http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/politics_show/4719086.stm

West Midlands: Poles apart

Patrick Burns
Political Editor West Midlands



View the Politics Show West Midlands


We all want wholesome food at affordable prices. So perhaps we choose not to
delve too deeply into how it finds its way to us.

But the Politics Show this week has a disturbing insight into conditions
facing thousands of workers here in our region.

Many of them are from the ten Eastern European countries which joined the EU
nearly two years ago.

Over 30,000 have registered to work in the West Midlands alone, two thirds
of them from Poland.

Many of them seek work picking and packing fruit and vegetables.

We hear from Dagmara, a young Polish woman who came to this country from the
northern coastal town of Koszalin.

Unemployment in Koszalin runs at 25% and she found it impossible to find
work.

A new world of opportunity opened in May 2004 when Poland joined the EU.

Britain, Ireland and Sweden were the three established EU member nations
which opened their labour markets to migrant workers from the new accession
nations to the east.

But Dagmara says the conditions waiting for her here were "terrible": 20
people sharing a room, sleeping on floorboards and sharing one toilet.

Even when there was no fruit picking work for them to do, they would still
have deductions from their pay to for their accommodation and transport.

Our reporter Sarah Thackray has been talking an employment lawyer who says
he deals with 20 cases like Dagmara's every week.

He says they are usually paid very low wages, sometimes below the minimum
wage, and given fake payslips by unscrupulous gang masters.

In two months' time, the Gangmasters Licensing Authority will be up and
running.

The government is consulting over four options to determine how far up the
food production chain the licensing system should apply.

The unions, farmers and many labour providers themselves favour what has
become known as "Option Four".

The toughest of the four options, it would mean labour providers right
across the food picking, processing and packaging industry would have to be
licensed.

But it is thought ministers may favour a more lenient option, "Option One",
which would apply only to those providing labour in picking and packing.

Those providing workers in processing and shelf-stacking would be exempt.

Warnings are coming from the unions and the licensing authority that if
option one were to be adopted, it would make it impossible for the authority
to do its job of helping to protect workers from exploitation.

The European Commission are urging other established member states to follow
the Britain, Ireland and Sweden's lead and open up their borders to migrant
workers.

But have they anticipated the dangers of exploitation raised by stories like
Dagmara's?

In a break with the line taken by Michael Howard during last year's general
election campaign, the Conservatives' employment spokesman in the European
Parliament, the West Midlands MEP Philip Bushill-Matthews has welcomed the
influx of eastern European workers.

Mr Bushill-Matthews is live on the programme ... as will be John Partridge
from the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU).

The TGWU took the lead in persuading the government to introduce the
Gangmasters' Licensing Authority in the first place.

Farm alarm

It has been described as the biggest shake-up in European farming subsidies
for 30 years.

120,000 farmers have applied for money under the new Single Payment Scheme,
the SPS.

Instead of subsidising farmers for what they produce, the new system is
based on how much land they have and how they use it.

The SPS replaces 10 earlier subsidy schemes so I theory it should be
simpler.

But introducing the complex computer software to implement it has slowed
everything down.

The old subsidy schemes used to start paying out from the beginning of
October.

But our farmers are still waiting for their "new" money, whereas the
counterparts throughout the rest of the EU, including Scotland, Wales and
Northern Ireland, have now received their first instalments.

It is no consolation to them to know that the money has already been paid
over from the EU to the British Government, the Department of Environment
Fisheries and Food (DEFRA) is still working to get the money out through
what it calls the "Payment Window".

DEFRA claims 96% of farmers will get their money before the window closes in
June 2006.

That is many months later than the farmers themselves have been accustomed
to.

Environment Correspondent David Gregory reports live from a dairy farm in
the Stafford constituency of the Labour MP David Kidney.

David Kidney is Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Agriculture and
Environment Minister, Elliot Morley.

The Politics Show

Join presenter Adrian Goldberg for the Politics Show on BBC One on Sunday19
February 2006 at Noon .