Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-119)
Wednesday 7 May 2003
Mr Michael Paske, Mr
Bob Fiddaman, and Mr David Brown
Q100 Mr Jack: All right, but just
explain this: I am the recipient, like many of us are, of some
of your extremely good, well-prepared briefs, and since I stopped
being an Agriculture Minister, I cannot remember when I have had
a brief from the NFU asking for some action or representations
to be made on this. Why not?
Mr Paske: Well, perhaps that is
because you have changed your role within your party. However,
I will check and find out for you.
Q101 Mr Jack: No, I am on the NFU
mailing list and I get everything from nitrate vulnerable zones
to the whole lot and no stone is ever left unturned, and Mr Holbeche
is paid to send us this information, so the question I am asking
is if you have really got the bit between your teeth on this,
why have I not had a piece of paper from Mr Holbeche telling me
that you want something doing about it?
Mr Paske: Take it from me, I will
make sure you do get something, Mr Jack.
Q102 Mr Jack: My point is that if
only now we have these exchanges, it makes me question just how
strong the desire is because within rural communities, if there
are all these people who have all the problems listed in here,
the grapevine will supply this information. People talk, people
gather in pubs, and you do not need to be a genius in a rural
community to find out what is going on, but somehow, in spite
of all this information swirling around, it ain't being plugged
into.
Mr Paske: Well, I am sure that
the ACU have the same leads as I would have under those circumstances
and if that was the case, I cannot understand why there are not
more prosecutions.
Q103 Mr Wiggin: Following on from
that line of questioning, one of the subjects that we do get endless
letters about, certainly as constituency MPs, is polytunnels and
of course the problem with gang master labour is that a lot of
that is used in the picking of soft fruits. At the moment that
is quite a profitable sector and that is why the proliferation
of Spanish tunnels and polytunnels has been going on. What concerns
me is that if this type of labour continues to be demanded in
the way that it clearly is at the moment, this will effectively
ruin the market in the longer term because you cannot have high-value
crops if there is a glut. Now, what is the NFU going to do about
this? Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty now are being covered
in polytunnels and this is entirely dependent on this cheap labour
and this is a real problem in terms of people's sympathy towards
the farming community as well. I do not know if you are getting
that sort of vibe.
Mr Paske: Well, I understand the
problem and of course planning regulations are such that they
allow these tunnels to be put up, so it is covering a demand and,
you are quite right, it is an increasing demand. Certainly that
would require an additional amount of labour, but at the present
moment we are asking for additional SAWS workers to be able to
cover that because at least with the SAWS system we are very happy
with the way that that is regulated.
Q104 Mr Wiggin: Yes, I take your
point. I was lucky enough to meet horticulturalists and growers
the other day and they are now talking about having lights in
their tunnels because they can then produce for a longer season.
They are making a lot of money and it is going very well for them,
but this is not necessarily something which is actually sustainable
and that is my concern.
Mr Paske: Well, horticulturalists
are used to changing their operations to meet the market conditions
that are prevailing, so I am quite sure
Q105 Mr Wiggin: We are going to end
up with the potato cycle all over again, are we not, where everybody
grows potatoes until the market collapses?
Mr Paske: Well, it is an unsupported
sector, as you will appreciate, and so you have to be profitable
to remain in business.
Q106 Mr Borrow: My patch includes
part of the Lancashire clay, so I have a lot of growers in my
patch and I have got to say that I remember incidents in the press
when rag took place on gangs working for four growers who were
found to be illegal, so gang masters are obviously operating and
there are problems, but in six years as an MP, I have not had
any member of the horticultural community in my constituency write
to me or raise with me the problems of the regulation of gang
masters, so I was very interested to learn that the NFU have been
lobbying for 15 years for the regulation of gang masters. I assume,
however, from what has been said that the regulation of the gang
masters that you want is statutory
Mr Paske: Yes.
Q107 Mr Borrow: and not voluntary
and you accept, therefore, that any sort of voluntary scheme that
is plucked out of the air is something that is not really worth
the paper it is printed on?
Mr Paske: Well, it helps, but,
as my colleague has already said, we are not in a position to
enforce a voluntary code, except by using as much influence as
we can, but the strength of the law is obviously a greater deterrent
in that sense.
Q108 Mr Borrow: We have heard in
previous evidence from Mrs Day that probably a voluntary scheme
might impact on 50% of your membership who would go along with
it and want to see it implemented, but the odds are that the other
50% would carry on.
Mr Paske: Well, I was interested
to hear that statistic and I do not know where the statistic comes
from, so I could not really comment on the 50:50 as she did.
Q109 Mr Borrow: So from your angle
obviously as an office-holder within the NFU and, therefore, someone
who has got a big incentive both morally and in terms of your
position in the NFU to make sure that everything is done above
board, it would be to your advantage as an individual grower to
see a statutory scheme which ensured that all of your competitors
were producing crops using the same rigour and implementing the
same regulations as strongly as you do?
Mr Paske: Yes, it would.
Q110 Mr Borrow: On the question of
SAWS which we have touched on a little bit, the NFU is seeking
to expand the scheme and increase the numbers. How effective do
you think the Home Office is in actually ensuring that that scheme
is regulated properly?
Mr Fiddaman: I would have said
exceptionally well because, as I indicated a bit earlier, it is
recognised that it is not 100% proof, and there are one or two
people who seem to be able to lose themselves within the UK employment
system somewhere and fail to return under the work permit that
is there, but it is because it has been at that very low level
that the Home Office has felt that there has not been a need to
do anything specifically about it because it is probably as tight
as you can get it. The operators themselves do not want to see
that sort of slippage because it then impugns their own ability
to run the scheme, and they have a licence and that licence can
be removed. Now, I know it has not been removed from the seven
that we have got, but it is because they have been so robust in
the way they have run the mechanism. The issue has been, and it
has been sort of touched on earlier, that the whole of the employment
cycle in the UK has improved to the point where there is certainly
in large parts of the country very low unemployment, and thank
goodness for that. Having said that, it then equally means that
there is not the ability for the industry to pick up short-term
employment requirements when there are peaks of demand which obviously
harvesting particularly produces. Therefore, there has to be,
for those businesses to expand and improve, a mechanism which
can be relied on to give them that form of flexible labour force.
It was mentioned just earlier on about how the strawberry industry
has gone into polytunnels and they have these regular figures,
but it is through the SAWS scheme that they have been able to
do that because they have expanded their picking season now to
some 20 to 26 weeks in the year. What they are doing through that
is actually competing against the Californian, the Israeli produce
and so on which come in to fulfill the market if we do not produce,
so it is not as though the strawberries would not be there, but
they would come from somewhere else, and that is, if you like,
one of the issues which, within the Ethical Trading Initiative
which I also am on the working group of along with David Brown,
we have discussed before. For example, if we negotiate, as we
have, a higher pay rise for the workers in the sector and, therefore,
it is going to cost our growers more to produce each unit, are
the supermarkets going to recognise that in what they will then
offer for the end price? Their fallback answer is, "Well,
we can't agree on anything together because we are immediately
under the suspicion of the OFT because it is a trading restriction",
as they play it. Now, the issue is that because we have quality
standards and most big businesses now are plugged into assurance
schemes which are determined to show the consumer the quality
of the product both in the sense of the fruit or the vegetable
itself and the mechanisms by which it is grown. To do that, therefore,
we need to be able to show that we are trying to produce the right
mechanisms. This is the problem and I think that is where the
strength of the SAWS system is, that we can actually show that
it is a well-run system. I will not guarantee that there are not
potential abuses and, if there are, I am well aware that that
will mean that those operators will no longer service those employers
who end up abusing that privilege, because it is a privilege because
they have to ask for and are then given a quota which they may
have of this number of SAWS students and they are monitored. Now,
they will not necessarily be with a given employer for the whole
of the season because that employer might well only have a narrow
harvest season when he or she requires that labour and it is right,
therefore, that that labour should move to another employer who
then needs that activity, albeit in a different product. That
is what has been so successful about the SAWS scheme and why we
have been so keen to see it expanded in time length because of
the way the seasons are being lengthened by all sorts of mechanisms
because of consumer demand, therefore, we want to try and see
that there is the right labour to fulfill it. Equally, there have
been sectors of the industry which have not been able to use it
because the students are unavailable. Now, the proposal is that
it is now a 12-month scheme on a sort of six-month provision basis
with a return position after that. I feel in this instance that
the Home Office is trying to avoid the other thing which we asked
for which was a Green Card scheme to actually provide a further
resource of labour because the students are students and there
must be a limited number which will wish to be involved and it
has already been mentioned how the current students, some of them
are certainly coming from what will be the enlargement countries,
so given another 18 months in fact from now, and certainly in
the documentation we are seeing, the Government recognise that
they will have free access to the UK labour market, so obviously
they cannot be treated any differently from anybody else within
the EU, and that is quite right. So yes, some of the SAWS students
we have currently got will no longer fit the old definition, but
it does not necessarily mean that they might not want to use the
ability of, if you like, the employment service by booking through
an operator because they know that when they get to this country,
they are going to be guaranteed a place of residence, because
that is part of the SAWS scheme, that it is up to a standard which
the operators are there to maintain even if it is on a multiple-employer
system so that the minimum standards are at least attempted to
be protected, though you can never guarantee it, but there is
a very strong element of guarantee in the mechanism, and also
they know the right rates of pay and what they are entitled to.
As many of the best ways of running the scheme are in place and
it is right that they should be multiplied and made the best use
of. If you like, the debate that we are having about the gang
master system is because there is not any means of slapping down
misusers of the scheme and, therefore, if there is, if you like,
an illegal gang master or illegal labour within the use of a gang
master there is no means of even starting to attempt to try and
correct whatever level that might actually be. You are quite right,
we do not have physical evidence of the numbers. Certainly from
the workers' side they give us anecdotal evidence that they have
a number of people involved and we have always supported their
view that the statutory licensing of the gang master is the right
way to remove that abuse, or at least to start removing it because
you will not remove it overnight necessarily. If you have got
a mechanism, and that is what the SAWS scheme is, it is a mechanism
of which we have evidential proof of how successful it is because
it is licensed, because that licence can be taken away, because
the number of work permits can be reduced or removed it is a real
incentive to see that the operators behave correctly. It is, if
you like, a copy of that that needs to be seen within the gang
master system.
Q111 Mr Borrow: I am not quite sure
whether you are saying that in terms of the effective administration
of the scheme by the Home Office there is proof that that is effective
because very few people overstay and disappear at the end of their
visa period, and that is a sign of it, or are you actually saying
that the Home Office police the scheme well because there is no
abuse by employers in using SAWS labour in inappropriate circumstances
or subcontracting that labour on, which is one of the things we
heard earlier this afternoon?
Mr Fiddaman: Certainly it is that
the Home Office does do that, they monitor the operators to see
that they fulfil the contract they have got with the Home Office.
I have not heard of it being a heavy-handed approach because it
has got the longevity of evidence of proof. In other words, the
operators have shown by their standard of running their operations
that they can be trusted to do what the Home Office set out to
be the rules of the scheme. It was one reason why the NFU in particular,
amongst others, was very reluctant to see any additional operators
easily added to the list until there was some fairly strong mechanism
for seeing that one could monitor their ability to maintain the
standards that we recognise as being very good and something that
we are proud to see is actively working well. That has been a
very strong stance of ours and that is why initially we said no
extra operators. Now we are aware that for competitive reasons
the opportunity must be there for others to bid in but they are
going to have to show they are as good as the current ones. We
would fully endorse the Home Office taking the ability they have
then to use their powers to remove that licence.
Q112 Alan Simpson: Can I just come
back to your evidence to the Committee. You did say that the existing
framework of guidance and industry codes worked to some degree.
How do you know?
Mr Paske: Because we can check
that quite clearly from the feedback that we have from our members.
Q113 Alan Simpson: Presumably those
are the members who would choose to give you the feedback. I am
not sure how many would give you feedback that said "No,
we are scamming the system".
Mr Paske: I think our systems
are such that we would be able to weed out those sorts of responses.
Certainly we would get those responses.
Q114 Alan Simpson: Can you just give
me an example of any action that you have taken against one of
your members who was seen to be engaging gang masters involved
in illegal employment practices?
Mr Paske: It is very difficult
for us to take any action against any of our members. What we
would do under those circumstances is we would be very happy to
publiciseand havethose situations to the detriment
of a member because we are not supporting illegal activities by
our members.
Q115 Alan Simpson: Is this not the
dilemma that we face at the moment? I do not have any reason to
doubt the probity of employment practices that you three operate
because it seems to me it would be highly unlikely that the NFU
would send three representatives to this Committee who said "We
are a bunch of scallies, you have caught us red-handed, we throw
ourselves at the mercy of the Committee". The reality is
that from everywhere else we are seeing evidence both anecdotal
or just from the sheer volume of people who are coming in complaining
about this that there is a serious problem here that the NFU systematically
have not addressed and one of the reasons for that may be that
in truth you are hand in glove with that process. We have had
evidence about the extent to which, irrespective of whether the
labour is legal or not, the accommodation on farms that people
are squeezed into is horrendous and it is almost akin to rural
Rachmanism at times.
Mr Paske: Can I just be clear.
With gang masters it is very unlikely that accommodation is being
provided by the employer.
Q116 Alan Simpson: There are two
things. One is the gang masters may park people in caravans or
stuff people in caravans down the lane.
Mr Paske: That is where responsible
employers, with respect, will check that out. If there are irresponsible
employers out there I am certainly not going to try and defend
them as members of mine, I am certainly not going to defend them.
What I want to see is the regulations that are in place and the
codes of practice that are in place being enforced fairly.
Q117 Alan Simpson: Is not the problem
here though the one that was identified by Mrs Day which is that
the competition that is going on is to a least cost competitive
base and on that basis your own members have a vested interest
in not asking questions about people's legality?
Mr Paske: No, I am sorry, I cannot
accept that because, as I say, my experience, and I can only talk
about my own experience and my contacts within the area where
I operate, which is in Lincolnshire, is that the majority of the
people that are employed on gangs are on a piecework basis, so
exploitation in that sense, I will not say it is impossible but
the facts are it links back into employment regulations, it links
back to the minimum wage in other words. The sort of exploitation
that you are talking about I find incredibly difficult to believe.
Q118 Alan Simpson: So what you are
saying thenjust let me try and be clear on thisis
that you do not think that there is any particular basis from
which a gang master might find it attractive to employ non-legal
labour as opposed to legal labour because the price that is being
paid is the same?
Mr Paske: I can see how a gang
master can profit at that, certainly I can, but I am talking about
responsible employers.
Q119 Alan Simpson: And there is no
evidence that farmers themselves have a remote interest in that
as a process, there is no sense in which that influences the price
that
Mr Paske: Certainly not from the
point that you are making, which is pressure from price putting
that in that place because, again, my experience is such that
the labour content of the job that is being done in some cases
is quite low. The fact of the matter is you know what the price
is and, as I say, if you are paying on a piecework basis you know
exactly how much it is going to cost you per pound to harvest
the product. That system is the system which is most widely used
in gang labour.
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