Seasonal Worker Visas: Sponsorship Certificates

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

I thank the right hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) for asking this urgent question today. He has drawn attention to concerns faced by the daffodil industry in Cornwall—a place I hope to visit over the Christmas break; I am often in his constituency—and those concerns are shared by sectors throughout these industries.

The National Farmers Union says that as much as £60 million of food has been wasted on farms due to labour shortages. During a cost of living crisis, that is disgraceful. Where shortages are linked to pay and conditions, those must be improved, and we will work with industry to deliver. However, countries across the world require seasonal schemes to help support agriculture and horticulture. We need a properly delivered seasonal worker scheme, announced in advance with long-term action to tackle shortages, not panicked short-term announcements without any underlying strategy.

The average time taken to process a sponsorship application has more than trebled over recent years, meaning less certainty for business and more produce going to waste. What steps is the Minister taking to reduce that time? The Home Office has been warned about exploitation in this scheme, including from the results of a Government review last year and reports of recruitment fees charged by agents abroad. Have those warnings been listened to, and what safeguards have been introduced to ensure serious exploitation is not allowed to continue? Finally, this is the latest in a long series of delays, backlogs and chaos from the Home Office. It is not fair on the public and it is not fair on the sectors that rely on the Government to run smoothly; can we confidently say that this is a Home Office we can trust to get a grip?

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for those points. The scheme is broadly operating as it is designed to, which is shown by the fact that about 1,400 certificates are unused as of today’s date. So the overall quota of 40,000 places a year is approximately the right number. We are, as ever, discussing with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs whether that quota should remain the same next year or be higher. A statement on that will be made imminently. However, the decision made by my Department—with my right hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice)—to choose 40,000 appears to have been about the right number.

In terms of the scheme’s operation, we need to ensure that it is as smooth as possible because no business deserves to be put through unnecessary bureaucracy to gain access to the workers it needs. The hon. Lady is right to say that, although of course we want to make the best use of our domestic workforce, there will always be—as there has been—a need for some seasonal workers to come into the UK from overseas. That is exactly why the scheme exists.

On ensuring that those who come under the scheme are properly looked after and not abused, every one of the four or five operators of the scheme is licensed by the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority, and it is its responsibility, together with my Department, to ensure that those seasonal workers are looked after appropriately and do not fall inadvertently into modern slavery or other poor practices. We at the Home Office have a duty to ensure that those individuals come for the right reasons, that their employers treat them appropriately and that the scheme is not abused. There is a significant minority of people who come under the scheme and subsequently choose to apply for asylum, which is one of the many things that we have to take seriously when deciding the number of individuals who can enter under the scheme each year, but I am certainly sympathetic to the needs of our food and drink sector and will work closely with the Environment Secretary to choose the right number of places for next year. As I said in answer to my right hon. Friend, we will make an announcement soon.