Ministers call for immigration and UK food prices to increase
Immigration and food prices must increase to solve the food crisis, ministers are to say at a summit.
Rishi Sunak will be joined by ministers from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) as well as farmers and industry leaders at the meeting at No 10 on Tuesday.
The Guardian understands there is a battle between the home secretary, Suella Braverman, and Defra over immigration.
Fruit and vegetables have been rotting in the fields, and some farmers have gone out of business, as there are not enough people willing to pick them.
Farmers and Defra ministers have been lobbying the Home Office to increase the number of temporary visas for agricultural workers, but a senior Defra source said Braverman was “ideologically opposed” to such a move.
Sources at Defra hope Sunak will publicly concede at Tuesday’s meeting that more workers are needed, thus pushing the Home Office into agreeing to more visas.
The talks are expected to cover issues of inflation and food security in the British food and agricultural sector. While the Treasury has been telling supermarkets not to increase prices, even as costs to suppliers increase, ministers at Defra have pointed out that farmers and food suppliers going out of business would be more inflationary than a modest increase in food prices.
Food prices in the UK are lower, ministers point out, than across Europe, with British consumers spending less of their income on groceries than other Europeans.
In many cases, supermarket items are sold at less than the price of production. However, food prices are increasing with inflation, and last week there was a record 17.8% increase in the cost of fresh food year on year, according to the British Retail Consortium (BRC).
The National
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