Labour fears prompt Saws call

A call for an immediate reintroduction of the seasonal agricultural workers scheme (Saws) to give some certainty over labour supply was made yesterday – as it was revealed that vegetable crops in Scotland were being fed to animals due to a shortage of workers to pick them.

The devaluation of sterling together with the uncertainties of Brexit has already resulted in the nightmare scenario of crops remaining unharvested due to the lack of immigrant labour, an NFU Scotland press briefing revealed yesterday.

Host farmer John Sin- clair, owner of Craigies Farm shop, stressed the need for continued access to EU labour for seasonal work. He said: “If this issue is not addressed this will lead to production shifting to other places where the labour supply is more secure and will lead to the country importing more instead of growing what we can here.”

He said that while a project to recruit more local labour had proved partially successful, workers had indicated that unless the pay was well above the national wage there would be few willing to do field work on a regular basis.

NFU Scotland chief executive Scott Walker said that it was “a huge disappointment” that no Saws had yet been introduced – as the framework was already there.

“Settingupsuchascheme shouldn’t be difficult to do – as a Saws was in operation until 2013 while Romania and Bulgaria were in the process of joining the EU.”

He said that the lack of progress was the result of buck-passing between statutory bodies.

“While both the Migration Advisory Committee and the Foreign Office seem to be in agreement that such a scheme should be reintroduced, there would appear to be some disagreement about who should initiate such a move,” said Walker.