UPDATED UK immigration plans are not the ‘silver bullet’ for agriculture which the industry was led to believe.

In what appeared to be a U-turn in the UK's newly announced immigration policy last week, dairy operators, butchers and slaughtermen were amongst the occupations to be included in the new regime's definition of 'skilled'.

The UK Government webpage detailing the immigration rules for workers was updated on Thursday, February 20 to include a redefinition of 'skilled' workers, recognising certain roles within industries such as agriculture and horticulture, which would allow migrants to qualify under the criteria of RQF3, which is the equivalent to a higher or A-level qualification.

Secretary of State for Scotland, Alister Jack, released a statement last Friday assuring that the parts of rural Scotland struggling to meet labour demands would be taken care of.

He claimed: “We want to recognise many more of the jobs our economy depends on – and ensure people with those skills can continue to come to Scotland to work. The independent Migration Advisory Committee keeps a detailed list of jobs at a range of levels,” he continued. “It shows which jobs will be included in our new definition of 'skilled'.

“In agriculture, they include dairy workers who operate milking machines. As a farmer myself I know just how skilled those jobs are. Butchers and slaughtermen working in abattoirs are also included. For all those jobs, and many more, employers will be able to recruit workers from overseas.”

But NFU Scotland’s political affairs manager Clare Slipper pointed out that even with new recognition from the UK Government, there would still be barriers facing employers in terms of finding a sponsorship route and meeting salary thresholds.

“It is welcome that salary threshold has come down from £30,000 to £25,600, which will help in some cases such as with recruiting vets and more highly paid workers on dairy units, but otherwise, it is still really restrictive," said Ms Slipper.

“Certain roles, previously labelled as unskilled by the UK Government, now fall into the RQF3 bracket, however this is by no means a silver bullet. There are still no agricultural-related roles on the shortage occupation list and even if this were to be the case, employers will need to find a sponsorship route and we believe this could be extremely expensive and bureaucratic."

She highlighted that the MAC would be undergoing a review of the shortage occupation list shortly and urged employers to submit robust evidence detailing the roles required for Scottish agriculture and horticulture: “There is a Scottish shortage occupation list which operates alongside the general shortage occupation list but it contains no occupations that are relevant to our sectors. We would like to see this significantly expanded and having more of a regional focus so if we are short in a certain occupation we could develop schemes to offer more permits to come to certain parts of Scotland to undertake work.”

She added that this would be different to the SAWS scheme, with more of a focus on certain sectors in parts of the country, and gave an example such as a shortage of abattoir workers.

NFUS horticulture chair James Porter stressed that the changed definition of 'skilled' would not help the soft fruits sector: “The recent immigration proposals don’t give us confidence in recruiting for next year and we are having to order strawberry and raspberry plants from Holland, 18-months in advance which will cost millions of pounds, without knowing if there will be the staff to pick them. Even if certain roles are added to the shortage occupation list, we don’t know what this will look like in terms of costs for businesses and if it will even be possible.”