership organisations from being able to provide considered responses to support evidence-based decision-making in policy … as so many legislative proposals impose additional costs on business, calculating their actual cost impact can often take time and resources’”.
The committee concluded that there was a,
“widely expressed preference for a 12-week standard duration”.
We can see from what has happened in relation to the Agricultural Wages Board why that should be the case.
The Fresh Produce Association, as my noble friend says, is a convenient front for the supermarkets; no wonder it is in favour. On the issue of what landowners’ companies will do, I noticed the Duchy of Cornwall Nursery response in the consultation. The manager there says: “Overtime rates are ridiculous”. We know what will happen to the overtime rates of Duchy of Cornwall employees when we abolish the Agricultural Wages Board. I doubt there will be any overtime rate at all. That is what will happen in practice when this wretched amendment is passed, if it is passed, by your Lordships’ House.
The Minister then talked about this being a “deregulatory” action. I was a Minister at Defra for a little while and I am reminding myself of the Agricultural Wages (England and Wales) Order. It is not a very long document and absolutely clear. It is one of the most readable documents that I have come across. Here is a very clear way for employers and employees to understand what the rates are and how to put them into practice. That is admitted by Defra, whose regulatory impact assessment, in talking about the impact on the affected groups, states:
“Employers will need to familiarise themselves with relevant legislation instead of”,
having to look at the agricultural wages order. I refer noble Lords opposite to their continued and frequent complaints about the complexity of employment legislation. I fail to see how getting rid of this very slim, readable document and replacing it by the need for hard-pressed farmers to go through and read Act after Act is, frankly, a nonsense.
The impact assessment goes on to say:
“Workers and employers will need to spend time on negotiations to agree pay levels & other terms & conditions individually”.
How on earth is that reducing the time and effort of both farmers and farm workers?
The Government are replacing a well ordered system, easily understood by everyone, with bargaining that will have to take place from farm to farm, involving both farmer and farm worker in the complexity of negotiations. Is there any group of workers who work harder than farm workers? I doubt it. Surely they are the “strivers” that this Government were so pleased to cite when Mr Osborne started to try to divide this nation up in a very disturbing and discomfiting way. We know that the real impact of this will be to drive down the wages of some very good and vulnerable people, and we ought to have nothing to do with it.