We need migrant workers not hostility
NATURE abhors a vacuum. Nowhere is this more true than in relation to our dependence upon migrant workers right across the economy.
The shortages of medical staff in the NHS have been well documented and at the weekend we learnt the full extent of vacancies in agriculture. The vacuum left by the 4,300 unfilled jobs in the sector, 99% of which would hitherto have been filled by EU migrants, has been filled instead by rotting fruit and veg on our farms and orchards, according to new survey data from the National Farmers Union. Various reasons for the post-referendum decline in numbers have been advanced, increases in hostility towards migrants and the decrease in the value of the pound among them.
Another vacuum currently unfilled but intimately connected to our agriculture and other sectors is the Government’s policy vacuum on migration. We have been promised a paper for months yet the vacuum persists. We have to ask why it’s taking so long. The answer may lie in the realisation that as our population ages and we have full employment and unfilled jobs in many sectors at home we will be reliant on migrant labour for some time to come. Migration was one of the main drivers in the vote for Brexit yet the Government must fully realise that whatever policy on migration it comes up with it will not significantly reduce the need for migrant workers. How is it going to sell that to those who voted for Brexit? Unless they find a way the vacuum will be filled by the same ill-formed arguments about access to public services, the same resentments will fester.
As things presently stand it is moot whether in a post-Brexit world enough will want to come. The consensus of financial opinion is that post-Brexit the UK will grow more slowly than our G7 competitors but grow it may, helped by global economic growth. This in itself should increase demand for labour and in theory increase wages, satisfying the urgent domestic need for real wage growth, and act as a draw for migrant labour. Whatever policy the Government comes up with it must recognise that we will need migrant workers at the same rate as we experienced before the referendum, and it must address the issue of hostility towards them. Robin Lynn Penarth