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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he is taking to ensure access to skilled labour in the dairy farming sector.

We appreciate the importance of skilled labour to our domestic food producers, including the dairy sector. To help support the issue of labour shortages, the Government commissioned John Shropshire to carry out an independent review which considered how automation, domestic labour and migrant labour can contribute to tackling labour shortages in the food supply chain. The report was published in June 2023.

The Government Response will consider all ten of the recommendations made in John Shropshire’s Review, covering the four themes of Recruitment & Retention, Skills, Data, and Automation. The Government Response will be published shortly.

The Skilled Worker visa route is open to all nationals who wish to come to the UK for the purpose of working in a skilled job they have been offered. The Government have broadened the skill and salary thresholds to include medium skilled jobs and the route now covers 60% of jobs in the economy. This strikes an appropriate balance between allowing employers access to the skills our economy needs and encouraging investment in the resident workforce.

Defra will continue to work closely with our dairy and other agricultural sectors and across government, to make sure that the workforce requirements for food and farming are understood.