Home Office is not doing enough to solve a shortage of pork butchers say MPs

The parliamentary committee that deals food and farming among other issues has written to a Home Office minister who gave evidence to it earlier this week seeking clarification on what he told the committee about visas for foreign pork butchers.

The Chair of the Environment, food and rural Affairs (EFRA) committee, Neil Parish MP, said earlier this week that the Home Office is not doing enough to solve a shortage of pork butchers in the UK by supplying enough visas for foreign workers in a timely, efficient manner.

During a public question and answer session of the EFRA committee on Tuesday, 14 December, the minister for safe and legal migration at the Home office, Kevin Foster MP, told the committee that only one of the UK’s major four pork processors held the necessary licence to allow them to sponsor visa applicants.

Subsequently, leading voices in the industry wrote to the committee challenging the minister’s evidence and stating that all four were indeed sponsors.

Today a letter was forwarded to the minister from the chair of the committee seeking clarification on his statements.