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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to his oral statement of 4 December 2023 on Legal Migration, Official Report, columns 41-43, whether he has made an assessment of the potential impact of the proposals announced in that Statement on the food supply chain.

The UK has a highly resilient food supply chain. Alongside strong domestic production, our high degree of food security is built from imports through stable trade routes. We produce 60% of all the food we need, and 73% of food which we can grow or rear in the UK for all or part of the year, and these figures have changed little over the last 20 years.

The recent changes announced by the Home Secretary will encourage businesses to look to British talent first and invest in their workforce, helping us to deter employers from over-relying on migration. To support this, the government has committed over £123 million of funding to industry-led research and development for agricultural and horticulture. And on 30 November the government announced a further £45 million of funding for the latest rounds of competitions and grants. This includes £30 million to help farmers invest in robotics and automation to make processes like harvesting and milking more efficient, and near £9m for the next two competitions as part of the Farming Innovation Programme. The Farming Innovation Programme has so far supported 156 Research & Development projects across all agricultural and horticultural sectors. This includes a dedicated funding round of £12.5 million in early 2023 focused on automation and robotics, with 17 such projects worth £20 million funded to date.

Alongside this, the Seasonal Worker visa route will allocate 45,000 visas for the horticulture sector in 2024, with a further 2000 for seasonal poultry workers, ensuring these sectors can plan ahead for 2024 with confidence. Defra will continue to work closely with our food and farming sectors and across government, to make sure that the workforce requirements for the food supply chain are understood.