Agriculture: Seasonal Workers

(asked on 23rd April 2021) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the effect of the Pick for Britain campaign on the agriculture sector.


Answered by
Victoria Prentis Portrait
Victoria Prentis
Attorney General
This question was answered on 29th April 2021

The 'Pick for Britain' campaign was launched in April 2020 in response to the emerging risks that the COVID-19 pandemic posed to the UK's food supply chain. It was a joint initiative between Defra and industry stakeholders, aimed at promoting picking roles to British workers, particularly those unemployed or on furlough.

This campaign, alongside other measures introduced by Defra, helped to ensure that British growers had access to the labour they needed last year. The harvest was brought home without issue in extraordinary circumstances, and with unprecedented interest from UK workers. We know the 'Pick for Britain' website was central to this uptake in interest - it received around 2 million unique page views following its launch, and recruiters featured on the site received significant numbers of enquiries about roles as a result. We are not able to share specific information about jobs, vacancies or recruitment, as this information is commercially sensitive and not held by Defra.

Defra has collected feedback and lessons from stakeholders and partners to the 'Pick for Britain' campaign, and will use this to inform future work to promote domestic recruitment across the horticulture sectors.

Reticulating Splines