Migration report fails to deal with sector’s labour shortage
While the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) report looking into the use of a points-based system and salary thresholds for workers coming into the UK after Brexit marks some progress, it still falls shortofdeliveringforscotland’s food and farming sectors.
That was the view delivered yesterday by NFU Scotland – which welcomed some of the changes proposed by the MAC report which was published yesterday but claimed they didn’t go far enough to eradicate the spectre of labour shortages which haunts the fields, processing plants and other sectors of the agri-food labour market.
The union’s parliamentary affairs manager, Clare Slipper, said that while the proposed move away from an arbitrary wage threshold of £30,000 was to be welcomed, the union still disputed the need for wage thresholds at all.
She said there was no evidence that such measures were required to prevent undercutting in the labour market.
“Similarly, the MAC’S fixation on academic skills is problematic and fails to recognise the clear evidence that was illustrated in NFUS’ submission that the vast majority of roles within the entire agri-food chain may not require a level of academic qualification but are extremely technically and manually skilled,” said Slipper.
“In addition, setting an arbitrary definition of ‘skills’ also fails to account for the skills that an employee will accrue whilst in a post – to operate machinery, or undertake skilled husbandry of crops and animals.”
But Slipper said that the union welcomed the fact that the MAC was still advising the government to retain a seasonal agricultural workers scheme – and that it would lobby for a “robust, fully-operational scheme” to be in place by the time the current pilot comes to an end in January 2021:
“Any new SAWS scheme must offer permits to some 70,000 workers from outside the UK for up to nine months,” she added.
But she said that the union was mindful that, despite the advice from MAC, it would be for the Home Office to respond and make final proposals – and added that the union, together with others in the agri-food chain, would continue to push for a sensible and effective migration policy which met the needs of the sector to be up and running by the end of the year.