The review will be central to informing Government as it designs future immigration policy and painting a clear picture of farm businesses labour requirements so that policy can effectively respond to this.
The full response answers the MAC’s specific questions regarding the roles that EU nationals undertake, the benefits and drawbacks of employing these workers and the potential impact on businesses if faced with a reduction in labour availability.
Read the NFU's full response here
The NFU has worked with many industry representative bodies, food and farming enterprises and the membership to provide a wealth of statistics and evidence on the crucial role that EU citizens play in UK food production and manufacturing.
The response highlights the great diversity of employment, demonstrating that the sector requires workers with a great variety of skills, both seasonally and permanently. Aside from crucial on-farm labour requirements, there is a significant trend of non-EU citizens being employed further up the food supply chain and in supporting sectors such as veterinary services.
The response details why EU workers are such a feature of UK food production and importantly why a straightforward and immediate shift to employ more UK workers is simply either not possible or at best unachievable without significant impacts on the viability and competitiveness of UK food production.
With this in mind, the NFU makes a series of recommendations, including Government action to provide certainty for EU nationals currently resident in the UK, steps that can be immediately taken to ease the current tightening of labour and important principles that should be central for future immigration policy so that the needs of food and farming enterprises are met. This echoes what was already put forward in our Labour Vision Paper in July.
The MAC is a body of experts, independent of Government, which exists to provide impartial and objective evidence to policy makers in matters concerning migration. It carried out a previous review on the impact of discontinuing the former Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme.
The NFU called for the body to undertake a review earlier in the year and this was formally commissioned by the Home Secretary in July. Its final report is due in September 2018, but the NFU is calling for an interim report focussed on the needs of the food and farming sector before the end of the year.
More of the NFU's work for members on Brexit: