Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)

16 MARCH 2004

JIM SHERIDAN MP, GERALDINE SMITH MP, MR PETER ALLENSON AND MR GARY BRISLEY

  Q20 Ms Atherton: Forgive me my cynicism regarding the supermarkets. From some of my own involvement around gangmasters, I am aware that they operate in many other parts of the country than East Anglia and Morecambe Bay and they certainly do in Cornwall, a part of which I represent. My feeling very strongly with supermarkets is that they act when the consumer is putting the pressure on. The consumer puts the pressure on the price, as we discussed earlier, but also the consumer will put the pressure on unfair trade and will say, "We will not drink tea or coffee that is picked in an unacceptable way in other countries". Now, I feel very frustrated in the fact that I do not feel that the British public are actually saying that in our country we ought to have a fair trade policy for the way in which people are treated and employed and that the pushing down of prices at the farm gate has resulted in farmers possibly feeling that they have to look for the lowest gangmaster price that they can get and that has implications right along the line. Do you get any sense from the supermarkets that they are aware of this chain and that they are actually at the head of that chain and they have to take action?

  Jim Sheridan: I think one of the things that may come out of this Bill is the fact that we are looking at setting up an advisory board which will monitor just exactly how this Bill could operate and its implications. Part of that board will be the major supermarkets themselves, along with the farmers and the gangmasters, the trade unions, et cetera, so I think that will be an ideal forum to remind some of the major supermarkets if they are being seen to be putting pressure on anyone else, I think that is an ideal opportunity to remind the major supermarkets of their ethical, if I can use that word, responsibilities.

  Q21 Chairman: Before we move off this question of the supermarkets, we had some evidence from the British Retail Consortium against a background where I know you have a long list of individual supermarkets who claim to be supporters of your Bill. In their evidence to the Committee, the British Retail Consortium, whilst reducing its general support, says that existing enforcement systems and entities should be utilised to monitor business and that most efforts should be directed on the enforcement of existing legislation. That seems to be a slightly sort of hedged position from generally supporting your Bill, but putting a lot of emphasis on to the enforcement of the existing legislation. Perhaps you would like to comment on that.

  Jim Sheridan: I do not know when that was published, Chair, but certainly after the Morecambe Bay situation, I think the supermarkets' and maybe the retailers' minds have been concentrated on how best to carry out their business, but I do genuinely think that the price of goods should not be put on to people being exploited and I think that is a message to get across to the retailers. Perhaps Gary may want to say some more.

  Mr Brisley: I think on that point, Chairman, the supermarkets have recognised that there are existing enforcement mechanisms out there and I think they would like those to be used more effectively. I think perhaps the principal reason they are supporting the Bill is that they have always had a great difficulty in actually identifying who is and who is not a legitimate gangmaster. They believe that a licence and a public register will allow them to be sure that they have clean hands in effect, that the people who are providing them with their products are actually using legitimate licensed gangmasters, and we do have a list of, as you say, major supermarkets supporting it and we have statements from them to that effect, so I think there is no distinction between the two. They do want more effective enforcement with existing mechanisms, but they see a licence and a register as an additional means of giving them a way of identifying who is legitimate and who is illegitimate.

  Q22 Chairman: Earlier in the questioning, the pressure of supermarkets' price and distribution demands has been justified as one of the reasons why gangmaster-type labour is a requirement of modern-day trading. Have you done any analysis to work out the type of costs they bring to growers and packers that can result from the use of gangmaster-type labour as opposed to employing people on a normal and full-time basis?

  Mr Brisley: We have not, no. I think that with many of the costs that are involved in gangmaster labour, people are saying that it is cheaper to use rogue gangmasters and I think rogue gangmasters are probably charging the same prices as legitimate gangmasters, but they are actually skimming off much larger profits and they are not passing those down to their workers because they are exploiting them, but we have not done any background research into whether it would be cheaper for farmers or pack-houses to employ workers directly rather than use labour-providers, no.

  Q23 Mr Mitchell: I just wonder how you characterise the attitude of central government to this problem of illegal gangmasters. Let's divide it into two parts of before the tragedy and after the tragedy, and just put it first of all to Geraldine and then to Peter.

  Geraldine Smith: Before the tragedy, to be honest, I would have to say that I think that the Government must have been aware of the problem, that it was an issue. I told them and your own Select Committee has produced reports, so they must have been aware. I think there was a certain amount of turning a blind eye to the problem, but I think that attitude has certainly changed. A tragedy does make everyone sit up and think, and I certainly hope it will mean that the Government will back this Bill on gangmasters and look at the problems of exploitation of migrant workers because clearly people are being exploited. Those people in Morecambe Bay were not just victims of the treacherous sands and sea, but they were victims of exploitation and that was quite clear, so the Government does have to tackle these issues. Let's face it, they are difficult issues and no political party has all the answers, so what we nee is a bit of honesty in this debate.

  Mr Allenson: I think obviously prior to the Morecambe Bay disaster the Government had in part recognised the problem and of course we had Operation Gangmaster which, with all of its failings, was recognised by this Committee in its first Report. I think since Morecambe Bay in many ways, though it is difficult to tell because we are still feeling the repercussions of that particular situation, but there seems to be a willingness to work. I think we are very clear in our view that this Bill is one of a number of measures which need to take place, some of which this Committee have touched on in previous hearings. It needs to be properly co-ordinated with a minister in Defra responsible for that legislation and properly resourced in the enforcement that needs to take place as a consequence. Clearly if we start to move in that particular direction, I hope this Committee will take the opportunity of endorsing the Private Member's Bill and assist in the process which now is going forward.

  Q24 Mr Mitchell: Do you discern any change in the Government's attitude and approach after our Report in September and did that actually influence things?

  Mr Allenson: I did not detect any change. However, I have to say that it was one of the reasons why we, as a trade union, decided that we needed to push this further and harder at that particular point in time.

  Q25 Mr Mitchell: Do you think the Government is now taking it seriously, genuinely seriously, or is this just a response to a hot issue, and they have to be doing something about or be seen to be doing something anyway?

  Mr Allenson: In the discussions we have had with government so far, they seem to be taking the situation very seriously. I have got to say that that all bodes well for government support for the Private Member's Bill.

  Q26 Mr Mitchell: What can you tell us about the connection? There seem to me to be two problems here, one of which is illegal people-smugglers, people bringing people in, and the other of which is illegal gangmasters. Are they the same group? Are the people bringing the illegal immigrants in also employing them in this kind of fashion or are they two separate groups?

  Mr Allenson: Again we have not had any evidence of that. From the evidence, again I can talk of East Anglia because that is the area where we have had most contact, but there was a situation of some Chinese workers being brought into East Anglia, but then they were separately employed by gangmasters locally and that is where the abuse actually took place, so the two were separate in that particular instance.

  Mr Brisley: There has been some evidence from the National Criminal Intelligence Service in one of their reports about potential security threats to the UK, that the very worst elements of gangmasters operate sometimes as cartels and are engaged both in human trafficking and in then supplying those workers to various sectors of the economy, so there may be some overlap there in terms of criminal activity.

  Jim Sheridan: As it stands just now, we do not know who the gangmasters are and we do not know who they are employing. With this Bill hopefully we will recognise who the gangmasters are and they will have responsibility. If we look at the situation in Morecambe Bay, in my view, if this legislation had been in place, then we could have identified who the gangmaster was and he would have been held responsible for the deaths of those people, and there would have been a risk assessment carried out or there should have been a risk assessment carried out before those people went on to the beach. Therefore, this Bill is about identifying who the gangmasters are, who they are employing because we need names and addresses and they will not be able to hold any documentation from them, so if an inspector turns up, he can ask exactly who the gangmaster is because he will have an identification badge, and they will also be able to supply the names and addresses of the people who have employed them, so I think that will go a long way to eliminating the practice if indeed they are bringing people illegally into the country.

  Geraldine Smith: Can I say that one of the points at Morecambe Bay is that I suspect the police will have great difficulty in identifying an employer/employee relationship because everyone will turn around and say, "No, we had nothing to do with the Chinese. We did not buy from them", and I think that is going to be an issue.. I think in relation to your earlier point about whether the people-smugglers are linked to the gangmasters, the Lancashire police have done a fantastic job, it is a very impressive investigation and I think there will be some answers at the end of that, I am hopeful that there will be, and they will establish some sort of chain.

  Q27 Mr Mitchell: There was some kind of boss. There was a report in the paper, and I do not know whether it is true, of a plaintive phone call made home from a mobile phone by one of the cockle-pickers, who is quoted as saying, "My boss made a little mistake", so there is certainly a boss there, is there not?

  Geraldine Smith: The speculation was that basically someone should have come back for those people and they were left out in the middle of the bay. I have no way of knowing if that is true or false, but certainly there is speculation.

  Q28 Mr Mitchell: How far is this a question of illegality of working? Anybody who is not allowed to work, an asylum-seeker or an illegal immigrant, is very vulnerable, is he not, to being employed by an illegal gangmaster at an illegal rate of pay in illegal conditions? How far is this a problem of whether we can allow people to work as they seem to do in the States when they cross the border and are able to get a job with no questions asked? Would the situation be more straightforward if everybody was allowed to work?

  Jim Sheridan: I think you are absolutely right and, with the EU accession countries coming in as well, people will be allowed to work and be paid the proper wage/minimum wage that everyone else in the country enjoys. There are the health and safety implications as well. So, although people will be allowed, under the new regulations, to come into the country and work, the important thing about this Bill is that we will know exactly who they are, where they are and how they are being treated and I think that is the main objective. As it works just now, these people are operating in a twilight world and trying to get a handle on it is extremely difficult. I have to say that the Treasury are losing estimates of £100 million per annum in unpaid taxes, so there is a self-interest from Treasury to support this Bill.

  Mr Allenson: In addition, we have a number of people who are here as of right, for example Portuguese workers who are EU citizens anyway, but they are still abused. We have the indigenous workers who are abused. The language difficulties and the cultural difficulties are also, as has been mentioned before, things that have to be taken on board and be dealt with as something that we have to recognise.

  Q29 Mr Drew: Mr Allenson, you said just a few minutes ago, as we had recommended in our report, that you felt that a Defra minister should be the lead minister on these issues. In response to our last report, the Government said that was inappropriate because the problem exists beyond the agricultural field of employment and continue to seem to see DWP as the lead department and a DWP minister as the lead minister. I extend this question to other witnesses: do you think it is important that it should be Defra that leads or is that something that is still open to argument as far as you are concerned?

  Mr Allenson: In the context of this particular Bill of course, it is related to agriculture and first-stage processing, so Defra would really be the Government department that we view would be best able to coordinate it. Certainly, the main point is that it needs to be coordinated and one of the things that the Committee has found before from evidence is that, when there are a number of departments involved, things can easily get shuffled between departments and disasters come out as a consequence.

  Geraldine Smith: Defra ministers lead in on issues with health and safety, their department of work and pensions. I think it is important that you have a lead minister. It is absolutely essential that you have one person to whom you can say, "Right, you are responsible for this", but that person also has to have some power and influence over other government departments for matters such as health and safety.

  Q30 Alan Simpson: I want to focus on some of the enforcement issues and can I begin with a quite quick one on supermarkets because Peter made the point that they have now come on board, their minds have been focused on this. At the first set of hearings, they were keen to have a list but not a licence because that would have rather cost. Now they have come on board on licensing, but is it still the case that their interest in licensing is to ensure that someone else has liability and not them?

  Mr Allenson: To cover an earlier point, obviously the intention is that the coalition that has come together with the DTI will continue to work and hopefully will form the main body of any stakeholder advisory group and they have come together to inform the minister etc if that is the thinking later on. So, we will continue to be able to work with the people who are in the coalition including the retailers and we shall continue to bring to them concerns that we have about where they need to sharpen up and where they need to be in terms of making sure that they do not use their strength to cause problems right at the sharp end for working people. In terms of the other question—

  Q31 Mr Mitchell: In fact, I only asked one, Peter, and that was not the answer. You answered something that I had not asked you about. I just want to know, is the supermarkets' position still that they are happy to have licensing but not for them to be liable?

  Mr Allenson: The Bill will not—

  Q32 Alan Simpson: You said that they are keen on a responsibility and ethical responsibility but that they want the legal liability somewhere else.

  Mr Allenson: Yes.

  Q33 Alan Simpson: Geraldine, can I come back to you because it also ties in with the previous hearings that we had specifically about the existence of Operation Gangmaster. We had a fantastic line-up there of all the departments involved in Operation Gangmaster, but it was almost like an episode of Bremner, Bird and Fortune. There was this interdepartmental team that was everyone's specialist yet, when we asked them about how they worked together and the number of meetings they had had, it turned out that not only had they never had a meeting but that the line-up had never met each other and we almost suggested that it might be nice if, as a committee, we adjourned in order that they could say "hello". Have you had any contact with Operation Gangmaster as it is lead by DWP rather than immigration authorities and the police which seem to start from, how do we chase the victims of this exploitation?

  Geraldine Smith: It appears to me that Operation Gangmaster was under-resourced and was just an umbrella term for some operations where people had got together and decided to work together, but certainly my experience of the multi-agency approach and the different departments coming together is that it is very hard to get anyone to accept responsibility because they always tell you what they cannot do, not what they can do and what some other department is responsible for and you can bet that, if you leave one out of your meeting, they will be the department that gets blamed for everything. So, it is really difficult getting this joined-up working unless someone gets a grip of it, unless there is someone ultimately with overall responsibility to whom you can turn and say, "Right, how are you going to get this team of people together? How about some enforcement operations? Who takes the lead?" The first multi-agency meeting that we had in Morecambe was arranged by the police and myself; the second one was arranged by North West Sea Fisheries; the third one again was going to be chaired by myself and arranged by the Sea Fisheries. So, there was no one who was willing to say, "Right, I am responsible for sorting this problem out" and working across different departments. Indeed, it would appear that immigration were quite often out of the picture altogether.

  Q34 Alan Simpson: Would it be fair to say that the focus of the interests with which you had to deal was still, how do we do something about these people who effectively were the victims? How do we pick them up? How do we deal with overcrowding? In a sense, looking at those who were the most exploited parts of the process rather than those who were the villains of the piece and saying, "So, who was it who was doing the exploiting?"

  Geraldine Smith: Certainly for me, the issue of cockling in Morecambe began in November 2002 when a large boat turned up in Morecambe Bay and there were some vans of people turning up for cockling. At that stage, it was not an issue of possible illegal workers, it was British workers and they were probably being exploited as well because the claims then were, as to whether these people were claiming benefits or that they were unemployed and working on the side. Since the tragedy, I have seen young kids/teenagers working down on the shore quite open to the same health and safety concerns because nothing has changed. Their lives could be put at risk and I am sure that young people can quite often be vulnerable to exploitation. I think the problem with people who are illegal immigrants is that they have no one to turn to. They cannot come to me—they did not speak English. They cannot come and say to the local MP, "We are being exploited." They keep a low profile because they are outside the law and that makes them so much more vulnerable. However, I am quite sure that the authorities were aware of what was going on.

  Q35 Alan Simpson: Jim, could you just connect that into the aims of your Bill. Does it follow from what Geraldine has described that the issue of licensing and enforcement is not just going to be a question of who gets licences but what they are licensed for and the terms and strengths of licences? It is quite clear that the people who were involved in that tragic episode on Morecambe Beach were not there because they had a passion for night bathing. They were there because they were told to get out there and pick the bloody cockles and to earn the pittance that they were being paid. So, it is not just whether you have a licence to do that but the constraints that will be imposed with any licence.

  Jim Sheridan: You are right, we cannot have people just turning up and saying, "I want a licence to become a gangmaster", pay whatever the payment may be and get on with it. What we are asking for is a very strict criteria and that will be left for the Secretary of State for Defra. What we also asking for is that the advisory board that we are hoping to set up will look at the criteria because they are the people who are working at the sharp end and who know the difficulties. So, we would hope that the advisory board can put in recommendations to the Secretary of State for Defra in order that he or she can build into that a very strict criteria in order that, when people are applying for a licence, they know what they have to follow.

  Mr Brisley: In Jim's Bill, there are very basic licence conditions. For example, a requirement for an employee or agent of a gangmaster to carry photo identification in order that they can prove to the user that they are legitimate licensed gangmasters; a requirement for them to keep other documentation; a requirement for them to abide by minimum standards as to health and safety; and also to make sure that they do not withhold documents. We are having lots of reports, particularly from migrant workers, that passports are being held and basically these people are being held hostage until such time as the gangmaster no longer needs their services. Alongside those basic conditions, obviously, as Jim said, we would like to consult with the experts in the industry, the key stakeholders, and perhaps take the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) code, for example, and have that as the basis for licensed conditions as well as having a more robust licence. Alongside that, when somebody applies for a licence, they should be vetted, there should be background checks on these people, and then, during the lifetime of that licence, there would be compliance visits to make sure that they are keeping to the terms and conditions of the licence and those orders will also feed into wider enforcement agencies to identify problems perhaps with tax evasion or with health and safety.

  Q36 Ms Atherton: Jim, have the Government now given you unequivocal support for your Bill? Well, I think you have answered the question!

  Jim Sheridan: I have very quickly found out who runs the country! Seriously, during the Second Reading, the Government shared the objectives of the Bill. They have now moved on to sharing the principles of the Bill and we have had some very constructive meetings with Defra ministers and I really do think that they are now coming on board. They see the merits of this Bill and I think that we are all looking for a workable solution that (a) provides the cover that we need in order that people are not exploited and that (b), what is equally important, we do not burden businesses with significant costs because that would endanger the cause. I think that there is a genuine desire by all parties, the coalition, ourselves and the Government, to come to some sort of workable solution and I think that we are almost there.

  Q37 Ms Atherton: So, you have been meeting with Defra ministers but what about DTI and some of the other ministers and departments that might have different issues and concerns? Have they been feeding in concerns or have they all been coming through from Defra?

  Jim Sheridan: They have all been coming through Defra. We took a decision earlier that, rather than us going round all the various departments, Defra would be the coordinating body and they would then contact other departments by letter or whatever seeking their views on the Bill and asking them to identify any concerns they may have and certainly there were one or two concerns that were raised in terms of costs, enforcement etc, but goodwill is now coming through and I think that we are making good progress and I am extremely confident that we will get this Bill through the necessary process.

  Q38 Ms Atherton: I suppose I am trying to tease out from you whether you feel that there is resistance in some government departments that mean you are going to have to bring amendments or changes than perhaps if you were purely just dealing with Defra ministers.

  Jim Sheridan: You know how the parliamentary process works. Sometimes things are said to you at face value and then other things are done behind closed doors. Certainly at face value, the 15 ministers whom I have met have been very honest and upfront about the aim of the Bill is and what their objectives are and principles are. There have been some other departments that have raised concerns and I think that we have managed to overcome those concerns and identify the concerns that they have raised.

  Q39 Chairman: Alun Michael said in his concluding remarks in the Bill that we believe licensing should target agricultural activities. That does not cover fishing specifically and it does not cover anything else. Are you happy about that?

  Jim Sheridan: I assume that Alun perhaps has mistakenly called it that but it does cover fisheries and processes as well.


 
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