Benn fights for agricultural wages board

PLANS to scrap the Agricultural Wages Board as part of Government cutbacks came back under the spotlight this week with a row having broken out as to whether the body should be mothballed.

The coalition Government decided to disband the Agricultural Wages Board earlier in the summer as parent department Defra wrestles with cutbacks totalling nearly a third of its total budget.

The body has been in existence since the 1940s and sets a minimum rate of pay for agricultural workers. The Government claims that as a minimum wage now exists the Agricultural Wages Board can be done away with.

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However former environment secretary Hilary Benn, the Labour MP for Leeds Central, branded the plan "shabby" during a House of Commons debate and said there was no justification for doing away with the board, saying it would "cut the wages of agricultural workers".

Mr Benn said that scrapping the AWB was a step "even Baroness Thatcher shied away from" and asked Conservative Farming Minister Jim Paice what kind of a burden the board placed on the Government.

Mr Paice responded by stating: "The issue is one of inflexibility, because of the wages orders implemented through the Agricultural Wages Board.

"The right hon gentleman has just made the point that the minimum wage for agriculture is 2p an hour more than the national minimum wage, so what is the point of having a whole superstructure of an Agricultural Wages Board for the sake of 2p an hour?"

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However Mr Benn went on to state scrapping the board would leave out people in several pay grades, those between two and six of minimum wage legislation, and added that overtime rates and bereavement leave would also be lost for farm workers.

However Mr Paice branded the Labour former minister "behind the times" and said that today's economy demanded flexibility, claiming the board had been unchanged in more than 50 years.

Scrapping the Agricultural Wages Board won praise from Britain's farming industry when it was announced, with the National Farmers' Union calling it an "industrial relic".

Its president Peter Kendall said that the board had actually hampered farmers, making the farming sector less competitive and putting them on an unequal footing with other employers.

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The cause has this week also been taken up by the Unite trade union, who have launched a campaign to save the AWB from extinction.

Ian Wadell, Unite's agricultural national officer, said: "We have seen policy after policy from the new government in a few short weeks which will undermine the very fabric of rural Britain."

CW 18/9/10