Your country needs you, Professor Emma Thompson of Hogwarts

Gordon Brown reduces the number of women in top jobs in government, and announces that he's taking advice from a coterie of millionaire businessmen. One of them, Sir Terry Leahy of Tesco, can look forward to a bonus that could be as high as [pound]11m after protesters failed to block a new pay structure for him at the AGM last Friday.

In the event, more than 16 per cent of them voiced their disapproval, but were overruled. When Gordon, Alan (Sugar), Stuart (Rose of M&S) and Terry are having their chats in the coming months, I wonder if they will be inviting actress Emma Thompson along. The latest Harry Potter bonanza opens in cinemas in the UK on 12 July, and has already received rave reviews. Emma is in top form as Hogwarts stalwart Professor Trelawney, complete with mad hair and milk-bottle glasses. When not dealing with Daniel Radcliffe and his classmates, Miss Thompson has a lot to say about Tesco and how our big supermarkets pay their workers, but it's not necessarily what Terry wants to hear. Gordon may be declaring a war on poverty, but if that's the case he's chosen rum bedmates.

Since 2001, Emma has worked as an ambassador and spokeswoman for ActionAid, an international development and anti-poverty charity, travelling to Ethiopia, Uganda, Mozambique and the Western Cape in South Africa. A year ago, the charity brought Gertruida Baartman, a fruit picker on a farm that supplies Tesco, to the AGM in London to protest about appalling wages paid to workers. She received a standing ovation and Tesco listened to Gertruida and promised to help her. She had made a protest at last year's AGM, and was sacked on her return, despite Tesco's assurances of protection. But she was reinstated after her union intervened. Last week she came back to tell Tesco conditions have "improved" on her farm - she's now paid a whopping 38p an hour - but all over Africa, men and women picking vegetables for Tesco aren't being paid enough to live on.

Tesco and other British supermarkets have signed up to the Ethical Trading Initiative, which seeks to impose a code of conduct on suppliers. But the ETI has not done enough, and an independent report showed that there has been little overall change. Emma Thompson, unlike Sir Terry Leahy, has taken time out to visit South Africa and see conditions for herself.

At one farm, she found 80 women who worked from 7am to 6pm for 38p an hour. In April, Tesco announced record profits of [pound]2.6bn, at a time when many consumers are starting to ask whether we should be more vigilant about what foreign workers are paid, and War on Want highlighted the plight of workers in Bangladesh making cheap clothes for British chain stores.

At Tesco's AGM last week, the retail giant was faced with a resolution calling on it to have independent monitoring of foreign workers' pay and conditions, and one shareholder after another stood up to express concern. Tesco's media director tells us, "We ... have not found any evidence to suggest there is a problem." Well, I'd like him to get off his backside and go and live in South Africa on 38p an hour and come back and tell you and me he had a perfectly acceptable time.

We know standards of living are lower in Third World countries. But our obscene desire for cheap food and unnecessary cheap clothing are ensuring people like Gertruida can't possibly afford to care for their families. The war between our supermarkets in being played out through the plight of these low- paid workers on the breadline. Of course Tesco should continue to source produce from Africa - providing jobs vital to fragile economies - but they are guilty of the worst kind of imperialism when they treat their workers so badly.

I would be ashamed to eat anything packed by another woman for 38p an hour, but maybe Sir Terry has a thicker skin. In any event, Emma Thompson would make a far better supper date for Mr Brown than Terry Leahy, and she's a bigger star too.

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