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9.52 am
Mr. Colin Pickthall (West Lancashire): I thank you, Madam Speaker, for calling me, and I thank the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Sir J. Wiggin) for his all-embracing courtesy. I welcome the opportunity to debate a Select Committee report in the Chamber. After all, an awful lot of work goes into producing such reports, apparently for little return, sometimes.
The difficulty of the investigation resulted from the immense diversity and complexity of the horticulture industry, and the consequent variety of difficulties reported to the Committee. None the less, underlying the investigation were three important factors that occupied our attention.
The first was the trade deficit in horticultural produce, and the scope that that offers for substantial import substitution, which could do nothing but good for our national economy. In that context, I agree with the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare that the shift in the responsibilities held by Food From Britain was regrettable, although one welcomes the efforts to put something in its place, in the form of the export bureau.
The second main issue is the relative labour intensity of the sector, with its potential for job creation,its seasonal nature and all the implications for horticultural training. Thirdly, there is the capacity of the European Union, while responding to pressures from its widely varying regions, to blunder into regulations that could damage some growers in this country--and no doubt, at times, in other countries too.
The proposal to impose an illogical upper limit on nitrates in lettuce was of particular interest to me, as it would have wiped out many lettuce growers in my constituency and in other areas, notably Cambridgeshire. I was heartened by the united front against the proposal presented on both sides of the House and by the United Kingdom scientific community--an approach also embraced by the Minister's predecessor, who is now the Financial Secretary to the Treasury.
I was grateful to the Committee for its energetic questioning on the nitrates issue. My colleagues on the Committee will be glad to know that the Lancashire lettuce growers whom they met have had a good year. Mr. Keith Ball, who runs Lovania Salads and formed the Solfresh marketing group in Tarleton and Hesketh Bank, is one of my constituents whom they met. Last month he won the national salad grower of the year award for the quality of his produce, and he tells me that this year his firm will produce 300,000 boxes of lettuce.
The nitrate threat has not completely gone away, but at least the immediate threat has been allayed. I hope that the Ministry and its Ministers will keep alert, to ensure that the issue does not become a serious threat again.
I shall touch briefly on two or three other matters raised in the report, the first of which concerns employment and training. There is much anxiety about developments in horticultural training in recent years. The Committee's recommendations on the subject were pretty bland, simply asking the Government to keep a weather eye on the
matter and keep it "under close review". But the Government could not even go along with that fully, declaring that
that is, decisions on discretionary awards.
The take-up of specialist horticultural courses depends,of course, on discretionary awards. Although it is rather outside the scope of the debate, it is important to know that discretionary awards represent one of the aspects of local education authority spending that have been most brutally cut in recent years. Because the awards are non-statutory, obviously they get clobbered, along with other non-statutory education provision. In my county, as with many other local education authorities,the provision has been cut to ribbons.
Local authorities naturally concentrate such awards as they can still afford on students attending local further education colleges, often at the expense of specialist colleges. As the awards shrink in size and number, the problems of specialist colleges are increasing. The example of the Welsh college of horticulture at Northop in Clwyd has been brought to my attention. This year it may not offer any full-time courses in edible cropping at all, and may have to close its glasshouse production unit because of the lack of grants for students to take up places there.
Horticulture workers are in general the lowest paid in agriculture, and they have the least security of employment. Despite that, unlike the agricultural community as a whole, several of the groups whose representatives we interviewed opposed the retention of the Agricultural Wages Board.
That reveals an interesting problem. Seven-day opening by the supermarkets over the past year to 18 months, plus the moves by big retailers to buy more British produce and offer greater security to growers, which we must welcome, should mean a welcome increase in jobs in the horticultural sector. However, those developments also mean seven-day working, and employers in horticulture, both in growing and in packing, are reluctant to pay premiums to their workers to cover the seven-day regime.
One fact uncovered by the Committee's investigations in the preparation of the report was that the flexibility allowed by the 1993 changes to the Agricultural Wages Board secured much of what employers wanted in the way of flexible rostering, but also brought some safeguards for workers. Nevertheless, many employers, especially in mushroom growing, use casual labour at weekends to avoid premium payments. I make no point, at this stage in any case, about employment practice, save to say that the AWB arrangements seem to be both adequate and flexible in regard to the problems and I fully support the Select Committee's recommendations.
The Select Committee also considered representations from the industry about foreign workers. I understand the concerns about the potential use of eastern European casual workers to undermine UK casuals or even permanent workers. However, the National Farmers Union's evidence in particular clearly pointed to the need for more foreign student labour in horticulture during the summer, especially in the south-east. Foreign students form a particular and circumscribed group of about 4,000 workers, the use of which is worth reconsidering. Casual
labour among United Kingdom students in European horticulture and viniculture is a long and valuable tradition, and if we can maintain it and at the same time help the horticulture industry by expanding such labour, it can do little but good.
The horticulture industry, specifically vegetable and salad growing, which most interests my area, exists--I hope thrives--without much help, subsidy or grant. Nevertheless, the industry requires Government help from time to time. It cannot, for example, completely sort out the problem of discretionary awards and training. National and local governments must do that.
On an entirely different subject, but continuing the theme of Government help, the Committee noted when it visited the Almeria region of Spain that there was enormous investment in renewing the irrigation system--paid for, as far as we could tell, by the regional government, which was helping growers to compete more effectively with UK and other European growers, and to try to extend the season. By a remarkable coincidence, the following summer in Britain was the most drought-ridden on record. People involved in the industry in my area feel very strongly that there should be grant aid or a taxation incentive to encourage the increased provision of water storage facilities and water preservation and recycling systems in anticipation of global warming causing more and more wonderful, hot, dry summers. It is a serious point, because people waste much water and the horticulture industry is no exception.
It seems odd that the Government have decided to withdraw from the European Union processing and marketing fund from 31 March, years before the expiry of the original deadline. English growers might be seriously disadvantaged in comparison with other EU states, and Scotland and Wales, where I understand the fund is to continue. It is hard to see how that decision coincides with the Government's desire, which I am sure we all share, to correct the trade deficit in fruit and vegetables.
Since I come from an area with an extensive glasshouse industry, I also urge the Government to take a much more positive stance on the Committee's recommendation that the glasshouse industry should be exempted from any possible energy tax from Europe. Historically, our glasshouse industry has been disadvantaged, as the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare mentioned, by artificially lower energy prices for glasshouses in Holland. A similar or greater disadvantage should not be allowed to recur.
Should the wholesale market experience the severe decline that has been forecast, large supermarkets would enjoy a type of monopoly that would damage the horticulture industry. I therefore urge the Government to take a more proactive role in the rationalisation process than their response to the Committee's recommendation suggests.
The potential for the horticulture industry is immense. At present, it employs many workers. The Transport and General Workers Union estimates that there are 36,000 workers, of whom 16,000 are casual. I agree, however, with the view that its contribution to the economies of many areas such as mine is out of all proportion to the number of employees. The sector is extraordinary for its relentless hard work and apparently infinitely flexible enterprise. In recent years and usually in partnership with supermarket chains, it has become the centre of exciting research and development, which is dramatically
improving the quality, yield and taste of its products. The standard of many products, such as tomatoes, is capable of challenging produce from much more favoured areas of Europe.
"The Government has no locus to intervene in those decisions"--
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