The chief of the food and drink sector skills council, Improve, has responded with ‘disappointment’ to the government’s decision not to relax the rules restricting the number of Bulgarian and Romanian workers allowed to apply for jobs in the UK’s food processing industry.

Jack Matthews, chief executive of Improve, gave evidence before the government’s Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) in October, arguing that Bulgarian and Romanian nationals could offer short-term relief for an industry hit hard by the recent sudden exodus of migrant workers from countries such as Poland, Lithuania and Slovakia.

Eastern European nationals account for around one in seven employees in the food processing industry. Current restrictions only allow Bulgarian and Romanian workers to be employed in meat, fish and mushroom processing.

But despite announcing an increase in the quota of Bulgarian and Romanian nationals allowed to work in the agricultural sector under the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme (SAWS), the MAC yesterday said it would not be making any changes to the rules for food processing workers at present.

Matthews said: “It is a disappointment that the MAC has not seen fit to extend the number of Bulgarian and Romanian workers in food processing. However, I do welcome their commitment to considering the extension of the current quota to cover other food manufacturing occupations - for example, fresh produce, dairy and chilled and frozen foods.

“Additionally, I welcome the further request from the MAC for information [from Improve] that could alter its current definition of what constitutes a skilled occupation within the UK food and drink sector.

“Even in the current economic climate, there are still some critical skilled occupations which are not being filled by the domestic workforce,” he said.

Restrictions on the numbers of Bulgarian and Romanian nationals allowed to enter the UK to work were imposed when the two countries joined the EU in 2007. No such restrictions exist for nationals of any other EU member state and all immigration quotas between EU countries will have to be scrapped by 2011.

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