Latest seasonal worker plan ‘is too little too late’
It was a case of two cheers from the farming industry yesterday for Home Office plans for a new seasonal labour pilot scheme aimed at addressing the growing shortfall in the migrant labour which plays a crucial role in harvesting the country’s fruit and vegetables.
And the scheme announced yesterday proposing a two-year pilot between spring 2019 and December 2020 allowing a total of 2,500 non-eu migrant workers to work on farms for six months was condemned as falling “significantly short” of the number required.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid said that farmers were vital to the UK’S economy and, promising to support them while reducing migration to sustainable levels, he said: “This pilot will ensure farmers have access to the seasonal labour they need to remain productive and profitable during busy times of the year.”
However, while there was a welcome for the government’s recognition of the growing need for non-eu workers, especially following Brexit, and for the introduction of a seasonal agricultural workers scheme (Saws), strong reservations were voiced across the industry over the limited number of
workers allowed under the pilot scheme.
Nick Marston, chairman of British Summer Fruits – the trade body which represents the growers of 97 per cent of berries supplied to UK supermarkets – said that farms were already facing acute labour shortages: “UK horticulture employs 60,000 seasonal staff from the EU annually, with berries alone accounting for 29,000 workers.”
He said if the UK government really wanted to support the success of the fruit and veg sectors, around 10,000 workers were urgently required to fill the gap, not 2,500, adding: “This number will have little effect on the current shortages UK farms are facing as we speak.”
Stating that Germany currently had 60,000 permits for Ukrainian seasonal workers, Marston said that the last UK SAWS scheme in 2013 allowed 21,250 workers to enter the
UK from Romania and Bulgaria prior to their accession to the EU: “And we then had unfettered access to workers to the ‘EU 8’ and still needed over 21,000 extra staff a year.”
He said that the drop in the number of EU seasonal workers – which was already occurring but which was likely to increase substantially after Brexit – would suggest that a non-eu SAWS scheme would need to provide similar numbers as the 2013 quota of over 20,000 workers if the industry was to continue to thrive.
NFU Scotland’s horticultural chairman James Porter said the lack of labour had been a serious problem over the past two seasons but the scheme could be a positive step.
However he agreed that the proposed numbers in the pilot fell “significantly short” of what was likely to be needed.