Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she plans to add butchers to the shortage occupation list.

Thanks to our expansion of the Skilled Worker route, occupations including butcher, butcher’s assistant, butchery manager, master butcher and slaughterman can now be sponsored to work in the UK.

A job does not have to be on the Shortage Occupation List (SOL) to qualify for the Skilled Worker visa. Being on the SOL also does not exempt a job from other requirements including English Language and skill thresholds, although it does allow an employer to pay a salary lower than the General Threshold for the route.

The Government intends to commission the independent Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) to undertake another review of the SOL this year and we will consider any recommendations following such a report. The meat sector, along with other economic sectors, are encouraged to provide their evidence to the MAC when their call for evidence opens.

We will continue to monitor the labour needs of other sectors, however we want to see employers make long-term investments in the UK domestic workforce, including offering competitive salary packages, instead of relying on labour from abroad. Beyond the Points Based System, there is the resident labour market which includes UK workers and non-UK citizens with general work rights.