Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Nick Thomas-Symonds and David Duguid

Thursday 14th February 2019 Public Bill Committees

[David Duguid]

I had heard that it was even higher than that; I think it is 90%.

James Porter: I know it is very high. This affects not just soft fruit and veg, but other areas of agriculture.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

Q You said that you felt that the £30,000 earnings threshold was not a realistic number. You have spoken about the temporary agricultural workers scheme, but could you give me a sense of what the impact of a £30,000 threshold would be more generally across the agricultural and associated sectors? Is it really fair to describe people who earn less than that as low skilled?

James Porter: I do not like “low skilled” as a term. I told the MAC in Edinburgh a couple of years ago that I did not like it. I understand what they are trying to get at, but although you do not need an academic degree to do a lot of these jobs, they require quite a high level of skill and experience to learn. I prefer the term “manually skilled”. That might be a better one.

If you look across agriculture in general, I do not know the exact numbers, but there are a lot of people working in agriculture from the EU right now who would be earning less than £30,000. It is not just my industry. Perhaps you are not all from rural constituencies, so you are not aware of where agriculture is or the details on soft fruit and veg. Is it worth giving you a little bit of background on it?