UK food sector should cover initial costs of migrant workers, advisers say

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Government migration advisers have said the UK food industry should cover the upfront costs of migrant farm workers if it wants to maintain access to the overseas labour it relies on.

Farm workers coming to the UK are at risk of debt bondage because they often borrow money to cover flights and visa costs without knowing how much they will earn, a report by the independent Migration Advisory Committee has found.

There is no immediate alternative to maintaining current levels of food production due to a lack of people willing to take part in the UK’s seasonal workers scheme (SWS), a report published on Tuesday said, with ministers being urged to reassure the industry about the scheme’s future.

But the report also found that industry and government had not done enough to tackle workers’ rights abuses in a system where there was an “inherent power imbalance” with employers.

SWS enables British growers to employ around 45,000 people a year on six-month visas.

The previous Conservative government announced in May that the scheme would run until at least 2029, but said it aimed to gradually reduce its scope while encouraging farmers to automate.

Ministers should confirm visa numbers annually, the MAC said, so that the industry “has five years’ notice of the programme being closed”.

Labour pledged ahead of the 4 July general election to reform the immigration system to restrict the hiring of foreign workers, with the aim of making visas available to employers conditional on them doing more to train workers in the UK.

However, it has not yet been said what this will mean in practice, nor have any changes to the SWS been proposed.

But workers also need more certainty about how much they will earn, the commission added, calling for a guarantee of at least twice a month’s wage to ensure they can recoup the costs of coming to the UK.

The industry was urged to accelerate its efforts to move towards an “employer pays” approach, so that recruitment and relocation costs are borne by employers rather than employees.

An industry taskforce, which includes supermarkets, growers and recruiters, said it would model how the EPP model could work. However, progress has been slow because there is no consensus on how to share costs in the supply chain, given the tight margins imposed by retailers on UK growers.

The MAC said the taskforce needed to move faster and urged it to set a timetable for submitting proposals. Ministers should then confirm the scheme will go ahead only if that timetable is met, it said.

The committee said the government and employers needed to do more to inform workers about their rights and enforce them through proactive checks. It also called for a more transparent income tax refund process and help for workers to opt out of automatic enrolment in pension schemes.

Workers’ rights campaigners welcomed the commission’s recommendations. “All the risks of the migrant workers scheme are borne by the workers, all the costs… It’s really important that the government takes that into account,” said Andy Hall, a migrant rights campaigner who has worked with industry taskforce Stronger Together.

A government spokesman said the government would “carefully consider” the MAC’s findings and respond “in due course”.

Sophie De Salis, sustainability policy adviser at the British Retail Consortium, said the taskforce’s research would be a “crucial step” in understanding how EPPs can be applied in practice.

It called on the government to adopt the MAC recommendations but also to scrap visa fees, arguing that they “increase the financial risk for workers from the outset”.

The SWS industry taskforce said it had taken note of the committee’s call for the study to be carried out in a timely manner and was working closely with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the jointly funded project.