Hugh's speech on the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme

Hugh outlines the current situation with SAWS and recommends some solutions to this issue.

Mr Woolas,

May I start by welcoming you to The Chair and also thank The Minister for giving up his time this morning to respond to this short debate on The Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme. Albeit a little late, I also ought to welcome him to his new post and wish him well in one of the most challenging posts in government.

The reason that I have asked for this debate this morning is that I represent a constituency where fruit farming is the dominant form of agriculture. Kent is a county whose reputation as The Garden of England is defined by its fruit farms and I made my maiden speech on the subject when I entered The House in 2001. I have served since that time as Secretary of the APPG Fruit so this debate is taking place on behalf of the wider fruit sector - as well as my own constituents.

However, it goes further than Kentish Fruit Farms. Since this debate was announced, I have been approached by many colleagues who represent constituencies where other horticultural crops are grown and, amongst many others, the concerns today are shared by my friends, The Hon Members for NE Cambridgeshire and Boston and Skegness, who are supporting the debate, and the Hon Member for Mid Worcestershire, The Chairman of the Business and Enterprise Select Committee who reports similar concerns amongst constituents of his who grow salad, legume and asparagus.

Given the timelines involved with the proposal to end SAWS in 2010, this is an opportune moment to raise these concerns as The Minister has the opportunity to take action now to prevent a disaster a year, or 18 months, hence. The Minister should also be in no doubt that this is serious and a genuine problem. I, myself, know of three growers in my constituency who have had to let crops rot in the ground due to labour shortages and the problems caused by the abolition of SAWS was the dominant topic of conversation at The National Fruit Show three weeks ago.

The NFU’s Seasonal Labour Survey for 2008 show that 61% of respondents claimed to have lost income as a result of labour shortages of which:

58% was due to crops which could not be harvested. They were simply left to rot in the ground.

30% of losses were due to crops that were harvested but, due to labour shortages, harvested so late that they were unsaleable by the time that they reached the market.

Total losses this year reached £8m and are expected to rise dramatically in 2009. These figures are almost bound to be a serious underestimate as the less successful growers tend not to respond to the survey and growers more generally are notoriously unwilling to admit to failing to harvest crops.

Mr Woolas,

Before we examine the issues, I hope that we can all agree on three specific principles:-

Firstly, Fruit Farming (and, indeed, horticulture more generally) is an activity that we all ought to support. All growers are vital, small to medium sized businesses that feed other parts of the local economy such as packing and transportation. When we last debated the issue, it accounted for 12% of agriculture in this country – or 19% if the effect of subsidies was disaggregated.

The industry produces high quality produce, close to the market place and is completely unsubsidised. The Government’s own healthy eating strategies (five-a-day etc) require UK growers to produce the fruit and vegetables necessary to make them work. In the case of ‘top fruit’ farming (apples and pears) particularly, the trees also define the landscape. It is precisely because of fruit farming that Kent is known as The Garden of England.
So horticulture is an unqualified good thing!

The second thing is that SAWS has been a fantastic success for over 40 years. SAWS is well managed by the operating companies, licensed by The Home Office and all participating farms are carefully monitored.

All participants in the scheme are genuine students, money earned is taken home and invested in economies less developed than ours and, crucially, the abscontion rate is tiny. Many of those who have come here as SAWS students go on to have successful agricultural careers in their own home countries and, indeed, when we last had a SAWS debate, two years ago, the Polish Minister of Agriculture (Thomas Kowalski) was an ex SAWS student!

In short, it is a fantastically successful scheme that should be nurtured and encouraged not closed down.

The third, and final, principle is that SAWS is not an immigration and asylum issue. Participants are not coming here looking to earn the right to stay or to disappear into the black economy. It is a seasonal labour issue by which students come here on a work visa to gain specific agricultural experience relevant to their studies, earn some money and then go home. It makes no contribution to the more general immigration and asylum debate.

So what is the problem?

At its peak in 2004, 25,000 students visited the UK on the SAWS Scheme to work on our farms, earn money to take home and learn about our language and culture.

The Government’s own investigation into this area, The Curry report, recommended that the number of places on the scheme should be increased to 50,000 – double that peak.

However, despite this, the Government is committed to abolishing the SAWS scheme by 2010. The hope is that the shortfall will be filled by EU workers and, in particular, A8 Accession countries. The problem with this if fourfold:-

(i) All restrictions on A8 Accession countries are due to be lifted by 2011. Britain is not necessarily the most attractive European destination for ‘unfettered’ migrant labour due to its climate, geographical isolation and associated higher travel costs. WRS figures, since 2006, support this showing a downward trend in the number of A8 nationals coming to work in the UK in general and horticulture in particular.

(ii) There is a growing body of evidence that A8 workers are much more reluctant than SAWS students to work in horticulture and tend to filter away to less physically taxing jobs in the hospitality industry.

(iii) The domestic workforce is reluctant to work in horticulture. This is closely related to the structure of the benefits system which discourages those who are unemployed from taking temporary, seasonal work.

(iv) The Home Office has implemented year on year reductions in the number of Seasonal Agricultural Workers in the years preceding the abolition of the scheme in 2010.

In short, all the evidence suggests that the idea of replacing the SAWS Scheme with A8 Accession country labour will lead to a serious shortfall of labour. This will cause crops to rot and growers and horticulturalists to leave the sector.

The solution to this issue is fourfold:-

Firstly, horticulture desperately needs an increase in the size of the remaining SAWS quota to manage the downturn in migrant numbers from the A8 Accession countries. This would bring much needed business confidence to the labour intensive sectors of horticulture (soft fruit, top fruit and salad vegetables) and would be an easy ‘win’ for the Government.

Estimates from the NFU suggest that to recommend quota for 2009 should be 21,250 and for 2010 should be at least 25,000 – back to 2004 levels.

If the Government really wanted to help the industry it could also lengthen the amount of time a Seasonal Worker can stay from six to nine months.

Secondly, and in the longer term, horticulture desperately needs a new Points Base System (PBS), compatible with SAWS, that embodies the pre 2007 elements of the scheme. It would be perfectly reasonable to include new criteria that respond to broader societal concerns about the wider immigration and asylum debate – although, as I said earlier, this is not strictly an immigration and asylum issue.

Such a scheme could easily include:-

a. Checks on arrival, and departure, for participating students.
b. Responsibility for ensuring departure devolved to the SAWS operations – with return agreements in place with source countries.
c. A strong educational and cultural bias so that participants improve their English language skills and develop an understanding of western culture.
d. An appropriate inspection regime including standards of accommodation and other employment conditions.

I know, from my own experience, that many growers do all of these things already so the industry should welcome an increase in standards across the board.

The third solution is to channel more inactive British Citizens into horticulture. The Government has recognised this problem with the 2007 Freud Report (Reducing dependency, Increasing Opportunity – options for the future of welfare to work). I absolutely support the central tenets of this report [including:-

i) Implementing well designed unemployment benefit systems and active labour market policies.
ii) Making non employment benefits more work orientated.
iii) Adjusting taxes and other transfer payments to make work pay. The Spanish example of a fixed, discontinuous contract which allows a worker to have an indefinite contract with a company but only be paid when work is available is worth examining.]

This would do much to encourage the unemployed, those claiming job seekers allowance and students to work in horticulture and is an important element of any future solution.

Finally, there are a number of solutions that horticulture can itself adopt. It needs to ensure that both horticulture and agriculture more generally, are attractive career options to young people. Initiatives such as the GROW web portal, due for launch in November 2008, and the introduction of a land based agriculture diploma are all hugely positive developments but the industry needs to do more, alongside the changes requested of Government, to change perceptions of horticulture.

Mr Woolas,

In conclusion, I hope that we can all agree that horticulture in general and, from my perspective, fruit farming in particular is an industry that we should all support. The availability of labour is a, in some ways the, key component in the industry’s success and future viability.

Horticulture has been fantastically well served by the SAWS scheme for many years but this scheme is due to end in 2010.
All the early evidence suggests that labour from the A8 countries will not cover the shortfall. What I need to impress on The Minister today is that, horticulture desperately needs some breathing time. This could be achieved by extending the life of the SAWS Scheme and increasing the number allowed into the country.

This would buy the time necessary to agree a new replacement scheme and whatever changes are necessary to existing regulations to encourage more UK Citizens into horticulture.

The point of this debate was, firstly, to alert The Minister to the problem and, secondly, to highlight a number of possible solutions that he can, hopefully, now work through with the NFU, SAWS Operators and the wider industry. The clock is ticking to 2010 but there is time to find a solution.