Examination of Witnesses (Questions 180-190)
Wednesday 21 May 2003
Mr Peter Allenson, and
Mr Don Pollard
Q180 Mr Borrow: Can we look at the
Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme. In my constituency the horticultural
businesses in West Lancashire are block growers and they have
traditionally relied on the SAWS scheme for seasonal labour. The
Committee have heard various tales as to the effectiveness and
legitimacy of the scheme. We have heard from some people that
it is being well run and well regulated and from other people
that workers who are here under the scheme often are diverted
into labour type work that they should not be doing under the
scheme. I think that given they are supposed to be students on
the scheme, it should have a cultural and educational aspect to
it rather than simply being a source of cheap labour. I have heard
a number of tales from my own constituency of workers here under
that scheme being diverted into other types of work. I wonder
what your take is on the way in which the scheme is working and
whether it is working legitimately or not and how effective the
Home Office is in regulating the scheme?
Mr Allenson: Certainly from our
perspective the SAWS scheme, in many ways, is difficult for us
to choose because obviously students are here for six months and
we are unlikely to have too much access to them. We get second
hand information, for example, through directly employed staff
that are supervising the SAWS students themselves. Certainly up
until recently there has not been a high level of complaint—I
will not say there have not been any complaints—to us about
abuse of the scheme from the students involved in the process
or indeed from trade unions back in the country that perhaps they
came from, feeding it through to us. We are concerned about the
rapid expansion of the scheme, we have made that view known, and
about how that effectively leads to it being abused, perhaps,
in the future. We have concerns about the scheme but in the past
it seems to have been relatively well regulated and monitored
none the least because the two main organisations which were involved
are charitable institutions. We are concerned that other companies
in the new system may get involved and that may lead to other
pressures that there are not presently.
Q181 Mr Borrow: Have you got concerns
that the expansion of the scheme could have an effect on the whole
market for temporary labour in the sense that the idea behind
the scheme is that people come here as students in order to widen
their experience and earn some money, but not principally as a
source of labour. The whole ethos of the system will change to
being a source of temporary labour in the agricultural sector
and that will compete against other sources of temporary labour
if the scheme is allowed to expand without the necessary checks
and balances in the system.
Mr Pollard: I think that whole
original concept of SAWS being part of a strong culturally element
as well as a work experience element and a chance for people to
earn money has gone by the board over the last four or five years
especially as the numbers allowed in have increased. It is really
a source of labour. Certainly the NFU position seems to be that
where they continually ask for more to be allowed in seems to
be on the labour side rather than on the cultural side. As you
probably all know, it is a very narrow recruitment exercise, it
only deals with students from Eastern Europe, it only deals with
students in their penultimate year of university so they will
go back to finish their degrees. The recruitment is through the
universities in Eastern Europe. The facilities and the farmers
who apply for workers, their places of work are inspected, the
accommodation is inspected. Once the workers are here they have
a complaints' procedure and the inspectors go out to see these
places occasionally. From that point of view it is very successful
but I think I have less of an acceptance of abuses in the SAWS
scheme than Peter because I have had many complaints from students
where either the accommodation or work has not been what they
were told it would be, sourcing out is a problem. It is probably
less of a problem with the two main ones which provide about 90%
of the SAWS students but some of the smaller ones, I think there
are five other small ones and I know one which is a farm which
has about 500 licences for work, they are supposed to work directly
with farmers but I know they send out to gangmasters as well.
There are other cases where the farmer because of the harvesting
conditions may have only two months' work and they have contracted
for three so they send them somewhere else for the other month
which is illegal but permitted by the Home Office.
Q182 Mrs Shephard: I was interested
in the point you made about there being a lack of workers in rural
areas. Having observed this rather closely for the last 15 years
what I feel is there are not the workers who will do the kind
of work which is required, namely packing, processing, quite unpleasant
sorts of work and harvesting in very inclement conditions. One
of our earlier witnesses suggested that it was a lack of social
housing in rural areas which had contributed to the problem, I
would like you to comment on that. It is not my perception at
all, it may be yours.
Mr Pollard: There are changes
in society all the time. At one stage some groups of people would
do a certain amount of work and then they improve their conditions
and do not want to do that work any more. Whether it is America
or this country, you get other people, maybe people come from
the North or from Ireland and they do the lower paid dirty jobs,
and I think we are at that stage in social development where the
UK workers can get more money in much better conditions and, therefore,
you have to have another source for that labour and that happens
to be in many cases immigrant labour.
Q183 Mrs Shephard: There is another
twist to this because some of that work, say packing and processing
of vegetables, is being done by workers who come from those countries
from which the vegetables and fruit are being imported. This is
another twist, is it not?
Mr Pollard: Yes, it is another
twist. It is one of the ironies of horticultural development,
is it not?
Q184 Mrs Shephard: In your paper
on gangmasters in Sussex you suggested that the Immigration Service
was insufficiently funded to deal with the problems associated
with gangmasters. Certainly, again, that is my experience in Norfolk.
Our chief immigration officer said they had not even got enough
people to know whether some workers were Portuguese or Brazilian
and, even worse, they might be legal or they might not be legal,
for example. In your evidence to us you do not comment much on
what the Government has done to try to deal with this, for example
Operation Gangmaster. Do you think that Operation Gangmaster has
made much difference?
Mr Pollard: The first thing I
think it did was to recognise there was a problem.
Q185 Mrs Shephard: Yes.
Mr Pollard: Basically up to that
time the only person speaking out was Sir Richard Body who was
speaking out about gangmasters and abuses of gangmasters and it
was never really taken seriously however long he took over some
of that issue. In 1998 when they created Operation Gangmaster,
that was a recognition there was a problem. It did another thing.
One of the problems with the gangmaster situation is that abuses
of labour rights are spread across seven different government
departments and Operation Gangmaster at least was an attempt to
bring those different departments working together in co-ordinated
action, so that was a useful thing. Even the raids themselves
were quite useful because they gave us a base line. If you had
a certain number of raids you began to see how many people on
that particular place were illegal immigrants, how many were on
benefits, how many were legal workers. You began at least to have
the base line. The problem is the first year Operation Gangmaster
operated, at the end of that year they produced not this report
but a report this thick about what they had found and comments
and analysis of it—the first report was done in late 1998,
no report has been produced since—and when I asked for an
update on it I was given this: it is about two paragraphs and
this is the update. Now the problem about statistics and what
is happening is how can you do that if you do not have an update.
What have they found in all these raids? What is the percentage
of illegal workers? Why are we not being told that? You can ask
that, I can ask it, and nobody will answer me but they might answer
you. Where are the results of Operation Gangmaster which not only
are Lincolnshire but in six other regions of the country as well?
I think it would be very useful if people on this Committee would
ask where is the analysis, where are the results of all these
raids you have had? What does it tell us? I think we could start
getting beyond anecdotal evidence.
Q186 Mrs Shephard: We are about to
have that opportunity.
Mr Pollard: Right.
Q187 Mrs Shephard: One final question
which is this. You say, rightly, that the offences might be spread
over six or seven different kinds of government agencies and again
something which has arisen with more workers coming from other
countries is this question of exploitation in terms of the conditions
which involve housing and travel and food and all the rest of
it. Again, in my experience in my constituency, although gangmasters
appear in the dock as far as the Committee's inquiry is concerned,
in that particular case of the exploitation, it is not the gangmasters,
it is agencies which are run by Portuguese businessmen. All of
this has been uncovered by the local citizens advice bureau. Is
that within your experience as well?
Mr Pollard: I have not found that
but I would not be surprised by that. As you know, it is human
nature that often the people who abuse other people are from that
same society. I think the issue you raise about accommodation
and health and safety points to the fact that this is not just
a labour problem, it is a social and labour right and the accommodation
these people face. I have seen gangworkers in vans with no seats
and even now just a pick up van. There have been two deaths, one
in your constituency, Mrs Shephard, a van coming back from dropping
off workers and it overturned and the driver was killed and in
the other case in Suffolk where a van also overturned and the
driver was killed, both of whom turned out to be illegal immigrant
labour. There are transport problems, housing accommodation problems,
etc.
Q188 Mr Lazarowicz: I understand
your union is in favour of a statutory registration scheme being
introduced. Can you tell us why you think a statutory scheme would
be enforced any more effectively than the present framework? Are
not many of the problems to which you refer ones which arise not
from the lack of a scheme but from the lack of effective enforcement
action of the present law and present rules?
Mr Allenson: I think, first of
all, we are calling for a statutory registration scheme because
we believe that voluntary codes have not worked appropriately.
We have, of course, within our own trained group the experience
of the Agricultural Worker Wages Board. Whilst that is not enforced
as well as we would want, it is nevertheless seen and stood up
as the example of enforcing a minimum rate within that particular
industry. We believe, as I said earlier, that unless we have a
registration scheme in place then we will not provide a platform
from which reasonable employers can exist and grow. Of course
if we cannot do that then we cannot raise levels within the industry
itself. We have several ideas about what a statutory scheme would
entail but it is quite clear it has to be audited on a regular
basis, it has to be monitored on a regular basis and there have
to be some substantial teeth as a result of any gangmaster who
does not meet those particular criteria. It is very, very important
and it is the only way that we can see that we will raise levels
in this particular industry having seen gangmasters over a period
of time develop, and they are now getting to a stage where there
is that criminal element, we believe, involved in the process.
Mr Pollard: We have difficulties
now to prove a murder if there is no body and it is equally difficult
to prove some of these crimes which have been committed if we
do not know specifically who the people who are running the businesses
or subcontracting them are. I think a registration scheme would
be a first step, it is by no means a solution but it is a first
step to know who is operating out there. It is not uncommon—those
of you who know gangmasters in your constituencies—that
they change names, they change addresses, they change the directors
on an almost annual basis in many cases. It is fairly difficult
to trace that back and then pin the crimes on individual people.
Q189 Mr Lazarowicz: There was a previous
registration scheme, I think until 1995, which was not particularly
successful in tracking these abuses down. What would your explanation
be for the lack of success of that scheme and what lesson would
you draw from that operation for the type of scheme that you want
to see?
Mr Pollard: I think you are referring
to the Employment Agencies Act?
Q190 Mr Lazarowicz: Yes.
Mr Pollard: First of all, it did
not really apply to gangmasters. It did not apply to agencies
who supervised their workforce. In many cases gangmasters supervised
the workers, even though they may have been working on a farm
or packhouse, they were being supervised by staff of the gangmaster
and they never came under the legislation of the Employment Agencies
Act. Maybe it was a bad Act, I do not know. I have seen the Act
but I do not know why it failed. It does not mean we should not
try.
Mr Allenson: I think, Chair, as
you know very well by now, we have two voluntary codes. It has
been a long-documented problem. I think there is an awful lot
of anecdotal evidence but I think there is an awful lot of anecdotal
evidence that cannot be explained out there, and therefore it
is time for a registration scheme. I think a registration scheme
could be put together that could actually be quite effective.
Certainly Operation Gangmaster has helped but it has not, by any
means, eliminated the problems to the extent that is necessary.
Chairman: Thank you very much. You have
been extremely helpful, not least in suggesting how we may carry
on with the next part of this session. Thank you. I suspect our
next witnesses have been sitting behind listening, in any case.
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