Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what recent discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the recruitment of overseas workers as farming machinery operatives; and if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of creating a temporary visa scheme for these workers modelled on the temporary visa scheme for HGV drivers.

The Government has no plans to introduce a general immigration route allowing recruitment at or near the minimum wage, with relatively short work-based training requirements, nor will there be another similar visa concession to the HGV temporary scheme.

We have no plans to extend the skills threshold below RQF level 3 unless there are truly exceptional circumstances, such as adding care workers to the Shortage Occupation List (SOL). The Government has recently commissioned the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) to undertake a review of the SOL. We expect the MAC will shortly launch its call for evidence and we encourage interested stakeholders to respond.

Our immigration system is not aiming to replicate the free movement which previously existed between the UK and the EU. The Government recognises some businesses are needing to adjust, but investment and development of the UK’s domestic labour force should take priority, rather than seeing cheap migrant labour as the solution to recruitment difficulties.

Beyond the Points Based System is a wide labour market, which includes UK workers and migrants with general work rights. Businesses should therefore engage with the Department for Work and Pensions in the first instance about the support they can provide.