The fight to save the Agricultural Wages Board has stepped up gear as the Unite union announces it is lobbying peers.

Unite is targeting Labour and LibDem peers ahead of tomorrow's crucial debate on the future of the board in the House of Lords.

Unite national officer for agriculture Julia Long said: “Many peers share our sense of outrage, both at the government’s plan to decimate rural workers’ livelihoods, and at the underhand and dishonourable way in which it has been done.

“The AWB’s abolition will take £247 million out of the pockets of agricultural workers in the next 10 years, according to DEFRA’s own figures.”

She said the supermarkets would be the ones to benefit from a move and described the major retailers as “hell-bent on driving down workers’ wages to poverty levels”.

The union – the largest in the UK – is calling on peers to reject the government's amendment to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform bil which seeks to abolish the AWB. Peers are being urged by Unite to vote against the bill at the report stage which is likely to take place at the end of February or beginning of March.

According to Unite, some 60 per cent of responses to the government’s consultation were in favour of retention of the board. In its own submission Unite argued that supermarkets – and the growers that supply them – are behind moves to abolish the AWB in order to drive down labour costs.

The National Farmers' Union wants to see the AWB abolished and the national minimum wage legislation applied instead.