Recently I was astonished to read a piece in The Economist addressing the future of the SAWS scheme. Martin Ruhs from the Oxford Migration Observatory suggested that it may be time for Britain to let its more labour-intensive farming slide and instead increase imports. What a ridiculous idea, an insult to successful British horticulture!
As I explained recently at Fruit Focus, the industry cannot understand why we need to even have a debate on SAWS as it is a tried and tested scheme that is hugely beneficial to the British food production economy.
SAWS workers do invaluable work on our crops, pay tax and National Insurance, spend a fair bit of their money and then go home. All major developed economies are dependent on seasonal migrant labour to pick their crops and the UK is definitely not the exception.
The Migration Advisory Committee is looking into the impact of the end of SAWS and will report to the government in March next year, but this is simply too late.
Surely the issue is one of economics not immigration? The obvious question in a period of high unemployment is why we don’t use the unemployed. When asked recently why there were not more British workers on our fruit-packing line, my trusted forklift driver Les Chamberlain replied without hesitation. “I am from a different generation, they don’t want the work,” he said.
It is clear that the domestic workforce and unemployed are reluctant to work in horticulture – the seasonal nature of the work and the need to live in a rural area close to the farm are part of the reason. For the unemployed the loss of benefits is a major factor, and one that must be addressed by the government in any restructure of the benefits system.
So why should we worry when SAWS ends? Surely the workers will continue as before. That of course could happen but if we look at the result of a similar change within the EU in 2004 it showed that the workers will come to the UK but will seek and find permanent work in the hospitality, leisure, building and care sectors.
The ideal scenario for British horticulture would be a next stage SAWS that would involve non-EU countries such as Ukraine, Moldova and others that were so successfully included prior to 2004.
SAWS has helped growers to overcome employment difficulties by providing an ideal contribution to the industry’s seasonal labour requirement for the last 60 years. With a growing global population to feed and rising demand for food, more than ever, UK farmers are being asked to provide safe, healthy and affordable food. SAWS will be crucial in enabling us to rise to this challenge.
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