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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent discussions he has had with the Home Secretary on encouraging seasonal EU workers to continue travelling to the UK to work on farms.

We are working closely with the Home Office as they seek to develop a new immigration framework that recognises the needs of the UK as a whole, to ensure that the UK has a controlled but flexible migration policy and considers access to seasonal agricultural labour.

Until we have left the EU, employers in the agricultural and food processing sectors can continue to recruit EU workers to meet their labour needs.

The Government has also commissioned the independent Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) to assess the role that EU citizens play in the UK economy and society, and how to align future immigration framework with modern industrial strategy. We welcome the MAC’s interim report published in March 2018 and will consider its evidence in full when it publishes its final report in September 2018.