Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has made an assessment of the implications for her visa and immigration policies of the shortage in the UK of specific skills needed to tackle the ongoing avian influenza outbreak.

Our Points Based System already caters for a wide variety of skilled roles across many sectors, including in relation to poultry keeping and veterinary roles, which the independent Migration Advisory Committee has said strikes a reasonable balance between controlling migration and providing firms with the ability to attract the people they need.