Agricultural Wages Act 1948

Supplementary

12 Officers

(1) The Minister may, subject to the consent of the Treasury as to number, appoint such officers as he thinks necessary for the purpose of investigating complaints and otherwise securing the proper observance of this Act.

(2) Every officer appointed under this section shall be furnished by the Minister with a certificate of his employment, and when acting under or exercising any power conferred upon him by this Act shall, if so required, produce the certificate to any person or persons affected.

(3) An officer so appointed shall have power—

(a) after giving reasonable notice, to require the production of and to inspect and take copies of wages sheets or other records of wages paid to workers employed in agriculture ;

(b) to enter at all reasonable times any premises or place for the purpose of such inspection or for the enforcement of this Act, but in the case of a dwelling-house not without giving reasonable notice ; and

(c) to require any such worker, or the employer of any such worker, or any agent of the employer, to give any information which it is in his power to give with respect to the employment of the worker or the wages paid to him.

(4) An officer so appointed shall have power, in pursuance of any special or general directions of the Minister, to take proceedings in respect of offences against this Act and may, although not a barrister or solicitor, prosecute or conduct before a court of summary jurisdiction any proceedings arising under this Act.

(5) Where it appears to an officer so appointed—

(a) that a sum is due from an employer to a worker on account of the payment of wages to him at less than the minimum rate applicable or by reason of a direction given under subsection (1) of section eight of this Act by an agricultural wages committee for the payment of an additional sum by way of wages for piece work ; or

(b) that a sum is due from an employer on account of the receipt of a premium in contravention of subsection (5) of section six of this Act ;

the officer (if he is authorised in that behalf by special or general directions of the Minister) may institute, on behalf of or in the name of the worker, civil proceedings before any competent court of jurisdiction for the recovery of the sum in question, and in any such civil proceedings instituted by the officer the court shall, if the officer is not a party to the proceedings, have the same power to make an order for the payment of costs by the officer as if he were a party to the proceedings.

(6) Nothing in the last preceding subsection shall be taken to exclude the bringing otherwise than in accordance with that subsection of proceedings for the recovery of any such gum as is therein mentioned.

(7) If any person—

(a) hinders or molests an officer acting in the exercise of his powers under subsection (3) of this section ; or

(b) refuses to produce any document or give any information which an officer so acting lawfully requires him to produce or give ; or

(c) produces or causes to be produced or knowingly allows to be produced to an officer so acting any wages sheet, record or other document which is false in a material particular, knowing the document to be false ; or

(d) furnishes to an officer so acting any information knowing it to be false,

he shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding twenty pounds or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three months, or to both such fine and such imprisonment.

13 Annual reports

The Minister shall make an annual report to Parliament of his proceedings under this Act and of the proceedings of the Board and of agricultural wages committees, and for that purpose the Board and each committee shall, before such date in every year as the Minister may fix, send to the Minister a report of their proceedings under this Act during the preceding year.

14 Expenses

The expenses of the Minister in carrying this Act into effect and any expenses authorised by the Minister to be incurred by the Board or an agricultural wages committee or subcommittee thereof, in each case up to an amount approved by the Treasury, shall be defrayed out of moneys provided by Parliament.

15 Evidence of resolutions and orders of the Board and agricultural wages committees

In any legal proceedings the production of a document purporting to be a copy of a resolution or order passed or made by the Board or an agricultural wages committee and to be certified by the chairman or secretary of the Board or committee, as the case may be, to be a true copy shall be sufficient evidence of the order or resolution and, in the case of an order, that any notices required to be given by this Act in relation thereto have been duly given, and no proof shall be required of the handwriting or official position of the person certifying the truth of the copy.

16 Power to give effect to, and modify, this Act as respects holidays and holiday remuneration

(1) The Minister may make regulations for giving effect to the purposes of, and modifying, this Act so far as it relates to holidays and minimum rates of wages by way of pay in respect of holidays, and for excluding, in relation to those matters or either of them, the operation of all or any of the provisions of sections four and ten to thirteen of this Act and paragraph 5 of the Fourth Schedule thereto.

(2) The power conferred by this section shall be exercisable by statutory instrument which shall be subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament.

17 Interpretation

(1) In this Act, unless the context otherwise requires, the following expressions have the meanings hereby respectively assigned to them, that is to say.—

• " agriculture " includes dairy-farming, the production of any consumable produce which is grown for sale or for consumption or other use for the purposes of a trade or business or of any other undertaking (whether carried on for profit or not), and the use of land as grazing, meadow or pasture land or orchard or osier land or woodland or for market gardens or nursery grounds;

• " consumable produce " means produce grown for consumption or for other use after severance from the land on which it is grown ;

• " county " means an administrative county ;

• " employment " means employment under a contract of service or apprenticeship, and the expressions " employed " and " employer " shall be construed accordingly;

• " the Minister " means the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries ;

• " prescribed " means prescribed by regulations made by the Minister by statutory instrument which shall be subject to annulment in pursuance of a resolution of either House of Parliament ;

• " worker " includes a boy, woman and girl.

(2) For the purposes of this Act, a detached part of a county shall be deemed to be included in the adjoining county or, if it adjoins two or more counties, in such one of them as the Minister by statutory instrument directs.

(3) For the purposes of this Act, a county borough which is surrounded by a county shall be deemed to be included in that county, and a county borough which adjoins two or more counties shall be deemed to be included in such of those counties as the Minister by statutory instrument directs.

(4) The Minister may by statutory instrument direct that, for the purposes of this Act, the area comprising the urban districts of Grange, Ulverston and Dalton-in-Furness and the rural district of Ulverston shall be treated as not forming part of the county of Lancaster but as forming part of the county of Cumberland or the county of Westmorland according as may be specified in the direction.

18 London

No agricultural wages committee shall be established for the county of London, but such portions of that county as the Minister may by order made by statutory instrument define shall, for the purposes of this Act, be deemed to be included in such other counties as may be specified in the order.

19 Isles of Scilly

For the purposes of this Act, the Isles of Scilly shall be deemed to be a county.

20 Repeal and savings

(1) The enactments mentioned in the first and second columns of the Fifth Schedule to this Act are hereby repealed to the extent specified in the third column of that Schedule.

(2) Nothing in this Act shall affect any order, regulation or complaint made, permit granted, resolution passed, direction, certificate or approval given, application made or granted, notice served or given, date fixed or any other thing done, under an enactment repealed by this Act, but any such order, regulation, complaint, permit, resolution, direction, certificate, approval, application, notice, date or thing shall, if in force at the passing of this Act, continue in force, and so far as it could have been made, granted, passed, given, served, fixed or done under the corresponding provision of this Act, it shall have effect as if it had been made, granted, passed, given, served, fixed or done under that corresponding provision and, in the case of an approval, had been given for the purposes of that provision.

(3) Any document referring to an enactment repealed by this Act shall be construed as referring to the corresponding provision of this Act.

(4) Any person holding office or acting or serving under or by virtue of an enactment repealed by this Act shall continue to hold his office or to act or serve as if he had been appointed or authorised under or by virtue of the corresponding provision of this Act.

(5) Where an offence, being an offence for the continuance of which a penalty was provided, has been committed under an enactment repealed by this Act, proceedings may be taken under this Act in respect of the continuance of the offence in the same manner as if the offence had been committed under the corresponding provision of this Act.

(6) Where an enactment repealed and re-enacted by this Act provides for the doing of some act within, or not earlier than the expiration of, a specified period from the giving of a notice, and the commencement of this Act falls within the period applicable to the giving of a particular notice, the repeal and re-enactment shall be deemed to have taken effect in relation to that notice immediately before the giving thereof.

(7) The mention of particular matters in this section shall not be taken to affect the general application of section thirty-eight of the [52 & 53 Vict. c. 63.] Interpretation Act, 1889, with regard to the effect of repeals.

21 Short title and extent

(1) This Act may be cited as the Agricultural Wages Act, 1948.

(2) This Act shall not extend to Scotland or to Northern Ireland.