Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme

Tom Tugendhat Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I am delighted to be following so many illustrious hon. Members and, in particular, to be speaking in a debate called by my neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately), who has done an awful lot in the 18 months that we have been in this place to represent the farming and agricultural communities that overlap our areas so much.

It is a huge privilege to be at this important debate, because the question it asks is fundamental and, in many ways, will shape British agriculture not only for the next season, or even the next two or three seasons, but for the next generation. The danger, however, is that we could see British agriculture going from being an industrial heart of innovation and technological improvement, and from providing taste explosions such as those from the strawberries my hon. Friend was describing, to a desert—perhaps simply a commuter belt of dormitory villages.

The question is therefore fundamental to what we want our countryside to be in the next 20 or 30 years. I am pleased that my hon. Friend spoke with such passion and eloquence, and that so many voices from around the United Kingdom—I am sure we will hear from Scotland shortly—are speaking out, because it is not simply a matter for the garden of England, which we all know is the most beautiful part of the kingdom, and it is not simply a matter for soft fruit farmers; it is a matter, as everyone has mentioned in different ways today, of migrant labour in the different areas.

We must get the system right, because if we do, we will have migrant labourers who are able to come, perhaps for a period of a few weeks or months, depending on whether they are here for tourism, fruit picking or other areas of the agricultural industry, and then to go. They will take their revenue and go home, continue their education, rejoin their families, or whatever it might be. If we get it wrong, we will have a real problem, because either we will have to close down large swathes of British agriculture, and perhaps swathes of tourism, or we will have done something that we did not intend, which is to create permanent migrants. The alternative to temporary migration when the economy is such a strong draw, as our growing economy is after six years of tough decisions, is that migration becomes permanent.

Communities might be complaining about a few thousand fruit pickers every now and again, but the pressure from people coming with their kids and families will be quite different. We should recognise that we are talking about a fundamental question for the United Kingdom industry. If we are to get this right, it must be a temporary migration scheme open to many other industries, not just agriculture. Such a scheme would open up an enormous opportunity for the UK to grow flexibly and create space for innovation.

One of the big problems for companies is that hiring workers is great, but firing them is not. No one wants to lay people off, in particular as companies innovate and come up with new ideas and new technologies, and as the agricultural sector revolutionises how we grow food in this country—as it has done, let us not forget, for the past 300 years, because we invented so many of the great reforms on land that allowed people to leave the soil and go to the cities, which led to the urban and economic regeneration of the United Kingdom that enabled us to become the powerhouse of the world. Those innovations are carrying on, but if we force people to have workers on permanent contracts, innovation will be discouraged, because the economic and emotional cost of moving people on and letting them go creates a drag. For an innovative sector such as agriculture, what we want and really need is temporary workers. They fill the seasonal hole and they allow innovation.

We can get this right, because here in the UK we are combining so many wonderful things. I joked a little about the garden of England perhaps becoming a desert, but the truth is that it is not one. It is already a centre of innovation, and what people often forget—I know that the Minister will not, because he has looked into this carefully—is that agriculture and technology work incredibly closely together.

Were the Minister to visit Kent, he would be very welcome at East Malling research centre, which is at the forefront of agricultural innovation. Not only are the people there developing new forms of apples and strawberries—some even better than the ones grown in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent, however extraordinary that might seem—but they are coming up with innovative ways of using water, so that food can grow in areas where water is very much at a premium, in particular in sub-Saharan Africa. They are also looking at the robotics that my hon. Friend referred to. Those areas are really challenging, but because we are blessed in Kent, we get the two of them working side by side and developing together, and that innovation spreads to the rest of the world.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

I am reluctant to interrupt my hon. Friend’s fabulous speech, which we are all enjoying, but as a fruit farmer’s daughter and a fruit farmer myself, I feel it is imperative to ask whether he agrees that these agricultural workers are a fairly unique breed. They must be both skilled technologically and strong physically. The type of work we ask them to do is unusual, skilled and often back-breaking. As such, they are a group of people who need to be able to move around—perhaps even more than other migrant workforces.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I completely agree. My hon. Friend knows very well that we share a passion for the British apple. As my right hon. and hon. Friends here will know, it is now russet season. May I strongly encourage those who have not had a Kentish Russet this season to do so? They are truly the champagne of apples—well, the English champagne of apples. They are the most fantastic product.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent said, we are talking about creating a system—I know the Minister is listening carefully and following the theme of this debate—that allows innovation in the agricultural sector to increase. As a boy in Kent, I did quite a lot of fruit picking, and I know that many other people did that too. My picking was not quite of the standard that my dear friend Marion Regan would require, as I was not packing for Wimbledon, which is where her strawberries go. We used to go as kids to a pick-your-own farm. Of course, we ate half the stuff before it got into the punnet.

Getting the system right would not mean some return to the halcyon days—which have not existed for a long time—of east-end Londoners going hop picking in the summer, because those east-end Londoners, thank God, now have very good jobs and spend their holidays all around the world. I am afraid that the idea that hop picking in Kent is an alternative to Ibiza is simply not credible for large swathes of people. Perhaps it is for some.

The change that we as a nation voted for on 23 June means that we have to reinvent ourselves and remember some old skills. Some of those skills are to do with imagination and creativity, which was the extraordinary thing about the seasonal agricultural workers scheme. Although other OECD countries copied the scheme, it was innovative when it came in. Indeed, extraordinarily, it almost—I do mean almost—still exists. It was last operated in 2013, which is only a few years ago. One of the many organisations that operated it, the Harvesting Opportunities Permit Scheme, or HOPS, stopped only then, and it still runs a recruitment agency for agricultural workers, so it could easily be brought back. We are not talking about a complete redesign; we are talking about switching back to a scheme that worked extremely well until only recently.

None of that will compensate for the many workers deciding not to come because they will take a 10% or 15% pay cut if they are paid in pounds but want to take their money back to parts of the world where they spend in euros, so a new scheme will not be a direct replacement. It will not simply turn on the tap immediately. We must recognise that there are still challenges for farmers, not just in Kent but around the country, but such a scheme will go some way to offering opportunities. If we look at the issue seriously, as I know the Minister will, we will create the flexible scheme that Britain needs, that farming needs and that many of our friends in Europe need.

We are of course about to enter—in some ways, we already have—the toughest negotiations the world has ever seen, on hundreds of lines of Government business, industry, migration and any number of other questions. Everything is to play for. As we started those negotiations, we must demonstrate our good will towards our European neighbours. Whatever people may think about the European Union, we are all friends with our European neighbours, and we must show them that we are open. We must show them again that we are believers in free trade. We created the rule of law and the system of international agreement—that system was created largely in the Chamber not far from here. If we remind them that openness is something that we feel we still share, and that we are not just willing but actually very happy for their young men and women to come and do a significantly better job than I ever did in Kent’s strawberry fields and take money home to enrich their own communities, that will go a little way—perhaps not far, but certainly a little way—to showing our good will to our European friends in particular, but also to people around the world. That would be an important gesture, not just for us but for them.

May I briefly sum up and ask the Minister a few questions, which I know he will be delighted to answer? Will he consider introducing a pilot scheme as soon as possible? I mentioned HOPS, which I am sure would be delighted to assist, should the Home Office be willing to engage with it. I am sure that he will not need to give reasons why he will not, so I shall skip over any explanation he might otherwise have given. Will he please collect data from that pilot scheme and share them with Members and groups such as the National Farmers Union, which has done a lot of work on this issue, and the Country Land and Business Association, which likewise has devoted an awful lot of energy to supporting not only the agricultural sector but all industry in rural areas? That would allow us to evaluate and, yes, to adjust. We do not pretend for a moment that the first scheme that will roll out will be perfect. It will not be, but we would be happy to work with him on that.

[Jo Churchill]

Does my hon. Friend agree that as the industry has been so proactive in asking us to have those discussions, it behoves the Government to involve the industry—the NFU, the CLA and so on—in developing the scheme that is most appropriate to service the issues that have come to light during this debate?

[Tom Tugendhat]

My hon. Friend makes an absolutely essential point. Not only does it behove the Government to consult the industry widely because of all the efforts it has made, but we simply will not get a very good answer unless we do that, because the experts are the people who are doing the work, not the ones who are legislating on it. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister will be only too willing to meet members of the NFU and the CLA. I remember his willingness to meet all manner of groups in his former occupation as aviation Minister, when he listened carefully to the people of west Kent and came up with absolutely the right answer. We will skip over that.

My last point is this. We have offered evidence that businesses will not survive if they rely solely on UK workers—a point that my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent made extremely well. The farmers in my community need help now. I know that the Government, my hon. Friend the Minister and the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural affairs are listening. I urge the Minister to act with a little alacrity, because as my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent said, the season for strawberries is not in June; it is in March.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Tugendhat]

rose—

[Mike Weir]

I will make some progress, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind. The vast majority of those who came to work in agriculture were here specifically for a short period and always intended to return to their home nation at the end of their visa period. Indeed, as the NFU points out, there was a 98% return rate. Unfortunately, as in many other areas, there is often a serious collision between perception and reality.

Under the previous scheme, some 21,250 visas were issued in its last year of operation for workers to come to the UK for periods of between five weeks and six months. In the last year of the scheme, I was told by Angus Growers, a producers’ group that covers Angus and the surrounding areas, of about 2,000 people whom it employed at the peak of the season the majority came through the SAWS scheme. It now employs many people from other EU nations.

It is worth pointing out the benefits to the UK of young people coming here. They not only earn money that they can take back to their home nation but learn English and gain a good impression of our country from the people they meet. That is an exercise in soft power and, if we end up outside the EU, we will have to look seriously at our relations with other parts of Europe and the world.

According to “Rural Scotland in Focus 2016”, launched this week by the Scottish Government, three quarters of Scotland’s migrant farm work is undertaken in Angus and Perth and Kinross, with the vast majority in the horticultural sector. Those areas—my area and adjoining areas—which are the heart of the Scottish fruit sector, rely on those workers. They should not be seen just as a form of cheap labour. Many companies have tried to recruit local workers and, as has been said by Members who are no longer in their place, one of the problems is that there are not sufficient local unemployed people to take up such posts.

[Tom Tugendhat]

A Conservative economic success.

[Mike Weir]

It is the Scottish Government’s success—the hon. Gentleman is getting it wrong. There are many more migrant workers employed in my area than there are unemployed people, and not all of those who are unemployed are capable of the labour required, because picking raspberries, strawberries and potatoes is not easy labour—I speak from experience a long time ago. Indeed, my local authority, in conjunction with growers, set up a berry scheme with the aim of providing opportunities for the long-term unemployed that had some success but not enough to take the place of those coming for work. A seasonal workers scheme is therefore necessary.

If we are unable to get sufficient seasonal workers to come, that would have a devastating effect on the local industry. I stress that horticulture provides jobs not just in picking but in the whole infrastructure behind that, from administration, processing and packing to transporting the fruit which, by its nature, has to be done quickly and efficiently. That provides many full-time jobs for local people as well as for seasonal migrant labour.

As has been said, there are real concerns that fruit and vegetables could remain unharvested if growers cannot obtain sufficient labour. The growers and agricultural industry in general are aware of the issues that surround the use of migrant labour, but they rightly point out, as I said, that many of them are students who come to this country, and there are genuine benefits to the UK from their coming and going back.

One issue that has not been touched on is what happens if the labour is not here? Some larger growers have already invested in farms in eastern Europe and are likely to invest more there. There has been talk of the great British strawberry, but unless we tackle this issue our export markets may disappear as that becomes the great Polish strawberry or the great Romanian strawberry. It is in our interests.

The National Farmers Union, with the support of horticulture and fruit growers, has come up with proposals for a renewed SAWS scheme, which it hopes would match its demands and tackle concerns about the use of migrant labour. In a rare degree of unanimity in the Chamber, I think we are all supportive of that, and perhaps of a trial, but, if the Minister is to go down the road of a trial, may we have one that takes in all parts of the United Kingdom, unlike for the post-study work visa, which, despite Scottish concerns, was for only a few English universities?

I make no bones about the fact that I firmly believe all existing EU workers should have the right to remain, but the NFU proposal is a sensible and genuine attempt to come up with a scheme that would meet Government objectives and allow this valuable industry to have the labour it requires. I urge the Minister, along with everyone else in the Chamber, to give that serious consideration.