'It defies belief!' Coventry MP blasts top Tory's call for pensioners to work as crop pickers

[dutchman]

Labour MP Jim Cunningham said idea of pensioners being 'frogmarched' to work in crop fields is 'preposterous'


Former environment secretary Owen Paterson

A former Tory minister stunned cabinet colleagues with plans to pull pensioners out of care homes and make them do gruelling crop picking work, it has been claimed.

Liberal Democrat David Laws, a former schools minister, made the claim in his new book about his time serving in the Conservative Lib Dem coalition.

He said then environment secretary Owen Paterson proposed his idea to stunned colleagues as a way of cutting eastern European immigration.

Mr Paterson, it was claimed, suggested exploiting the elderly by plucking them out of retirement to pick crops for less than the minimum wage.

He told a cabinet coalition meeting he planned to scrap a scheme that allowed EU migrants to come to the UK to do ­unpopular jobs in the fields.

When a colleague suggested the move would be unpopular with farmers, who would no longer find it easy to employ cheap labour for the back-breaking work, defiant Mr Paterson reportedly replied: “We’ll try to get more British pensioners picking some of the fruit and vegetables in the fields instead.

“Of course, getting pensioners to do this work could lead to an increase in farmers’ costs. After all, they may be a bit slower doing the work. I’ve thought of that too.

“We might arrange to exempt British pensioners from the minimum-wage laws, to allow them to do this work.”

Mr Laws wrote in his book ‘The Inside Story Of The Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition’: “Cabinet colleagues, even the more right-wing Tories, listened in stunned silence” and that one Whitehall official “tried, unsuccessfully, to stifle a laugh”.

Critics hit out at Mr Paterson’s idea – proposed amid fears of an influx of Bulgarians and Romanians as laws stopping them working here were about to be lifted.

Among those to lambast the proposals was Jim Cunningham, Labour MP for Coventry South.

He said: “This is horrifying example of the views that senior Tories can hold behind closed doors.

“The idea that immigration could be reduced by frog-marching pensioners out of care homes and into manual labour is preposterous.

“To add insult to injury the then environment secretary proposed that such a scheme would pay less than the minimum wage.

“It defies belief such a ridiculous notion can be put forward at the highest levels of government as a serious alternative to the employment of seasonal migrant workers.

“It further shows the government has no respect either for the minimum wage or for the dignity of pensioners up and down the country.”

[Melisandre]

I wonder how a psychiatrist would dianose Paterson but then this kind of barbaric method seems to be rife in the conservative party hitting out at the weak . I wonder is Paterson a distant relation to the Queen like Borris and Cameron.

[rebbonk]

Paterson is claiming this is all taken out of context and Laws is trying to promote a book. I'm not sure just how much credibility this 'story' has.

Owens story...

[Melisandre]

He is saying the industry says but not actually saying what he actually said.
As of lack of employement here for this industry is untrue there were documentaries about this a few years ago the locals who use to pick the crops who still wanted to pick the crops were in compition with the gang master going to Europe for lower pay workers .

[rebbonk]

It's all down to money isn't it?

Chasing and worshiping the little God of money.

[dutchman]

The industry proposed various options, which were discussed with a number of Cabinet colleagues including the possibility of extending the scheme to non-EU countries and that young UK unemployed should be encouraged to sign up through workfare schemes with horticultural businesses.

In what way is that not "forced labour"?