" This procedure has been a vital part of ensuring access to justice for victims of discrimination since our first discrimination and race relations Acts were passed nearly 40 years ago," the Baroness noted.
The removal of the right to obtain information in discrimination cases appears to be an ideologically driven, and wholly unfair, way of restricting access to justice to those who can afford it.
Abolition of Agricultural Wages Boards
Changes
Two days before Christmas 2012, the government added their policy to abolish the Agricultural Wages Boards( AWBs) in England and Wales as an amendment to the ERR BIll without any prior warning. By removing the Agricultural Wages Boards, the Agricultural Minimum Wage and the sector ' s wage structure will also be abolished.
Criticism
The Coalition has argued that the AWBs are old-fashioned and no longer relevant, since the National Minimum Wage now covers all workers. However, the agricultural sector comprises of many casualised and vulnerable workers- such as seasonal and migrant labour- who benefit from a set wages structure, which protects them against the downward pressure on their salaries by rich supermarkets looking for evercheaper food to turn a larger profit.
There is also evidence that farmers prefer having the AWBs in place, as it relieves them from the responsibility to negotiate complex employment legislation in order to build new wage structures. Several Lords in a peer ' s debate noted that many farmers prefer the simplicity of paying their workers according to a structure that is already laid out for them.
Although the government has argued agricultural workers will not be impacted by the change, because they tend to be paid more than the Agricultural Minimum Wage anyway, there are worries that this is a poor assumption on ministers ' behalf.
Firstly, the Coalition contradict their own argument in their impact assessments, where potential " savings " are outlined. It has been estimated that £ 250 million will be lost from the pockets of workers, according to Lord Whitty in a Lords debate, implying workers will in fact be hit- and hard.
Although many agricultural workers are often paid more than the Agricultural Minimum Wage, this is partly due to the wages structure that is in place- which recommends what farmers should pay different workers on their site. When the AWBs go, so will this structure, and Lord Whitty argued its loss will lead to downwards pressure on agricultural wages to the minimum possible.
What ' s more, that £ 250 million is unlikely to even go to the farmers. With rich supermarkets constantly applying pressure on their suppliers to produce more for
15