The British Meat Processors Association (BMPA) has written to Home Secretary James Cleverly once more in order to outline the damage the Government's new £38,700 immigration rule will inflict, warning Government that the rule will "stoke food price inflation".
The letter highlighted that "forcing companies to take on overseas butchers at £38,700" would represent a 49% increase to current salary levels, which sit around £26,200 for a worker in the UK. The Association said that this would "instantly spark a raft" of Equal Pay Claims under the Equality Act 2010, as existing British workers have a "legal right to demand to be paid an equal salary" for the same work.
BMPA said that the increase in overhead costs would not be absorbed when firms are "already working to tiny margins around 2%". It said that instead, food price inflation would be stoked and costs would be passed on to consumers.
Nick Allen, chief executive of the BMPA, said in his letter to James Cleverly: "Unfortunately, there is a perception that UK businesses utilise migrant labour as a "cheaper option" to UK-based labour.
"This is simply not the case. The skilled worker route offers our industry access to labour that we are unable to source within the UK and is already at a significantly higher cost than recruiting a UK-based worker."
BMPA highlighted that if companies can recruit neither British nor overseas workers they will have two choices - contract their business and reduce the amount of food they produce, or import more from abroad. Either way, it said the UK farming industry would take a "long-term systemic hit".
It said that initially the UK would see "animal welfare issues" as livestock starts backing up on farms, with not enough processing workers to "handle the volume". BMPA said this would cause farmers to "produce less over time", and many would go out of business, with the Association saying that it would "not only be anti-growth for UK Plc and damaging for the economy, but it would seriously injure Britain's food security".
Allen's request to the Home Secretary read: "We therefore ask that the Home Office ask the Migratory Advisory Committee to add butchers onto the Immigration Salary List, which would mean that they could apply the lower salary thresholds.
"This would still mean an overseas worker would be earning £30,960, which is a considerable increase from the current £26,200. Even this lower increase in the threshold will have a damaging impact for the businesses that have to find the extra money and will stoke food price inflation as higher overhead costs are passed on."
This story was originally published on a previous version of the Meat Management website and so there may be some missing images and formatting issues.
