Work-based Immigration
Debate between Karen Bradley and Alistair Carmichael
Dame Karen Bradley
The hon. Gentleman—who I will call my hon. Friend—will be very much missed on the Committee. He is officially discharged this evening, along with the Minister, and it is a sad day for the Committee to lose his expertise. All of us who attended the workshops found that the conversations became sophisticated. People started off with polarised positions and opinions—they spent a day and a half together, hearing from experts and talking about the issues, and each of the workshops made 10 recommendations, which could be distilled into 13 recommendations in total—but from some very different places we finished with remarkably similar recommendations. The hon. Gentleman is right that the level of conversation and debate was heartening to hear and showed that those conversations can happen in an adult way.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
I thank the right hon. Lady and her Committee for the report. She will be aware that many agricultural sectors rely heavily on migrant labour, and that the Home Office is telling us that we need to upskill our own workforce to take the place of those workers. I draw to her attention the situation concerning foreign sheepshearers, who come to this country for a short period of time—three to four months every year. They come here, they shear the largest flocks—we reckon they do an excess of a million sheep in that short period of time—and then they move on and shear in other parts of the world. They take a number of our local shearers with them, which is a great opportunity for young people from farming communities. Nobody is going to train to the level that those people need to operate for work that is only going to last three or four months of the year. Can I encourage the right hon. Lady to bring some pressure to bear on the Home Office to take a more realistic view on the position of sheepshearers?
Dame Karen Bradley
The right hon. Gentleman makes his point eloquently. There are many skills that we simply do not train people in. Welding is another example: the pay is so good, why would anyone teach it on a much lower salary when they could be a welder themselves? That is why we have the problem with training welders in this country. The right hon. Gentleman makes a valuable point about sheepshearers. As an MP for a rural area, I do not have the sheepshearing problem, but I am sure that issues on dairy will be raised with me.