The Government’s attempt to rebrand labour shortages within the meat sector is deeply concerning, says Kerry Maxwell of the British Poultry Council (BPC).
When I read that the Immigration Salary Discount List (ISDL) had replaced the Shortage Occupation List (SOL), it was the evident change in tone of the document that immediately caught my attention. It appears that one of the Government’s methods of tackling the wide-spread labour shortages is to adopt a different mindset. In introducing ISDL, officials are trying to flip the narrative from ‘genuine staff shortage’.
Poultry is half the meat the nation eats. We understand our connection with communities across the country, and, as a result, we want to build bright and inclusive pathways for all of our people. Job security is food security, after all.
“You can only imagine my face when I read the ‘rapid review’ of the new immigration list; there is no way this is a subject anyone can quickly skim through.”
You can only imagine my face when I read the ‘rapid review’ of the new immigration list; there is no way this is a subject anyone can quickly skim through. How we view immigration is something that needs to be embedded into a bigger conversation on productivity, self-sufficiency and the long-term sustainability of the British poultry meat industry.
But this insistence on putting ideology before outcomes means supply chains risk being hampered rather than optimised. Instead of Government looking at inputs alone (i.e., who is working in British poultry), maybe we should all be looking at what we want British poultry to achieve and working to allocate investment and resource accordingly – from establishing the Agriskills Taskforce outlined in BPC’s ‘2024 and Beyond’, to ensuring the Poultry Visa Scheme is cost-effective, flexible and ultimately fit for purpose.
Taking this approach to labour recognises that all workers, adverbs and adjectives aside, play a vital role in driving the outcomes we want to see in British food production. But when phrases like ‘immigration salary discount’ enter the chat, it reduces outcomes to short-term fixes and ‘rapid reviews’ that will only go on to create more problems.
I’ve written before that a combination of a declining workforce and productivity stasis is lethal. There is no shying away from a drop in output or overall stagnation if this Government (or one in waiting) cannot capture investment in agriskills while patching up holes in immigration, especially if some form of self-sufficiency is an objective for British food and farming as part of the green transition.
