Help fruit pickers to work in UK after 2019, urges MP

URGENT ACTION is required to ensure foreign fruit and vegetable pickers can continue to work in the UK post Brexit, Ministers have been warned.

The farming industry and MPs have called for clarity on the rules that will apply to seasonal migrants after March 2019.

An estimated 80,000 seasonal pickers came to work in the UK last year and the industry expects that figure to rise to about 95,000 by 2019.

Tory MP Kirstene Hair, during a Commons debate, called for the introduction of a seasonal visa scheme as a matter of urgency, warning Ministers that the industry could spiral into “turmoil”.

She said: “With regards to a solution there is only one choice in my view, the introduction of a system that permits individuals from European and non-European states to come to the UK specifically to carry out this seasonal work.”

She added: “Ahead of harvest 2018, it is imperative that we act now, our farmers cannot plan.”

Ms Hair added that the foreign workforce was needed as there was not the workforce “willing to undertake the lifestyle necessary for harvesting crops” in the UK.

She said: “This is not labour that can be undertaken by the existing British workforce; we do not have the numbers in the rural areas which require them, nor do we have those who are willing to undertake the lifestyle necessary for harvesting crops.

“Early starts and intensive work is the norm and, as I said before, this is skilled work.”

She added: “There’s a producer who I shan’t name, but who in two instances has attempted to find seasonal staff from the local workforce.

“On the first occasion the producer worked with the local job centre, advertised extensively on social media and indeed in the recruitment section of the local newspaper, there was a high volume of local applications and the producer went on to hire 90 workers. Within three weeks only 10 members of staff remained.”

Environment Secretary Michael Gove has previously said the case for a seasonal agriculture workers scheme after Brexit is “compelling”.