Agriculture Bill — House of Lords, 2020-07-23
Topic: Mixed Topics
Margaret Beryl Jones (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, since we strayed quite a lot into innovation, robotics and so on, I thought that, in retrospect, I should declare an interest regarding my involvement with Rothamsted Enterprises, which is on the record I thank all noble Lords for the pretty fulsome support for my amendment from around the Chamber. I emphasise that this is not a prescriptive amendment; it simply asks the Government to pull together all the strands that we have talked about this afternoon—and the issues the Minister has flagged up in the work that is already ongoing—into one coherent strategy, which I feel we would all find useful. So often when we have these debates, the problem is that we find that there is some work going on in the Department for Education over here and other work going on in BEIS over there, but this is a fundamental part of how we are going to deliver the new agricultural programme that we are all enthusiastic about and aspire to. It is so much at the heart of it that bringing the strands together in one document that we can all see, sign off on and understand would be a really welcome step As I and many noble Lords have said, training and skills are absolutely key to this, and we cannot afford to be behind the curve—it is moving so quickly. I was very pleased to hear the noble Lord, Lord Curry, talk about his recommendation of a professional body, which I would like to see in the strategy. I was interested in the Minister’s comments about the Peter Kendall recommendations. Again, it would be good to see some of that spelled out in the strategy. All of this information and these recommendations are great, but they need to be brought to fruition and this is the Bill in which to do that. I am not saying that the current wording of my amendment is perfect, but something like it needs to be on the face of the Bill I will pick out a few questions. I was asked about seasonal workers. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, that not all seasonal work needs to be 12 hours long and back-breaking—I know that the Minister has a different view on this, and I understand that some seasonal work has to go with the weather. However, it does not all have to be back-breaking, 12-hour shifts. One of the problems we have is that a lot of UK workers do not come forward, precisely because of the length of the shifts; personally, I do not understand why there cannot be shorter shifts running in parallel The Minister talked about all workers having a buy-in and working 24 hours a day if needs be. For longer-term workers, I can see that that is the case, but casual workers maybe do not have the same buy-in to the outcome. This is what we are trying to find: we are trying to build longer-term relationships where, year after year, people care about the produce and outcomes, and feel that they have a say, a buy-in and some ownership of the profitability of the companies they are employed by The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, asked whether migrant workers should be covered. I thought that that was implied by what I said, but I am happy to say that of course that is the case. I will go one step further: if you are going to have training courses, it is absolutely vital that migrant workers and UK workers have the same training courses, particularly when it comes to safety issues or the use of machinery. You cannot afford to have one person who is less well trained and could let the side down by not knowing how to use the equipment. All of that training should be available to migrant workers and other workers alike I also agree with the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, that issues around vets very much underpin this issue. We absolutely need to have a system where everybody is treated equally and where the proper pay and conditions apply equally to UK workers and those from the EU A comment was made about the minimum wage. If this sector has a future, I do not see it being a minimum-wage sector. Of course, there will always be entry-level jobs that will be minimum-wage, but there needs to be career progression and extra pay for the extra skills that you develop. One of the things that is lacking at the moment is that when people upgrade their skills, they do not necessarily see that they will automatically get a higher rate of pay for doing so, which is what would happen in many other sectors At the outset of the Bill in the other place, evidence was taken from the agricultural workers’ unions. That evidence was that even people on the minimum wage were having part of it docked for clothing, food and all sorts of other charges. I am not saying whether or not these were legitimate, but there is no standard scheme to say that if your clothing is provided, you can have your wages docked by a certain percentage. All the evidence they gave was that wages have gone down since the Agricultural Wages Board was abolished. I am not saying that it should be brought back in its old form, but something is needed to bring all of these collective bargaining bodies together. As I think I said in my opening, they already have such bodies in the other UK countries of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland; it is only in England where we do not have a means of providing advice on wages and conditions. I reiterate that change is coming fast in this sector. If we are to deliver the Bill, we need the subsidies, the finance that goes with that and all the advice and expertise we can bring into this sector, but we also need the labour force and the skills. That is the third leg of the stool that will prop this whole enterprise up. Unless this is an essential part of the Bill, I do not think the Bill will be sustainable I was pleased that the Minister said there is work going on—that is great. I really feel we need to pull those themes together, and this is the time to do it. I am grateful for his offer of discussions and would like to take him up. If not our amendment, something akin to it should be in the Bill. I really hope the Minister will not close his mind to the idea that the Government could put down their own amendment to deliver that; maybe that is an issue for another day. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw.