Agricultural Wages Board

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 5:25 pm on 24 April 2013.

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Photo of Huw Irranca-Davies Huw Irranca-Davies Shadow Minister (Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) 5:25, 24 April 2013

The hon. Lady says she has been contacted by just three, but three is three, and I know for a fact that a large number of Members—many of whom are, for understandable reasons, not present for this debate, but who will, I assume, be passing through the voting Lobby—have been extensively lobbied by agricultural workers in their communities. The question is this: how will they vote today?

In the midst of the economic gloom of Osbornomics—that is a commentators’ phrase—with the economy flat-lining and the rural economy suffering too, the Government’s own figures show that more than a quarter of a billion pounds could be taken out of the rural economy following abolition of the AWB, and as my hon. Friend Mary Creagh pointed out, we could well add to the burden by increasing rural poverty and the in-work benefits bill to the taxpayer. This is, indeed, the world turned upside down.