A report compiled for the British government’s Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) has further illustrated the crucial role of seasonal migrant workers and the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Scheme (SAWS) to the horticulture sector.
The report, published by the University of Liverpool, provided an independent analysis and assessment of staff shortages and immigration in agriculture and finds that growers are heavily reliant on seasonal migrant workers but are finding it increasingly difficult to source this type of labour.
UK agriculture appears to be facing a structural dilemma and associated demand-supply disequilibrium, the report finds. Many farmers feel “hemmed in”, walking a “tightrope of profitability”, and migrant labour provides a vital source of balance on this tightrope.
The report concludes: “Immigration has undoubtedly helped UK companies remain competitive, but only over the short- to medium-term.” It recommends that growers improve the pay and conditions of farm workers, in an attempt to make the sector more attractive to prospective British and foreign labour. “It is not possible to see how farmers could restructure to remove the need for low-skilled, low-paid, and temporary or seasonal work, without considerable side-effects,” it says.
Migrant worker is irreplaceable by domestic workers, however, for various reasons, including: “Agricultural employers do not look favourably on the inactive British and many have had very bad experiences of hiring them in the past” and “the British see agricultural work as a ‘dead-end’ option and this causes attitudinal problems”.
Greater immigration is an immediate solution to agricultural labour shortages but it appears that migrants may have to be attracted from outside the EU in the coming years. “If some form of migration from outside the EU is required in the short-term this assumes that business cannot persuade more EU migrants to come to the UK and/or inactive British workers cannot be supported back to work. In that case, a SAWS-type migration stream is the mechanism favoured by UK farmers,” the report concludes.
“UK farmers currently have, and have always had a need for seasonal migrant workers, and it is difficult to see this need ever disappearing. If demand remains, and if the supply of UK workers remains low, then temporary migrant worker schemes may be the only answer, even in the long-run. There is no need for such a scheme to be geographically restricted: indeed developing two-way educational, cultural and work-based links between UK employers, universities, and workers/students outside the current EU27 is likely to bring a number of advantages to the agricultural sector and beyond."
The key question is whether the government wants to open up new sources of migrant labour from outside the EU, the report says. “It is important to distinguish between addressing immediate labour shortages and addressing, over the longer-term, the causes of these shortages. In terms of the latter, it is really about those who control and profit most from the UK food system (consumers, supermarkets, and large international food suppliers) and developing a vision for the type of agricultural employment they want to reside over in future.
“Immigration is the cheapest and easiest option for both business and UK consumers. The question is what price business, consumers and the government are willing to pay if, collectively, they want to stop immigration because, very simply, we cannot have cheap British food without cheap British-based (if not British born) labour.”
Richard Hirst, NFU horticulture board chairman, said: “We welcome the recognition in the report that there is a need for a SAWS-type scheme to provide the seasonal labour that horticultural businesses require and we endorse the comments that such a scheme for workers outside the 27 EU countries would bring economic and cultural advantages extending beyond the agricultural sector. We fully accept there is a balance of solutions to the demand for seasonal labour, but seasonal migrants must be a part of that balance.
“This paper provides a valuable independent analysis of the problems that are currently being faced by the sector. I hope the MAC will give it serious consideration and that it leads to an urgent review of both the size of the existing SAWS quota and a re-think by the Government towards allowing workers from outside the 27 EU countries to enter the UK under the SAWS scheme.”
