Short term measures to bring in more migrant workers vital

THE scale to which Britain relied on foreign workers for many of its vital services may not have been entirely clear to the majority of the population before Britain left the European Union. But now, with a combination of the pandemic and changing rules on the movement of labour across European borders having sent many of them home, there is no hiding place.

Over the medium to long term the government’s aim, of encouraging more UK businesses to recruit more UK workers to fill those roles, must be the right one. It may mean prices have to rise and there will be some pain along the way, as the labour market adjusts to cope with the changes. But any nation with aspirations to make its citizens wealthier needs to get more people into employment and pay them properly for the jobs that need doing.

The Western Morning News has consistently argued for that change – not least because here in the South West we have some of the lowest salaries in the country, while costs – particularly housing costs – are among the highest. Better rates of pay is one sure way to help iron out that anomaly.

But it is becoming abundantly clear that while ministers keep on trotting out the argument that they want businesses to adjust to meet the needs of UK workers and improve training, terms and conditions and rates of pay, many essential roles are going unfilled.

This is not just leaving businesses a bit short of a few staff for a few months. As we have seen in the past few months, important services, from keeping our supermarket shelves stacked, our petrol filling stations topped up, our fruit picked and – as the WMN reports today – our livestock and meat industries running smoothly, are all being seriously affected.

The only solution, it seems, is to boost – at least in the short-term – the number of foreign workers allowed to come to Britain and do those vital jobs. There is, of course, no guarantee they will come, given the continuing issues around the coronavirus pandemic. They may have got out of the habit of seeing Britain as a good place to work; they may feel after Brexit they are no longer welcome here. And they may well want better rates of pay than they were receiving if they do come.

But if the economy is to continue its recovery from the pandemic across all sectors the workforce needs a filip and the only place that can come from, at least in the short term, is abroad.

There is absolutely no point in ardent Remainers reminding everyone that Brexit is to blame. Ministers can reasonably be criticised for failing to prepare for this eventuality – but businesses too must bear some of the blame for failing to ready themselves for a situation that must have been easily foreseen.

This is not, solely, a government problem, but it will be for government to sort it out. Warm words about ‘considering the options’ or ‘working with industry’, won’t wash. We need urgent action to open the way for migrant workers to come in and pick up the pieces, sharpish.

We can argue later about how this issue is sorted over the long term and how we build a more resilient workforce. For now, we just need the workers.