BREXIT IS ‘destroying’ the agricultural industry, yet the UK Government is refusing to take the labour shortage crisis seriously.

These comments were made by senior Conservative MP, Neil Parish, as he questioned immigration minister Kevin Foster on government action to address labour shortages in the food and farming sector during an evidence session of Westminster's environment, food and rural affairs committee.

But Mr Foster refused to accept there had been any flaws in the immigration process or the roll out of temporary visas, placing the blame instead at the industry’s door for low uptake.

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Committee chair Mr Parish accused the UK Government of inaction: “We are seeing our industry slowly being destroyed. There are 25% less vegetables being planted; 12.5% less poultry being produced. I thought Brexit was about encouraging production in this country not discouraging it – this is down to labour shortages.”

Mr Parish urged the minister to show humility towards the ‘emergency in the pig industry’ whereby pigs have been backed up on farm due to a shortage of butchers and called for some flexibility to ensure food security and animal welfare wasn’t compromised.

However, Mr Foster hit back that there has been a low uptake of visas, blamed employers for failing to sign up to the skilled workers scheme and criticised companies that haven’t registered as a sponsor, which he pointed out was a necessity to recruit overseas workers.

“The only thing we ask is that you become a sponsor," said Mr Foster. "The poultry sector has had good engagement with this and the biggest players are now recruiting under this visa, but in the pork sector, only one of four processors is looking to do so. One let their sponsorship run out and the other two haven’t come forward.”

When pressed by Dr Neil Hudson MP as to whether the Home Office accepts there is an existing animal welfare crisis as a result of not having enough butchers to process pigs, Mr Foster replied: “It is safe to say we haven’t been rushed off our feet with applications, which we were surprised about, given many people implying that there is this great crisis.”

Dr Hudson retorted: “No one is implying there is a crisis – there are thousands of animals backed up on farm, pigs developing respiratory diseases, increased reports of tail biting and facing imminent crisis that thousands will be slaughtered on farm and the government has the opportunity to urgently act in the short term.”

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Mr Foster replied that they have made 800 temporary visas available but that less than 100 have been filled and refuted any implications that the process to recruit was slow, adding: “We have one of the quickest visa application processors for skilled workers in the world.”

Mr Parish disagreed: “It is not a perfect system but quite flawed, I can understand why the industry is so frustrated because you don’t appear to listen, all you do is tell us a process. You have got to listen to the practicalities of what people are finding to get workers through the system,” he stressed, referencing multiple scenarios where people have contacted him because recruitment agencies haven’t worked.

“More and more of our industry is slowing down and if we don’t get the system right, and cost and bureaucracy right, it will just get worse.”