Scotland needs powers to suit country’s issues

We are now entering berry-picking season, a time of year that reminds me of the hard graft I did as a youngster when at the start of summer I’d go out and pick berries in order to earn money for my school uniform.

Obviously kids picking fruit in that way is rightfully an outdated thing of the past and times have changed as our fruit and veg growers moved to a professionalised system for picking.

However, it is clear that this great pastime and business of fruit-picking – which we have a proud heritage of here in Perthshire – is under threat.

Late last year Blairgowrie-based Peter Thomson announced that he would give away his entire 60 acre crop of blueberry bushes, while in May soft fruit farmer Ross Mitchell, based a little up the road in Laurencekirk, Aberdeenshire, took to Twitter to show that he was mulching much of his blueberry crop.

The businesses complained that the cost of growing, picking, packing and transporting blueberries to the supermarket made the work and crop unviable, as they compete with genetically-enhanced fruit grown in Peru, where workers are paid 10 times less and a crop is generated year-round. Labour is over 60 per cent of production costs.

It is the cost and access to labour that is central to this issue.

I recently met with local veg growers and NFU members, which are particularly reliant on migrant workers to pick their product, and they informed me that postBrexit the adaptation to the UK government’s Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme has been far from easy, and certainly more complicated than the EU’s Freedom of

Movement that ensured citizens were able to freely move between the EU’s Member States and allowing businesses a continent-wide recruitment talent pool without consideration for bureaucratic hurdles or a burdensome visa process.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman recently suggested that there“was no good reason”why the UK cannot train its own fruit pickers in a statement deemed‘naive’and requiring“a move away from anti-migration politics and rhetoric to make good policy”by NFU Scotland horticulture chair Iain Brown.

Despite industry expertise saying otherwise Tory politicians have been quick to back up the Home Secretary’s opinion and have looked to muddy the waters by presenting the idea that Scotland is an unappealing destination for migrants due to an apparent dislike of the SNP, rather than the reality of Brexit and unfriendly attitudes espoused by high-profile Tories.

Prior to Brexit businesses recruited people primarily from eastern Europe, who typically had an agricultural background and found the transition to working the fields in Scotland an easy one to make.

However, workers are now arriving from destinations such as south-east Asia and West Africa and, while there is the relative attraction of income for them, they are unprepared for the Scottish climate and cases have been reported of workers breaking off their contract early into the arrangement once enough income and other opportunities arise.

Businesses go out of pocket and can’t reimburse that fee.

The situation as it stands suits nobody. Neither local businesses nor the workers

Scotland absolutely needs the powers over migration to create policies that fit our unique circumstances.

It is certainly not a case that it is the SNP at the root of the recruitment problem.

Rather, it’s a case of the off-putting and unappealing Brexit that has put off those sought by the horticultural sector.