Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps the Health and Safety Executive have taken to prevent health and safety hazards on farms employing workers on the Seasonal Worker visa in each of the last five years in (a) Scotland, (b) England and (c) Wales.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) is Britain’s national regulator for workplace health and safety, this includes workplace health and safety risks created in agriculture.

Over the last 5 years, HSE has taken the following steps to address on-farm health and safety hazards and improve the health and safety performance of the industry for the benefit of all farm workers in Scotland, England and Wales, including seasonal workers, by:

• Working closely with the industry through Britain’s Farm Safety Partnerships (FSPs). Together, HSE and the FSPs use a range of interventions to encourage the industry to take a greater ownership of the health and safety risks that it creates, and work to create sustained improvement from within the industry.
• Between 2018 and 2024, in partnership with the industry, HSE ran a campaign to offer farmers free health and safety training which was then followed up by an inspection to a selection of the farms invited to take the training.
• Although HSE has no pre-planned inspections in agriculture in 2024/25, HSE continues to inspect where they receive intelligence to suggest risk is not being managed and investigate incidents in line with its selection criteria.
• Over the last 5 years HSE has also engaged with the industry through a variety of other methods including industry talks, webinars, presentations, campaigns, media engagement, and producing industry notifications which include safety messaging.
• HSE’s recent agricultural media campaign “Your Farm Your Future” was a successful example of using HSE and industry voices to reinforce safety messages and reach a wide range of farmers and farm workers. Campaign materials can be found at: https://workright.campaign.gov.uk/campaigns/agriculture/.
• In addition, HSE also publishes guidance for farmers on how to prevent workplace ill health and injury to their workforce, including seasonal workers. The guidance is freely available on the HSE website at https://www.hse.gov.uk/agriculture/index.htm.

HSE remains committed to working with the farming industry to help improve health and safety performance for the benefit of all its workers.