Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will publish the (a) selection criteria and (b) scoring mechanism for that criteria used by his Department when selecting which operators to licence to supply seasonal agricultural labour from abroad as part of the seasonal agricultural workers scheme.

Selecting the additional operators for the extended Seasonal Workers Pilot is a two-stage process. Defra conducted the first stage, which was the Request for Information (RFI) exercise inviting responses by 29 January 2021. Information on the selection criteria and scoring mechanisms is published online here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/seasonal-workers-pilot-request-for-information/seasonal-workers-pilot-request-for-information .

Defra has now completed the RFI exercise and in doing so proposed two additional operators to the Home Office, who are now conducting the second-stage of approval and licensing.