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

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of reports of a fall in the number of temporary migrant agricultural workers since the referendum on the UK's membership of the EU, what steps they are taking to encourage migrant workers to apply for seasonal jobs on farms.

I refer the Noble Lady to the Oral contribution given by my hon. Friend the Minister of State for Immigration during the Westminster Hall debate on the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme; Volume 617, Column 576WH on 30 November.

I would draw your attention in particular to his reference to recently published Office for National Statistics figures that:

“the number of workers from the eight countries of eastern and central Europe that joined the EU in 2004, and from Bulgaria and Romania—the countries most commonly associated with low-skilled labour—are also up year on year. To be precise, there were 129,000 more workers from those countries in the UK in the third quarter of 2016 compared with a year earlier. That does not suggest that there is a major exodus from the United Kingdom although, as I have said, I will continue to monitor the situation carefully.”