Milk Production

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Thursday 15th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, my noble friend, as always, puts her finger on a key part of the problem. I have outlined a number of measures that we are taking. I can also add to that the use of the RDP—the Rural Development Programme—to foster improvement of competitiveness and profitability, for example, by increased emphasis on value-added products, such as cheese and yoghurt. I think that is really important to our market. Once again I have to come back to you on the real importance of our work on exports.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that cash flow, which he touched on in an earlier answer, is a critical matter, both for farmers and co-operatives? Can he say whether he feels that the banks are playing their part in sustaining the farming industry by supporting them through volatility in cash flow?

[Lord De Mauley]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right. Cash flow is crucial. You can be as profitable as you like, but if you have no money in the bank, you cannot pay the bills. The noble Baroness is alluding to the cash-flow problems that face not only farmers but co-operatives. First Milk is a co-operative, wholly owned by farmers, and it is in the interests of farmers that it should survive and thrive. Work such as that being done by Dairy UK, which I referred to earlier, on helping farmers with cash flow is really important. Some of the banks are doing similar work.

Winter Floods

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley]

I thank my noble friend for that question. She suggests that there has been no research on the effects of flooding on businesses. I will take that matter away. I am pretty sure that it will be covered in the action plan that my right honourable friend is looking at, but I shall look into it.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, I wonder whether I might ask the Minister the question that I was hoping to ask him at Question Time, which bears directly on the observations of the noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater. Has any assessment yet been made of the possible public health impact or implications of land being under water for sustained periods, particularly where that land contains, for example, domestic sewerage infrastructure and where animal waste is also involved? Who, if anyone, is undertaking that assessment?

[Lord De Mauley]

Yes, my Lords. Somerset County Council is working with Wessex Water to ensure that proper water sampling is carried out and to co-ordinate any mitigation measures that are needed. Public Health England has issued clear advice on how to avoid any risk to health. People in the affected areas are urged to follow that advice.

Flooding

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley]

That is an important question, and I absolutely take that. Noble Lords will be pleased, I hope, to hear that I am going out there to look at the construction myself. I might be better placed after that to answer their questions.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

As most people are understandably concerned about the impact on human habitation of flooding, what assessment have the Government made of the impact on agricultural land? The anecdotal evidence, as one travels around the country, is that a great deal of farmland is still under water from the rains before Christmas. There must be considerable loss to farmers. Can the noble Lord give the House any information about how that has been assessed?

[Lord De Mauley]

Yes, my Lords. More than 95% of arable land in England is either outside areas at risk of flooding from main rivers or the sea or is in areas benefiting from a greater than one to 75 standard of evidence.

Working Time (Amendment) Regulations 2013

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Monday 22nd July 2013 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord De Mauley)]

My Lords, the Government are committed to providing an environment for all sectors of the economy in which private enterprise and businesses can flourish. A key objective is to simplify employment legislation and remove unnecessary burdens from businesses. As part of this, the Government have taken forward legislation through the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act 2013 to end the separate agricultural minimum wage regime in England and Wales and to bring employment in agriculture into line with other sectors of the economy.

The amendments which the Government are proposing to the Working Time Regulations 1998 are a necessary consequence of the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board for England and Wales on 25 June 2013 and the end of the separate agricultural minimum wage regime after 30 September 2013. Agricultural workers are already protected by the main provisions of the Working Time Regulations, including those relating to the maximum 48 hour week. However, some minor technical amendments are needed to align the position for agricultural workers in England and Wales fully under the regulations with that of workers in other sectors of the economy. If approved, these amendments will come into force on 1 October 2013, when the current special regulatory framework for agricultural minimum wages will end.

The proposed amendments will remove some very specific exemptions in the 1998 regulations which apply only to workers employed in agriculture. These are in relation to the date of the commencement of the leave year and the arrangements for giving notice to take leave. Under the Working Time Regulations, the leave year for a worker begins on the date provided for in a relevant agreement. Where there is no provision in a relevant agreement, the date of commencement of the leave year for a new employee is the date or anniversary of the date of commencement of employment. For agricultural workers in England and Wales, the commencement of the leave year is governed by the provisions of the Agricultural Wages (England and Wales) Order 2012, which will remain in force until 1 October. The order requires that the leave year for all agricultural workers begins on 1 October. There are also specific arrangements in the Working Time Regulations for taking leave which require workers to give their employer advance notice of the intention to take leave and for the employer to give similar notice if either they require the worker to take leave or do not agree to a request for leave from the worker. These arrangements provide transparency and certainty for workers and employers, but do not currently apply to agricultural workers.

If approved, these amendments mean that where agricultural workers in England and Wales come into the industry and enter into employment contracts after 30 September, the arrangements in respect of commencement of the leave year and for leave-taking will be brought in line with the arrangements for other workers under the 1998 regulations. For agricultural workers already employed before 1 October, their existing arrangements will remain in place until the end of their current employment. This will ensure that there is no risk of loss of annual leave entitlement for agricultural workers during a period of employment. Any agricultural worker who is employed between now and 1 October must still be treated in accordance with the full terms and conditions set out in the agricultural wages order 2012. A worker in this position will similarly retain the arrangements for commencement of the leave year and leave-taking as provided for under the order until the end of their current employment.

If these amendments to the Working Time Regulations 1998 are not approved, once the agricultural wages order 2012 ceases to be in force after 30 September this year, there would be no default position for commencement of the leave year, nor arrangements for giving notice to take leave for new agricultural workers coming into the industry after that date. This could cause uncertainty and confusion for both agricultural workers and their employers.

It may be helpful here to say something more generally about the proposed application of the Working Time Regulations to agricultural workers after 30 September 2013. From 1 October, all new workers coming into the industry in England and Wales will be protected by the National Minimum Wage Act and the Working Time Regulations, as are other workers in different sectors of the economy. This means that agricultural workers will be entitled to at least the minimum requirements for annual leave entitlement and length of rest breaks as provided for by the 1998 regulations, although we would expect that many employers will agree terms which are more favourable to their workers than the minima set in the legislation.

Currently, under the terms of the agricultural wages order 2012, agricultural workers have enhanced entitlements for annual leave and rest breaks. The Government have made very clear during debates in Parliament on the amendment to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act to abolish the agricultural wages board that agricultural workers will retain any existing contractual rights, including relating to leave and rest breaks. This has been enshrined in the relevant secondary legislation abolishing the board and the agricultural minimum wage regime.

Therefore, let me reassure noble Lords that the amendments we are now proposing to the Working Time Regulations will not have any impact on these existing contractual rights. Workers with pre-existing contracts at 1 October 2013 will retain the right to the annual leave entitlement and length of rest break determined in their contract of employment, unless either they agree with their employer to vary their contract or the contract comes to an end. These amendments are a necessary tidying-up exercise as the result of the abolition of the agricultural wages board and the agricultural minimum wage regime. Without them, for agricultural workers who take up new employment on or after 1 October 2013, there would be legal uncertainty and no clear provision as to the arrangements for the commencement of their leave year and leave-taking. I hope that your Lordships will accept these regulations.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

My Lords, I should have said at the beginning of the Committee that, in view of the extreme heat, if anybody wishes to remove their jacket they are welcome to do so.

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, might be pleased to hear that I will not remove my jacket.

I have vehemently opposed the whole principle in relation to the agricultural wages board. I am not in essence opposing the provision today because, as the noble Lord said, it is a logical tidying-up measure. However, serious questions arise about its timing and the way in which it has been introduced. He will recall that during the passage of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act there were arguments about the impact assessment produced by the Government at that stage, which Ministers in effect discounted and put to one side. To some extent the Minister has repeated that today. That impact assessment produced for Defra showed a total detriment to agricultural workers of about £250 million over 10 years and a consequential benefit to farmers from that saving in their wages bill. I argued at the time that that was a notional benefit to farmers since, in effect, most of it would end up in the pockets of the supermarkets. Nevertheless, that was the Government’s argument at the time. During the course of deliberations, they disavowed that whole impact assessment.

The noble Lord has repeated today that many employers will improve the terms and conditions of agricultural workers. That, however, is totally contrary to the best expert advice available to the ministry at the time that the amendment to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act was put through. In relation to limits on hours, I suspect there is not a big detriment. There may even be a benefit. However, we do not have another impact assessment. We do not have any indication of there being any analysis by the department as to which way that would work.

Obviously, the Government’s logic is to bring everything in line with general minimum terms and conditions legislation, whether in terms of the minimum wage Act or the working time directive and the legislation stemming from that. I think that that is logical. However, it is perhaps also interesting that Regulation 3 of this very short instrument enshrines the Government’s view that the conditions of the existing workforce, or those who are taken on before 1 October, will not be changed by this enactment. That is, of course, legally correct. However, the current terms and conditions will remain in place only until they are altered, until the employer gives notice of the end of their terms and conditions.

The totality of the Government’s approach here is to change the balance of power between the employee in the agricultural sector and the farmer or other employer. It is hardly worth the paper that it is written on to say that existing terms and conditions will continue to apply to those who are already in the workforce. It may take a few months or a few years for that to change. One of the reasons that the impact assessment was ultimately rejected by Ministers on the Floor of the House was that they recognised there would be a significant disbenefit to workers in the industry: not only new workers but existing workers would be faced with the likelihood of their terms and conditions being changed once the agricultural wages board disappears.

I think the Minister is probably right that this is relatively straightforward and unlikely to cause huge detriment. It is nevertheless part of the overall principle that we have opposed from these Benches. It is part of the attitude towards wages within the agricultural sector that this is being done without any meaningful underpinning even of the terms and conditions of people who are already in the industry.

Having said that, my main concern about the timing of this relates to the way in which it was written. It continues to provide for Scotland to be excluded from this measure because Scotland has always had its own agricultural wages board and still does. That means that it applies in England and Wales. Only last week, however, the Welsh Assembly passed legislation to establish a statutory body within Wales which would have the possibility of retaining the statutory force both of the substance and of the enforcement of the agricultural wages board. There would, therefore, be a new agricultural wages board for Wales.

Surely it would be more sensible to wait to introduce any consequential statutory instruments until it was clear how they would in theory apply to Wales—until it is clear how that new Welsh structure will evolve. The original proposition from Wales was that the legislation would not apply to Wales. They were, therefore, broadly content that the previous way in which the AWB had applied to the Welsh farming workforce would continue. However, we are now chipping away at that for workers in Wales as far as working time is concerned. That shows a serious disrespect for devolution, for the position of the Welsh Assembly and for the attitude that has been taken by the Welsh farming industry and the workers within it.

The timing—less than a week after Wales passed a clear indication that it did not want the changes to apply there—is, to say the least, unfortunate. I hope that the Minister will give us some guarantee that he has consulted with his Welsh colleagues and that this will not apply immediately to Wales, if it is still in the process of establishing its own statutory board as of 1 October.

Japanese Knotweed

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Monday 8th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley]

My noble friend is quite right. A non-native species risk assessment of Japanese knotweed has been carried out under the GB non-native species mechanism. It is one of more than 50 risk assessments on plants that have been published. Japanese knotweed is assessed as high risk. There are many others. My noble friend will be aware that we are doing considerable work bearing down on pests such as this which are coming at us from abroad.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

Will the noble Lord explain to those of us who are enthusiastic gardeners but have never seen Japanese knotweed what we should be looking out for? On a more serious note, is he confident that public information—for example, in garden centres and other places where people purchase plants—is at a sufficiently high level to ensure that people who should be aware of what to look out for know what they should be looking for?

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, I quite agree with the noble Baroness that public awareness is one of the most important aspects. I will resist the temptation to describe the appearance of Japanese knotweed in front of your Lordships.

Insurance: Flood Risk Areas

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley]

My Lords, whenever we talk about flood insurance, the noble Lord leads with his chin. I just say this to him, once again: the statement of principles, which his Government put in place, did nothing about affordability. That is what we are seeking to tackle this time.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

My Lords, given the information in the press at the weekend showing the vulnerability to flooding in urban areas—I do not know whether the Minister saw that information, but it was really quite alarming and a lot of it was about London—does he agree that many people who are in fact vulnerable to flooding probably do not know that they are, because they do not live near a river or on the coast? They are vulnerable to the breakdown of the infrastructure that allows waste water to be taken away when there are heavy rains. What have the Government been doing to encourage local authorities to prevent people from, for example, tarmacing over their front gardens, which makes the likelihood of flooding in those circumstances much greater?

[Lord De Mauley]

On the noble Baroness’s specific question, it is one of a panoply of issues that need to be addressed. I will write to her further on that. She specifically mentioned London. London is a very important component of this. The Environment Agency has a plan to tackle the issue, called the Thames Estuary 2100 Plan. A key strength of the plan is its adaptability, which allows us to deploy different options to manage flood risk as new climate change guidance emerges.

Pesticides: Bees

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Wednesday 13th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord De Mauley]

Yes, my Lords, and indeed persistence in soil is one of the tests that is considered.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

My Lords, going back to the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, does the noble Lord agree that among the many things that are important in preserving and developing the health and safety of bees is the increase in domestic beekeeping and encouraging people who have gardens to garden with an eye to what is good for bees? Do the Government have any plans to encourage people in either of those areas?

[Lord De Mauley]

I am very happy to say that I do encourage people. When we had the debate the other day I said to the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, who was leading for the Opposition, that I was sorely tempted, when I finished doing my current job, to become a beekeeper myself. The proposed national bee action plan could well be the sort of forum one needs to get a ground swell of opinion behind such an idea.

Food: Waste

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Tuesday 20th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

A great deal of work has been done on food marking. Some of those labels merely tell the shops when the product should be taken off the shelves, and it is really more for stock control. Some great strides have been made. The reduction in food waste will depend very much on consumers being aware that the use-by date still means that you can freeze the product and that it is still healthy to eat. By informing the consumers about the practical information that is available to them, we can save people throwing away food that is perfectly healthy.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

My Lords, following on from the question of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, does the Minister agree that a great many people now growing up do not understand either how to buy or to prepare food, that often food is wasted because people are driven to believe the sell-by dates that are put on to packaged food, and that they have no mechanisms for understanding how to use their own common sense in discerning whether food is fit for consumption? Will he ask his colleagues in the Department for Education to look into educating pupils better about that matter?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I am sure that we could all learn good household skills. It is never too late to learn about some of these very basic matters. I agree with the noble Baroness that a lot of food waste is caused by careless shopping and food stocking. This applies not just within the household but within the commercial and catering trades. That is why we are trying to tackle this problem on all fronts.

Defra: Research and Development

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

My Lords, my noble friend will know that the Government have taken on board the findings of the Taylor review, which is a commitment of Defra’s business plan. As the Minister responsible for science and research in the department, I can assure her that the issue is high on the department’s agenda.

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that one of the most vital aspects of effective food production is the success of the honey-bee in this country? Does he agree that the honey-bee is currently under threat in a variety of ways, including from the Varroa mites, which may or may not cause colony collapse disorder, and, now we learn, from the probable arrival of the Asian hornet? Will he reassure the House that research funding into the survival of honey-bee colonies will be maintained and will he also stress, wherever possible, the importance of domestic bee-keeping—I speak as the mother and the daughter of domestic bee-keepers—particularly in cities and towns?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I assure the noble Baroness that this is high on the agenda. Indeed, as she probably knows, the Government are funding a pollinator programme—not just bees but other pollinating insects are vital for the biodiversity that we are seeking to maintain. I have seen for myself the work being done at FERA in York, where not only are the problems affecting bees being looked at, but we are very alert to the Asian hornet and the threat that that poses. I have personal acquaintance with such insects from when I occasionally visit France, so I know that they are a real threat to bee-keepers and honey production.

Clothing Industry: Ethical and Sustainable Fashion

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall]

My Lords, I join all those who have spoken in congratulating my noble friend—because she is my friend—Lady Young of Hornsey on securing this debate at, as she said, an extraordinarily timely moment; and on her tremendous vigour in seizing this issue and in getting the all-party group going, which is a good and helpful way to bring these issues to the attention of a lot more people. As part of declaring my interests, I am delighted to say that I have joined that group, and I hope that many other noble Lords and Members of the other place will do so in due course.

I should declare another interest in that my son is a member of the small but extremely effective team that makes up the Centre for Sustainable Fashion at the London College of Fashion, which has been mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Young. I am indebted to him and his colleague Dr Kate Fletcher for useful briefing for this debate. As a result of taking on that briefing, I may, rather like my noble friend Lord Sugar, go slightly off-piste in terms of the way that this debate might have been expected to develop. I hope that your Lordships will forgive me.

The fashion industry divides opinion. For those involved in it, it is all consuming and endlessly fascinating. For others, it represents some of the most repellent aspects of a vain, consumerist culture. Personally, I confess to being more fascinated than repelled. I love clothes and I love fashion. What has not yet been said in this debate is that we have to recognise that fashion is part of the entertainment industry, at least to some extent. There is a lot of fun in fashion, and that is what attracts people to it. I particularly love the imagination and creativity of designers, and I admire the artistry of the photographers and stylists through whose eyes we understand their work. Frankly, most of us never get on to the front row, or even the back row, of a catwalk show in fashion week. It is therefore a tremendous pleasure to have the opportunity to talk about these matters in this House.

The noble Baroness, Lady Young, has framed her topic carefully. It refers to the,

“ethical and sustainable fashion and clothing industry”.

Another thing that has not quite been teased out—and I am not going to try to—is the definition of the difference between fashion and clothes; but there is something there that is quite interesting. I want to concentrate on “sustainable” and “clothing”, but in a slightly different way—in perhaps a micro, rather than a macro, way. I want to talk about the old fashioned concept of “make do and mend”—perhaps appropriately in these straitened times.

We have already heard that most of the clothes available today on the high street are made far away in China, Asia or eastern Europe by people who we will probably never meet, working in conditions we would prefer not to think about, for wages that would barely buy us a cup of coffee. These clothes are, as a consequence, absurdly cheap—as we have heard—which allows them to be regarded as disposable. The human, economic and environmental consequences of our overconsumption have been graphically spelt out by other speakers. However, this is a fairly recent phenomenon. Other speakers have touched on how different it was when they were growing up. Certainly, when I was growing up, clothes were relatively much more expensive and there was much less choice.

If you go back a bit further into the 19th century and beyond, the picture is even more starkly different. Clothes had to be made by hand, either by the person who was going to wear them or, for the better off, by a professional tailor or seamstress in the community. Making clothes was hard work. They had to last and they were often therefore reinvented by the addition of small embellishments, such as lace or ribbons, remade to suit changed shape or fashion, or passed on to others. How do I know this? It is not from serious study, but from reading novels—not, I regret, the novels of my noble friend Lady Rendell, but mostly the novels of the 19th century. If you take any of the great writers of that period—Dickens, Trollope, George Eliot, Wilkie Collins, and who remembers The Moonstone and the vital importance of a handmade nightgown to the plot of that novel?—you will find it all there in the detail of those novels. Most women and some men, until two or three generations ago, whatever social class they belonged to, would have had some skill in sewing, knitting, perhaps even lace-making or embroidery, and most importantly in repairing clothes. Such simple domestic accomplishments became unfashionable, I think largely from the point at which women began to seek a wider role in public life. Of course I do not regret that, but it had this consequence, among many others.

Now these skills have become the preserve of specialists. In the theatre, for example, where I have spent most of my professional life, clothes—costumes—are hugely important, both to the people who wear them and to the audiences who look at them. Many, especially in large classical theatre or opera companies, are tailor-made for individual performers, and require not only exceptional skill in cutting and making— comparable to that in fashion houses—but often the application of detailed research into style, fabric and decoration. They must also be made to withstand the rigours of whatever a performance may demand. Consequently, each piece costs a lot to produce and has to be maintained carefully throughout its life, which can be long. Many costumes, once their initial use is fulfilled, go into store, and in time reappear having been refurbished and changed in a completely different production.

This is sustainability in action. We have to ask, in a world of austerity and diminishing resources, whether we should not be learning again to value the ability to make things last, not just as a rare specialism, but as a normal part of everyone’s personal toolkit. Dr Fletcher of the London College of Fashion, to whom I referred earlier, points out that today the extreme cheapness of new clothes has pretty much consigned repair to history, overtaken by a new philosophy of “discard and repurchase”, about which we have heard a great deal this evening. The commercial imperative behind this, from the point of view of the industry, is pretty obvious. She also observes that the fact that most of us lack the practical skills nowadays to repair things ourselves must be partly to do with a general undervaluing of manual skills-based education, compared with academic subjects. It is timely to remember this on the day that the Wolf report is produced. We are not talking about it today, but I note it.

Furthermore, if we want to have our clothes repaired or altered professionally, it is increasingly difficult to find people able to do it. Even when we do, I fear that we are reluctant to pay properly for their services, thus making it hard for small businesses, to which my noble friend Lord Sugar referred—there are lots of them in this industry—to survive. When the Minister replies, I wonder whether he would consider the following questions; they are small but not entirely insignificant, I hope. First, how can the Government help to underline, through our education system and beyond, the importance of having basic skills necessary to get the maximum use from everything we consume? Secondly, what help can the Government give, perhaps through reductions in VAT or other tax breaks, to small businesses such as clothing repair services, aiming at this kind of sustainability?

The fashion industry is highly influential, particularly on young people. If it began to move away from its focus on cheapness and disposability, and started to construct some messages about the importance of conserving, reusing and repairing—it would be very difficult for it, I entirely understand—then the generation that needs to hear might begin to listen. There are some signs that this is about to happen. I hope that they will grow.