Foreign farm workers can come to UK for another five years

UK farms will be able to continue employing seasonal workers from overseas for another five years, under government plans to boost the agricultural sector.

Ministers will extend the seasonal worker visa route for five more years in an effort to give farmers greater confidence over the future supply of their workforce.

It forms the latest attempt from Environment Secretary Steve Reed to reset relations with the farming sector amid growing tensions over the Treasury’s plans to impose inheritance tax on family farms from next year.

Extending visas for seasonal workers was among the top demands from the National Farmers’ Union [NFU], and comes alongside fresh promises to introduce new requirements for government catering contracts to buy British produce and to protect British farmers in any future trade deals.

Any change to the visa route will not have any impact on the overall migration figures because seasonal workers can only remain in the UK for six months to pick fruit, vegetables or flowers.

Delivering his first speech to the NFU annual conference, Reed sought to further repair relations by stating he would judge his time in government as a “failure” if he did not oversee an increase to farmers’ profitability.

“The underlying problem is that farmers do not make enough money for the hard work and commitment they put in,” he will say.

“My focus is on ensuring farming becomes more profitable because that’s how we make your businesses viable for the future. And that’s how we ensure the long-term food security this country needs.”

NFU president Tom Bradshaw is set to give a highly critical speech at his organisation’s conference on Tuesday, accusing the Government of breaking promises with its “morally wrong” policy to bring in inheritance tax for farm businesses worth more than £1m.

Bradshaw will urge ministers to “do the right thing” and reverse the tax policy.

He will also criticise the “botched” agricultural transition from EU-era subsidies mostly for the amount of land farmed to payments for delivering public goods such as nature habitat and clean water, inherited from the last government.

And he will blame bad policy, geopolitics and “unprecedented weather” for leaving some sectors of the industry facing their worst cashflow crisis for generations, warning “many farmers are genuinely worried about how they’ll make it to the end of 2025”.