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Gangmasters Licensing (Exclusions) Regulations 2006

I will do my best to answer the last question, which is wholly reasonable. I am grateful for the contributions of noble Lords. One of them took me back more than 40 years. I was a young tool-making apprentice in Birmingham in 1960 when I saw an advert in the paper: ““Holiday with a difference: fruit picking in Scotland””. It was at Letham Grange, near Arbroath. I picked the biggest raspberries I had ever seen in my life. I was a Brummie: I thought they were strawberries! Concordia organised that employment. There were only three or four Brits there. The other 60-odd were from all over the place. I was so keen on it that I went back the following year. It just shows you that there may be two ex-Concordia fruit pickers who have ended up as Ministers. The issue of regulation of gangmasters goes back a long time. In 1997, my maiden speech on the Front Bench, two weeks after being appointed, was to answer Richard Body’s Adjournment Debate on behalf of my noble friend Lord Donoughue, literally within a couple of weeks of the general election. The process started from then to try to do something about gangmasters. The problems are well understood by noble Lords. The set piece that I have will cover most of the points that have been raised, and for those that are not included, I will refer to the detailed notes. It is true that many gangmasters operate respectable and legitimate businesses, but many do not. The licensing arrangements are important. They will ensure that workers are treated fairly and they will protect some 600,000 workers from exploitation. They will of course protect the interests of legitimate businesses so that they are not undercut by the cowboys. The rules and regulations that we have been debating today complete the second stage of the process. With the completion of this element of the regulatory framework, the Gangmasters Licensing Authority was able to commence licensing operations on 6 April, and I will give the latest figure on that. In its 30th report, the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee criticised the time that it had taken to establish the gangmasters licensing arrangements, as the noble Baroness said. Royal Assent to the Act was received on 8 July 2004. The authority commenced work on 1 April 2005 and has been working hard since to bring the licensing scheme into operation. There was initial consultation on the Gangmasters Licensing (Exclusions) Regulations in February 2005, and consultation on the Gangmasters (Appeals) Regulations in March 2005. A second consultation on the Gangmasters Licensing (Exclusions) Regulations took place in October 2005, when the authority also consulted on its licence standards. Although it has been time-consuming, and I fully accept the arguments about delay, the consultations were necessary to ensure that the rules and regulations delivered a robust scheme that is called for by the stakeholders and one that everyone understands. That is important. Consultation was also necessary to ensure that the evidence supported the application of the licensing throughout the food chain. That process has taken longer than we had hoped when early predictions on the timetable were made. On the other hand, it is complex, but we did not sit back and wait for consultation to end. Steps were taken during this period to prepare labour providers for the introduction of licensing. As an interim measure, we worked closely with the Ethical Trading Initiative Temporary Labour Working Group to adapt its voluntary code of practice as a business development tool. Defra funded that work, and the labour providers who volunteered for an audit were able to use the feedback to make their business ready for licensing. Some 400 labour providers have used that facility. The Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee made specific reference to the delay in introducing licensing in the shellfish-gathering sector, which the noble Baroness also referred to. Here the licensing will apply both to the supply and the use of labour, which are two very different concepts—it is different from agriculture, where only the supply of labour is licensed. The Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee’s concerns are understandable, but the authority needs more time to adapt its licence conditions to the specific circumstances of the shellfish gathering sector. In developing its initial licensing standards proposals, the authority was able to draw on more than two years of work done by the Temporary Labour Working Group, which developed a code of practice for labour providers operating in the fresh produce supply chain. That gave the authority a head start in the farming and food processing sectors. The authority had no prior work to draw on in relation to shellfish gathering; it was new. We did not have that background. The initial consultation on licence standards confirmed that shellfish-gathering requires a different approach from farming on land. As a result, finalising the licensing standards to apply to shellfish gathering will require more time; this work is in hand. A number of workshops involving industry interests have been held, and detailed proposals for shellfish licensing standards will be published shortly. We are keen to ensure that licensing is introduced as quickly as possible. There is no merit or gain for the Government in delaying this. Consequently, the regulations make it clear that licensing will apply to the supply and use of labour to hand-gather shellfish from 1 October 2006. A number of further steps need to be taken over the coming months to finalise the licensing arrangements. If the application process goes smoothly, we plan to make it an offence for a gangmaster to operate without a licence with effect from 1 October 2006. At the same time, regulations will be made, or guidance issued, setting out the steps a labour user must take to ensure that a gangmaster whom he or she engages has a licence. As I have said, we will commence licensing in the shellfish sector from 1 October. It is anticipated that it will become an offence for a labour user to use an unlicensed gangmaster in December of this year. We expect that the labour-provider and labour-user offences will be introduced in the shellfish-gathering sector from April 2007. There is a gap between the requirement to be licensed and the offences being committed, which is wholly reasonable in the circumstances. I have mentioned the industry’s need for a flexible labour supply. Indeed, I have some personal experience of that—I was on strike for the second year I was there, by the way.