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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether her Department has taken recent steps to help support ornamental horticulture nurseries to access the workforce they need to meet (a) market demand and (b) environmental targets.

Defra recognises the importance of the domestic ornamental horticulture sector in promoting people’s health and wellbeing, as well as to the economy – UK ornamental production being worth £1.6 billion in 2021. Our highly skilled growers enable us to grow a wide range of top-quality fresh flowers and plants for much of the year. Defra regularly meets with the Ornamental Horticulture Roundtable Group, who last year published their ‘Unlocking green growth: A plan from the ornamental horticulture & landscaping industry’, an action plan which explores opportunities to accelerate the sector's growth and sets out the industry’s potential contributions to the environmental challenges facing the UK. Where Government can help, we will support the opportunities outlined in the plan.

On 24th December 2021, HM Government announced that the Seasonal Worker visa route has been extended until 2024 to allow overseas workers to come to the United Kingdom for up to six months to harvest both edible and ornamental crops.

As announced in the Government Food Strategy in June, an extra 10,000 visas have been released for the Seasonal Worker visa route, with 8,000 of these going to the horticulture sector and 2,000 to the poultry sector. This brings the total number of visas for the horticulture sector, including ornamentals, to 38,000 for 2022. The new Government is carefully considering the position on visa quotas for 2023 and we will say more in due course.

During 2021, Defra undertook a review of automation in horticulture, covering both the edible and ornamental sectors in England. We published the Review on 27 July 2022 and a response from HM Government to the Review’s recommendations will follow soon. The government response will work alongside the extended and expanded Seasonal Worker visa route and Defra’s efforts to attract more residents of the United Kingdom into agricultural work – to support the overall aim of reducing the sector’s dependency on seasonal migrant labour.

All ornamental horticultural businesses are encouraged to advertise roles through the Department for Work & Pensions’ (DWP’s) Find A Job website, where they can upload and manage their vacancies. DWP do not charge for this service and it is available across the United Kingdom.