One of the UK's most prominent soft-fruit growers has labelled George Eustice's idea that jobless Britons should be made to pick fruit on farms or face having their benefits taken away as 'rubbish'.
The food and farming minister reiterated his belief during a Q&A session at yesterday's FPJ Live conference at the National Motorcycle Museum in Solihull.
But Anthony Snell, of the family-run AJ and CI Snell, questioned the logic of the minister's argument, which comes on the back of the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme (SAWS) being scrapped this year.
Snell also accused Eustice, a Conservative MP for the Cornish constituency of Camborne and Redruth, and whose family ran a strawberry farm in Cornwall in the 1990s, of ignoring a report by the government’s independent Migration Advisory Committee last year, which warned about the impact of scrapping seasonal work permits.
The Herefordshire-based grower, said: 'If the minister had read the report his government commissioned and then ignored, he would realise it's absolutely, totally impossible in any developed country to employ the unemployed who are often terminally unemployed. It's totally impractical.
'Eustice cites the soft-fruit industry as having developed hugely over the years, and that now it's easier to get people, but that's absolute rubbish. How can it be easier, when the industry has grown hugely? Our labour requirements have increased, not decreased, so he's totally out of touch on that point.'
On the subject of employing British people to pick fruit, Snell added: 'We've tried it, we've done it - we bend over backwards. We'd rather employ local workers. There's a misconception in our industry that it's cheap labour - it costs us more to employ an Eastern European worker, as we have to supply accommodation, infrastructure, sort out their bank accounts, take them shopping - we'd love to just take on local people.
'When I started in horticulture, the first job I used to do was drive over into Hereford, I parked in the council estate, and filled it with local people. They'd come and pick the fruit and veg, and at the end of the afternoon, we'd take them back. It's easier for a Brit to get a job on our farm, but the Eastern Europeans work hard, have a better work ethic, and we should welcome with open arms our seasonal migrant workers because if we don't look after them, we're going to lose them.'
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