We depend on ‘cut-price labour from overseas’

Bridgwater and West Somerset MP Ian Liddell-Grainger warns Defra Secretary Steve Barclay the new immigration controls could end up doing more harm than good

DEAR Steve, I am still ploughing through the small print of the new rules on immigration launched this week and while I see little that might affect the recruiting of temporary farm labour – already, in my view, an over-complicated and onerous process for both sides – I couldn’t help feeling more than a little uncomfortable with the general tone of it.

And for all that some sections of the public and indeed many politicians have been getting rather exercised about the pressure the UK is facing from illegal immigration or asylum claimants, neither of those issues is being addressed.

It’s tantamount to someone being told their central heating boiler is on the blink and deciding to fix it by having the bedroom painted.

I particularly disliked the reference to “cracking down on cut-price labour from overseas” which, of course, we have been relying on in areas like the care sector for many years.

People from other, more impoverished countries are always going to want to come and work here because our pay scales are comparatively more generous. Let me cite the case of a local fruit grower who a few years ago temporarily took on a couple of Polish women who were using their summer holidays to earn a little extra cash. One was a doctor, the other a vet.

People like Nigel Farage are always shouting the odds about workers from other countries coming to the UK and “stealing our jobs”. That is a gross distortion. They have come here to fill the vacancies in areas like the health service because there are insufficient, suitably qualified – or often motivated – Britons available to take them up.

A friend who recently spent a day in the local hospital said he counted staff of six different nationalities working at various levels on his ward and reflected that if it were not for them, the hospital would not be able to function at all.

And all of them will be paying tax, eating, shopping and paying bills as a significant contribution to the economy.

Farming, of course, is a classic example where we had through our EU membership built up quite a dependence on overseas workers to the mutual benefit of employer and employee.

It’s fine for some people to blithely declare that British workers are just as capable as any of harvesting peas or cutting cauliflowers. The problem is they aren’t interested in doing so. They lack – if I can couch it in the politest possible terms – the same work ethic. Innumerable producers have tried to recruit seasonal staff locally and have found that after complaining about the long hours and the rain they have simply failed to turn up after a couple of days.

So the effect of the tougher controls on seasonal labour has been the prospect of crops rotting unharvested in the fields and our food producers facing thumping great financial loss. How much sense does that make?

As someone pointed out this week, the best way to deal with the “shortage occupation list” would surely be to ensure that the UK has ample engineers, programme developers, vets, architects, artists, bricklayers, roofers, carpenters, plasterers, care workers, pharmacists, nurses, radiographers, paramedics, maths teachers, etc to fill the roles.

And since, even if we started now, it would be years before we could train up the necessary numbers of people, merely heaping up more obstacles in the way of those professionals who actually want to come here and fill the current vacancies. It would be an exercise in shooting ourselves in the foot. Or, indeed, feet. Yours ever,

Ian

Picture: Michael Bentley > People from other, more impoverished countries are always going to want to come and work here because our pay scales are more generous, says Ian