Source · Select Committees · Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee
Recommendation 13
13
Accepted in Part
We welcome the Government’s extension of the Seasonal Workers Pilot to the ornamental sector which...
Recommendation
We welcome the Government’s extension of the Seasonal Workers Pilot to the ornamental sector which should go some way to addressing the immediate labour shortage facing the sector. We recommend that Defra and the Home Office work with the nursery sector to review the number of seasonal worker visas available and consider whether further visas, beyond the current 30,000 are needed now that additional sectors have joined the scheme. We also recommend that the length of the visa for tree nursery workers be extended from 6 to 9 months to reflect the working season of that sector. (Paragraph 82) 42 Tree planting
Government Response Summary
The government extended the Seasonal Worker Visa Route to 2024 and included tree nursery workers in the scope of the scheme; however, it will not extend the visa length to 9 months and plans to taper the number of visas available from 2023.
Government Response
Accepted in Part
HM Government
Accepted in Part
Defra is working closely with industry to help our world-leading growers access the labour they need for 2022 and beyond. On 24 December 2021, the Government announced that the Seasonal Worker Visa Route has been extended to 2024 to allow overseas workers to come to the UK for up to six months to harvest both edible and ornamental crops, bringing tree nursery workers into the scope of the scheme. 30,000 visas will be available in 2022. This will be kept under review with the potential to increase by 10,000 visas if necessary. We are interested to see how the scheme is used by the nursery sector. While acknowledging the forestry industry’s reliance on foreign workers, the UK is committed to becoming a high-skilled, high-wage economy and the Government has been clear that more must be done to attract UK workers through offering training, career options, wage increases and to invest in increased automation technology. The number of visas available will be tapered from 2023 to account for an increased focus on British workers and automation. Defra will bring forward further proposals in due course on ways to support the sector as well as progressing recommendations from the Review of Automation in Horticulture that was conducted last year and is due to be published soon. Defra is also working with industry and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to raise awareness of career opportunities within the horticulture sector among UK workers. The Seasonal Worker Visa Route does not seek to provide all of the horticultural sector’s required seasonal labour for 2022 and beyond. Increasing the visa length to 9 months presupposes the need for near fulltime employment, which runs counter to the scheme being seasonal only.