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Lord King of Bridgwater: I am grateful to the Minister. I failed to welcome him, and it occurred to me to ask whether he is following in the footsteps of his former colleague from Birmingham, Denis Howell, who became the Minister for drought. That proved to be the solution, because shortly thereafter he became the Minister for floods.
Lord Rooker: That is true. I saw a photograph in one of the newspapers this morning of my former, late, colleague. To us, he was always a football referee—not that I do football—but he was "Mr Birmingham" for many years. We do not have people the size of Denis these days, but in 1976—if memory serves me—I had been in the House just a couple of years and the rainmaker was appointed. I am not the drought Minister, despite everything else I have gathered in the past week, but we have to make good use of our water resources. We are much more tuned in to that now than we were 30 years ago. We now realise that we have gradually been draining the planet and we are now taking much more care because these issues will come up. Notwithstanding the recent weather, we were warned last winter that this summer would be exceptionally dry, and as a consequence extra care will be needed about water.
The Duke of Montrose: The Minister explained the charges, but do they apply to existing extractions that have to be re-licensed or to new licences?
Lord Rooker: The charges apply to new licences.
Baroness Byford: I am grateful to the Minister for his response in this short but important debate. When statutory instruments come before the House and the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee draws things to our attention, we look through them very carefully. We bring back some statutory instruments so that we can have a short debate on them, as we have done today; on other occasions, we do not.
I thank all noble Lords who participated in this short debate and I thank the Minister for answering. He was not able to say what response the seven agriculture representatives had made to the
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consultation. I am not pressing him, but I would be interested to know the answer as it would be very helpful to me.
On Question, Motion agreed to.
Gangmasters Licensing (Exclusions) Regulations 2006
Baroness Byford rose to move, That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Gangmasters Licensing (Exclusions) Regulations 2006 (S.I. 2006/658) [30th Report from the Merits Committee].
The noble Baroness said: I shall speak also to the Gangmasters (Appeals) Regulations 2006 and the Gangmasters (Licensing Conditions) Rules 2006 because most of my points are general, although some are detailed. In its 30th Report, the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee noted its concern at the delay in bringing the new licensing system into force. I am also strongly concerned. When this matter was raised in a Private Member's Bill, introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Carter, if my memory serves me correctly, some noble Lords wished to debate it in Committee but we were told that if we did so, it would not be possible to push the Bill through in time for it to be enacted. That was more than a year ago, and here we are looking at something that will not, in some cases, happen until 2007. I find that worrying. It beggars belief that portions of the regulations that follow from the Morecambe Bay disaster will not operate until April 2007. That disaster was the wellspring from which the Gangmasters Licensing Authority was generated in 2004.
On 13 March this year, the noble Lord, Lord Bach, published a Written Statement foreshadowing the laying of the regulations that we are debating. That Statement surprised me on a couple of counts: first, he defined the boundaries as being not the supply of workers who are normally domiciled overseas, but simply the supply of labour for the agriculture and shellfish industries. Does that mean that these regulations could apply to someone who is UK-born and has always lived here? I thought that these regulations were to deal with people coming from overseas to take part in agriculture and horticulture as they historically have. I cannot see clarification on that in the regulations.
The Gangmasters Licensing (Exclusions) Regulations define the seasonal agricultural workers scheme. I declare an interest as president of Concordia, one of the organisations that for the past 40 years has brought seasonal workers from overseas, many of whom, the Minister will be interested to hear, were agricultural students in their own countries in their own right, and one of whom went on to become the agriculture Minister in his own country. So we did do some good.
Lord Rooker: Actually there is another one: me.
Baroness Byford: The Minister is telling me something that I did not know because I thought he
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was English-based; there we are. It is a very good organisation. It has been going through fairly difficult times regarding the future of the scheme, as has the National Farmers' Union with its similar scheme. I had assumed that the regulations were confined to SAWS operators and not to internal placement of people employed in the agricultural industry. I seek clarification on that.
I was somewhat surprised to read of,
"the early introduction of licensing for labour providers operating in the farming and fresh produce supply chain . . . More time is needed to finalise the licensing arrangements to apply to shellfish gathering".
Why? I cannot understand why it has taken so long, or what the hold-up is. Why did Defra not concentrate first on shellfish and that type of operation? That was where the maximum danger existed for seasonal workers.
I will try to go through the regulations in a sequence. I have one or two questions. First, in the exemptions under Paragraph 13 of the schedule to SI 2006/658, does,
mean "on each day that the particular worker works for that farmer", or does it mean, "on the first day of that particular supply contract"? I was not clear on it.
and Paragraph 15 goes on to say,
However, the Minister stated that it was anticipated that it would become an offence for a labour user to use an unlicensed gangmaster in December. We expect the labour provider and labour users offences to be introduced in the shellfish gathering sector from April 2007. In Paragraph 15 the exemption relates to,
That implies a change from the current practice. Again, I hope that the Minister might be able to explain what that change is and why that bit is in that statutory instrument.
S.I. 2006/660 lays down licensing conditions. This is a nitty-gritty point, for which I apologise. On the first page, in Rule 2(2)(a), there might be a typo. Instead of, ")who has" should it be,
which follows the same format as the next sub-paragraph? That is a minor technical point. On another technical point, is there a typo in Rule 7(1), which refers to "a licences"?
In Rule 8, if the fees for application inspections are to be scaled, why are they not in the same ratio as for the licence? What does an application inspection cover, and on what basis is the minimum charge £1,600? It would surely easily cover three days plus expenses, and even a VAT inspection of a small business does not take that long.
What is the intention of paragraph 6 of the schedule, as it seems at odds with paragraphs 8, 10(b) and 15(b)(ii)? That is a particular issue I wish to raise
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with the Minister. In paragraph 14, what is meant by the word "unsuitable"? Is this statutory instrument sufficient protection for a licence holder to end the supply of a worker without fear of having to face court action, particularly if the cessation of the supply costs the labour user money?
Under paragraph 19, why should the licence holder hold a record of the date of birth of the labourer if he is under 22 years old? I am puzzled by that; it seems very strange. I wonder whether under 22 years is when a person might still be considered a student. It seems unusual to have that in a statutory instrument. Finally, under paragraph 22, it is strange that records have to be held for only one year. In most legislation relating to farming—for example, concerning vets or, as in our case, farmers—we have to hold records for up to seven years. Do the Government feel that holding records for one year will be sufficient should it be necessary to refer to earlier dates?
In asking these questions, the NFU has recognised, as do I, the need for the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act, which we welcome. I hope that the Minister will not think that I do not welcome it. It is extremely important. We know that we need to have proper regulation of gangmasters. We have become increasingly concerned over reports of illegal activities concerning gangmasters for many years.
The very wide-ranging scope of the Act made it important, for example, that a number of exclusions from the requirement for licensing were made for the farm-to-farm short-term supply labour. Again, we debated that during the passage of the Act, when I was very grateful that the Minister recognised the need for farmers to be able to exchange short-term supply of labour on farms.
Further delays to the introduction of licensing were caused by the protracted discussions with the Government on whether to exclude from licensing any labour supplied for secondary processing—packaging and processing plants where fruit, vegetables and meat are cut, packed or turned into ready meals—as opposed to the farms where they were grown. The NFU welcomed Jim Knight's announcement on 13 March that licensing will apply to all labour providers supplying permanent, temporary and contracted labour to businesses in agriculture, horticulture, food packaging and processing industries. I know that there was a great debate between Defra and, I think, the DTI at one stage on how that should be viewed. If my memory serves me correctly, the Minister will recall some of those from his earlier time at MAFF, as it was then.
We welcome these statutory instruments. The things that we want to raise with the Minister are slightly nitty-gritty, but we need to have them clarified properly. Most importantly, we want to make sure that rogue gangmasters cannot find any way to beat the system, because we do not want to see that. Clearly, there is a need for a publicity campaign to make sure that gangmasters and those who employ labourers supplied by them are very clear on their needs and requirements, and the restrictions placed on them. I beg to move.
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Moved, That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Gangmasters Licensing (Exclusions) Regulations 2006 (S.I. 2006/658) [30th Report from the Merits Committee].—(Baroness Byford.)
4 pm
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