Food chief criticises migrant worker decision
30 April 2009
The UK food and drink industry skills chief, Jack Matthews, has hit out at the government’s decision to extend a controversial registration scheme for Eastern Europeans entering the country to work
Jack Matthews, chief executive of sector skills council Improve, said the decision to extend the Worker Registration Scheme (WRS) to 2011 demonstrated a ‘lack of empathy’ with food and drink companies which rely on permanent and seasonal overseas labour to supplement their staff.
Under the WRS, migrants from Poland, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovenia, Czech Republic and Hungary, which joined the EU in 2004, must pay £90 and submit their passports before being allowed to work in the UK, with the burden of administering the scheme often falling on employers. The scheme had been due to expire at the end of April, but will now run until an EU-wide open borders policy takes effect in April 2011.
Matthews said: “Once again I fear this is a case of the government playing for votes rather than listening to the needs of UK businesses. Food and drink companies are significant employers of migrant workers, with the majority coming from Eastern Europe.
“Over the past couple of years, we have seen applications to the WRS scheme fall sharply and that is leaving food and drink companies short of a necessary labour source. All this extension to the scheme is doing is adding an additional, unnecessary burden on companies as they try to recruit workers they need here and now.”
Matthews gave evidence before the government-appointed Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) last October when he argued that restrictions on migrant worker numbers and the industries they could work in did not reflect the real needs of food and drink companies and lacked the flexibility to be fit for purpose.
Research carried out by Improve last year showed a third (33.2%) of all food and drink companies employ migrant workers, with three-quarters (71.9%) hailing from the eight Eastern European countries covered by the WRS. WRS applications have been in decline since 2007, with an estimated fall of 54% in the year to December 2008 across all industries. Improve’s research predicts that this will lead to short-term labour shortages in the industry, with half (47.1%) of food and drink companies saying falling numbers will leave them with job vacancies, and a quarter (28.3%) saying it would lead to a fall in productivity.
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