Is Suella Braverman’s call to ‘train up’ Brits to fill labour shortages possible?

Suella Braverman has called for Britain to be “less dependent on low-skilled foreign labour” and claimed job shortages can be filled with domestic workers.

The home secretary is among the right-wing Conservative MPs pressuring Rishi Sunak to drive down net migration after it soared to a record of more than 500,000 in the year to June.

But several key industries are still reporting staff shortages, including agriculture, food processing and logistics, as well as gaps across the NHS.

Addressing a right-wing conference in Westminster on Monday, the home secretary insisted the government “needs to get overall immigration numbers down”.

“We mustn’t forget how to do things for ourselves,” Ms Braverman told the National Conservatism Conference. “There is no good reason why we can’t train up enough truck drivers, butchers, fruit pickers, builders, and welders.

“Brexit enables us to build a high-skilled, high-wage economy that is less dependent on low-skilled foreign labour.”

But is the home secretary right? The Independent takes a look at the facts and figures.

When the Brexit withdrawal agreement came into force on 31 January 2020 it ended free movement between the UK and EU states, meaning that EU citizens could no longer work in the UK without a visa.

A report issued last year by the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford said the change had “exacerbated recruitment issues faced by UK employers”, which were also worsened by the Covid pandemic.

It said industries that relied most heavily on EU workers, such as hospitality, transport and storage, had been particularly hard-hit and had struggled to adjust to new immigration rules making many posts ineligible for overseas recruitment.

“Employers in some industries, such as agriculture, have been able to switch from EU to non-EU workers after the end of free movement but in most low-wage industries, the immigration system does not permit them to do this,” the report said.

“Some shortages are transient and resolve of their own accord over time, although the process of ‘adjustment’ may be disruptive for employers who cannot reduce their labour needs through alternatives, such as automation. This has led to calls for work visas schemes to mitigate the impacts for employers.”

More than 70,000 temporary worker visas were granted in 2022, according to Home Office statistics, and more than half of those were for seasonal workers – including jobs in agriculture and poultry farming.

Only 2,493 such visas were granted in 2019, before the Brexit agreement took effect, and the figure soared to almost 35,000 in 2022.

A Home Office report said grants of temporary worker visas had risen by 72 per cent in the period, adding: “The increase in temporary worker visas has been largely driven by the ‘seasonal worker’ visa, which allows a person to do seasonal horticulture work or poultry production work.

“Visas granted to seasonal workers have risen from 2,493 in 2019 to 34,532, reflecting the increase in this route’s quota from 2,500 in 2019 to 40,000 in 2022.”

Despite the rise, several sectors are still reporting staff shortages, which are driving up wages in attempts to recruit and maintain staff, and increasing costs to consumers.

Hospitality, logistics and the food and farming sector have been vocal about shortages and are at the forefront of calls to relax immigration rules or increase targeted visas to plug them.

A report released last year by parliament’s Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee condemned the “government’s failure to grasp the labour issues faced by the food and farming sector, and the actual experience of businesses on the ground”.

It said ministers had unfairly “blamed the sector for not doing more to tackle the problem” itself, rather than addressing policy problems.

The report cited particular shortages in crop picking, meat production and butchery, the poultry sector, food processing, hospitality and logistics.

“The evidence we have received leaves us in no doubt that labour shortages, caused by Brexit and accentuated by the pandemic, have badly affected businesses across the food and farming sector,” MPs concluded. “If not resolved swiftly, they threaten to shrink the sector permanently with a chain reaction of wage rises and price increases.”

They warned that while more can be done to attract domestic workers and increase investment in technology, “neither reform could be expected to make up for the sudden decline in overseas labour in the short term”.

“At present, many British workers are not strongly attracted to roles in the food supply chain, particularly seasonal work,” the report added. “Given the tight profit margins in the food and farming sector, there is limited scope for businesses to attract British workers by increasing wages without causing price rises.”

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A spokesperson for the British Meat Processors Association told The Independent there is still an estimated 10 per cent shortfall in the workforce.

“Despite considerable efforts, meat companies still struggle to recruit and retain British workers,” she added. “Due to the geographical location of the plants, which need to be near the farming areas, British workers may need to move to take up those jobs which they’re not always able or willing to do.”

The association warned that shortages could worsen in the near future, because food price inflation has reduced consumer demand for meat, and if demand rises once more “the industry will again be struggling to recruit the staff it needs”.

The National Farmers’ Union is campaigning for the number of seasonal workers’ visas to be increased, and pointed to a failed government “Pick for Britain” campaign that attempted to recruit domestic workers from 2020 to 2021 as proof that vacancies could not be filled without migration.

It previously campaigned for the government to increase its quota for seasonal workers’ visas last year, and that ministers’ agreement to raise the cap to 55,000 was a “huge relief to farmers and growers employing the skilled workforce needed to produce fruit, vegetables and ornamentals”.

Deputy president Tom Bradshaw said the union was now pushing for a five-year rolling visa scheme, and for individual permits to be extended to nine months to “give growers the confidence to invest in their businesses, and boost Britain’s production of nutritious and affordable fruit and vegetables”.

He added: “Defra’s pick for Britain campaign, which launched to ensure the recruitment of domestic workers, ultimately highlighted that the British workforce is not able to carry out seasonal work.”