Prisoners could work on farms to make up for migrant shortfall
FARMERS say prisoners who are allowed to work on day release could help fill the post-Brexit void left by EU fruit pickers.
Ministers are planning to relax the rules that will allow more offenders out to work while they complete their sentences.
At present, offenders in open prisons must wait a year before being allowed out to work in the community, but last week David Gauke, the Justice Secretary, proposed that they could be allowed to work on day release to boost their job prospects.
Recruitment agencies for farmers said last year that they were struggling to find seasonal workers from Europe, leading to a 12.5 per cent shortfall in the workforce, or 4,000 workers.
Around 99 per cent of seasonal workers on British farms come from eastern Europe, with two thirds from Romania and Bulgaria. Suzannah Star
Just for kicks
key, who runs Starkey’s Fruit in Northamptonshire, said that she was in discussions about how to recruit prisoners to pick strawberries and apples at her farm come harvest season.
The farmer said that she would be happy for them to start as soon as September to harvest her Bramley apples, and that she had sought advice from John Timpson, the businessman who hires offenders and ex-offenders in his Timpson’s shops.
She said: “I will be getting in touch with my local prison and tell them who I am and what I want, and they will go and find potential people for my fruit farm. They are free to work just like any other employee, they come here, work and go back with their pay packet.
“I think we should as a society give chances to these people [and] give them a place in society.”
Farmers are currently worried that post-Brexit it will be difficult to get seasonal workers for their farms.
Ms Starkey said that this could be an option to plug the labour gap.
She said: “It’s an option after Brexit – we haven’t had a problem for 20 years of employing people.
“If it does get broken, we need an extra option quickly.”
The National Farmers’ Union agreed that this would be a good idea, but a spokesman said it had not been approached yet by the Ministry of Justice.
He added: “It is clear that labour availability on farms is tightening and a solution is needed to ensure farmers and growers have access to a competent and reliable workforce both now and post-Brexit.”