Seasonal Worker Visas: Sponsorship Certificates

George Eustice Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Home Secretary if she will make a statement on the issuing of certificates of sponsorship for seasonal workers’ visas.

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for asking this urgent question. The Home Office recognises the importance of the UK food and drink sector, and the agricultural industry that supplies it. The seasonal agricultural workers scheme exists to support those businesses and ensure that they have the labour they need. The quota for 2022 was 38,000 workers for the edible and ornamental horticulture sector, and a further 2,000 for the poultry sector. That quota has not yet been met, and the Home Office’s management data suggest that about 1,400 places remain.

An announcement on the 2023 scheme is imminent. My Department and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will be making that statement very soon. In the meantime, workers already in the United Kingdom under the seasonal agricultural workers scheme can continue to take other work placements and to stay in the UK for up to six months, even if that involves remaining here into 2023. Further workers can avail themselves of the remaining 1,400 certificates and enter the UK this year—even if, again, that means staying into 2023—for the duration of their six-month placement. My Department is committed to supporting this important sector and to working with stakeholders to improve the delivery of schemes such as the one for seasonal agricultural workers.

[George Eustice]

The seasonal worker visa scheme has been a tremendous success—perhaps one of the most successful Home Office policies in recent years—and this year it has provided about two thirds of the labour needs of the horticultural sector. However, there have been some serious problems with administration. In particular, scheme operators need to be issued with an allocation of certificates of sponsorship now, so that they can recruit people and secure the visas necessary for workers to start in January.

Last year, the Home Office allowed certificates of sponsorship in 2021 to be used as the basis for workers arriving in January 2022. This year, for reasons that have not been properly explained, Home Office officials have taken a decision not to allow that and have made it clear to operators that they cannot use that route. Indeed, I understand that they have closed the ability to issue certificates of sponsorship from the end of November, so that no one at the moment is able to issue them.

There are two legitimate courses of action. One would be to allow the same situation to apply as last year, and enable the remaining certificates of sponsorship for this year to be used for workers arriving in January. The second course of action would be to make a provisional allocation of certificates of sponsorship on the sponsorship management system run by the Home Office. This could be done very easily and would enable operators to recruit staff in the next few weeks.

That is of critical importance to the daffodil industry in my constituency. Daffodil growers currently have around a third of their staff from last year’s scheme, a third of them being settled EU citizens. At the moment they are going to have a gap of between 30% and 40% of their staffing needs, which will be catastrophic for the industry by the end of January. So will the Minister take immediate action directing his officials to put a provisional allocation of certificates for sponsorship on to the Home Office sponsorship management system?

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who of course brings more expertise to this issue than anybody in the House. He rightly says that the seasonal agricultural workers scheme has been a success and is an important contributor to the food and drink sector in this country, but he raises important issues, and I intend to take them up with my officials.

Parts of the sector, such as the daffodil industry, require workers early in the year, meaning that we need to take steps to ensure that those businesses can make sensible recruitment decisions in good time, and not leave these decisions, as has happened too often, to the eleventh hour. I appreciate that last year the decision on the seasonal agricultural workers scheme was announced on Christmas eve, which no doubt was a cause of significant frustration for those working in the sector. I will work intensively with my officials to ensure that we get that decision out as quickly as possible.

In the interim, two options are available to the industry: first, to make use of workers already in the UK under the seasonal agricultural workers scheme who have been doing other work until now but might want to move into a sector such as daffodils as quickly as possible for the remainder of their time in the UK; secondly, new individuals could enter the UK under the scheme using the undercapacity within the 2022 placement, and stay into 2023.

My right hon. Friend raises with me this morning the issue that the Home Office has frozen certificates, making it impossible for employers to bring people in and make use of the remaining certificates in this year’s quota. I have been informed by my officials this morning that nothing has changed from the way the scheme worked last year. If that is incorrect, I will change that today and ensure that the scheme is unfrozen so that important employers such as those my right hon. Friend rightly represents can make use of the remaining certificates before the end of the year. If it is correct that the Home Office has frozen these certificates, I apologise to businesses who have been inadvertently inconvenienced by that and I hope that the Environment Secretary and I can resolve this as quickly as possible.