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Agriculture: Seasonal Workers

Answer

Defra will continue to closely monitor the supply of labour to UK horticulture throughout the year, working with operators and sector growers to ensure there is sufficient labour to bring home the harvest this summer.

On 24 December 2021, the Government announced that the Seasonal Worker Visa Route has been extended to 2024 to allow overseas workers to come to the UK for up to six months to harvest both edible and ornamental crops. An initial allocation of 30,000 visas was made available in 2022. This was being kept under review with the potential to increase by up to 10,000 visas if there was evidence of need.

We have just announced in the Food Strategy that the Government will release an extra 10,000 visas for the Seasonal Worker visa route (bringing the total to 40,000 visas for 2022) with 8,000 of these going to the horticulture sector and 2,000 to the poultry sector.

A Request for Information (RFI) to recruit additional operators for the horticulture and poultry sectors went live Monday 27 June 2022. The RFI is for one additional operator for the horticulture sector and two operators for the poultry sector. This brings the total number of operators for the horticulture sector to five and two for the poultry sector.

While acknowledging the sector’s reliance on foreign workers the Government has been clear that more must be done to attract UK workers through offering training, career options, wage increases and to invest in increased automation technology.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

25878

Session

2022-23

Subjects

Agriculture Migrant workers Seasonal workers Visas

Link

View this Written question on www.parliament.uk