Labour has promised better conditions for agricultural workers if it comes to power in may. Though the party said it would not reinstate an Agricultural Wages Board, Labour politicians have promised to convene an industry-led ‘taskforce’ to cover part of its remit.

The AWB, England’s last wage board, which formerly governed pay and conditions for agricultural workers by overseeing negotiations between workers’ trade union representatives and employers’ representatives from the NFU, was shut down by the government in 2013, having been earmarked for closure in the coalition’s 2010 'bonfire of the quangoes.'

Though the NFU and Defra claimed the wage board was anachronistic, workers and a signifiant number of farmers’ groups (particularly in Wales) lambasted its closure as an attack on workers’ pay, leave allowance and work conditions, with trade unions warning that AWB abolition would lead to a transference of more than £235 million from workers to their employers.

Last week, Labour’s Shadow Farming Minister Huw Irranca-Davies told Farming Online, “This Government has failed to support [rural] communities, for example abolishing the Agricultural Wages Board… This is not just damaging to the living standards of rural and agricultural workers, it is threatening rural communities and the rural economy.”

Speaking to The Western Morning News on Tuesday, the party’s Shadow Environment Secretary Maria Eagle said that the earnings of those living in the countryside are almost £4,500 lower than their urban counterparts’, and claimed that Labour’s “Rural manifesto includes a pledge to put right the damage done by the Tories’ decision to abolish the Agricultural Wages Board.”

Eagle said the taskforce promised by Labour would have a remit over pay, work conditions and training - including apprenticeships. However, though Labour criticised the axing of the AWB by the Coalition government, and the Labour-led Welsh government introduced a special advisory group to counteract the effects of the board’s closure, Labour has confirmed that it will not resurrect the Wage Board.  

Discussing Labour’s plans, Irranca-Davies also told Farming Online that, ”To support rural and agricultural employers to recruit the next generation of workers, we will hand employers more control over apprenticeships funding and standards, in exchange for driving up the number and quality of apprenticeships in the sector and in their supply chains."

In her comments on Tuesday, Ms Eagle also stood by Labour’s manifesto promise to end badger culling, a decision which the NFU promises it will challenge, should Labour enter into government next month.

Other commitments promised by Labour include expanding the scope and power of the Supermarket adjudicator, working to meet the 2020 target on rolling out high-speed broadband to rural areas and making rural housing more affordable.