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 that an adequate number of work permits is issued to cover the demand for workers in the egg industry and associated sectors.

We are actively monitoring the impacts of COVID-19 and related control measures with significant input from industry stakeholders.

We are urgently considering which measures could be put in place to help mitigate the impact of the current situation on access to labour in the agri-food chain.

The Chancellor has announced an initial £330 billion will be made available to support UK businesses. He also set out a package of temporary, timely and targeted measures to support public services, people and businesses through this period of disruption caused by COVID-19.

After the transition to a new immigration system in 2021, businesses will continue to be able to rely on EU nationals living in the UK with settled or pre-settled status and there will continue to be other flexibility in the system and the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) has already pointed to the estimated 170,000 recently arrived non-EU citizens currently in low-skilled occupations.

The EU Settlement Scheme, which opened in March 2019, has already received more than 3.3 million applications from EU citizens who are able to stay and work in the UK – and people have until June 2021 to apply.

The government will introduce a new points based system from January 2021 which will include an employer-led route for skilled workers to enter the UK, both EU and non-EU citizens. The skilled worker route will not be capped, there will be no requirement to conduct a Resident Labour Market Test and the salary and skills thresholds have been lowered.

These changes will ensure that a wide pool of skilled workers will be able to come to the UK from anywhere in the world.