A fair deal for the countryside? How the Tories set out to “impoverish the rural working class”

Today the government will scrap the Agricultural Wages Board for England & Wales without a vote and without debate.  The AWB sets wages, holiday and sick pay, and overtime for 152,000 farm workers, and is a benchmark for thousands in the food processing industries.

There will be no minimum wage for children under 16 who drive tractors at weekends and in school holidays.  Seasonal workers will lose their entitlement to their own bed.  They will lose the cap on the amount their employers can charge them for tied accommodation, currently £28 a week for a caravan.42,000 casual workers will see their pay fall to the national minimum wage when they finish their next job. The remaining 110,000 will see their wages eroded over time.

There are six grades of workers, with those on the lowest grade getting just 2p an hour more than the National Minimum Wage.  Defra estimates that abolition could take £240 million out of the pockets of farm workers over the next ten years in lost sick pay and holiday pay. Scrapping the AWB will take money out of workers’ pockets and transfer it to their employers.  That will take money out of village shops and high streets, hurting small businesses in remote areas.

Who will pick up the tab? If incomes fall, rural workers may become entitled to tax credits, housing benefit and council tax benefit.  We, the taxpayer, will pick up the bill. This will add to the welfare bill and increase the deficit.  Scrapping the AWB will be bad both for rural growth and for national deficit reduction.

The Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill today ends nearly 100 years of protection for farm workers. The AWB was set up by the Attlee Government in 1948.  Even Mrs Thatcher did not abolish the AWB. She understood that if your home came with your job then you are in a uniquely weak negotiating position with your employer.

But is this good regulatory reform? Without the AWB, each farmer will have to negotiate terms and conditions annually with their staff.  They will make mistakes, as employers often do. And they may end up in employment tribunals as a result.  Many small farmers want to keep the AWB so they don’t have to become employment law specialists.  They want to get on with running their business. Paradoxically, scrapping the AWB will add to small rural businesses’ regulatory burden.

In opposition David Heath supported a motion which warned that abolishing the AWB would “impoverish the rural working class”. Today, he and his colleagues act as midwives to Tory dogma that will make people worse off.  Regulatory reform that will add to farmer red tape; a race to the bottom on wages that takes from the workers and transfers money to the owners; and the social and economic costs will be borne by the taxpayer through a higher social security bill for in-work benefits.

With food banks set up in even the most chocolate box rural areas, abolition of the AWB will increase food poverty in our food industry and our countryside.  We in the Labour Party believe that the people who pick the fruit should also be able to buy it in the shops.

Mary Creagh MP is Labour’s Shadow Environment Secretary