Now is not the time to chicken out of Brexit and its end to mass immigration – Telegraph.co.uk

In each case, the demand is the same. We need to increase the supply of visas for European workers to cope with critical shortages of staff. Without that, many industries will simply grind to a halt.

But is that really necessary? No one would deny that there is some disruption, and Covid-19 and the pingdemic have hardly helped. But shortages? That seems a little extreme.

Lets take chicken for example. Our domestic poultry industry has become critically dependent on imported workers, mainly from Eastern and Central Europe. In many cases, more than half of the labour force come from somewhere else in Europe, and sometimes even more. The industrys argument is that without them, there will be a dramatic fall in output, and very quickly shortages in the shops.

Really? In fact, poultry is a global industry. True, the world price for chicken is up slightly this year, mainly because of the rising price of grain, the main raw material, but the price is still down compared to 2018 (for anyone who doesnt follow the poultry price on a minute-by-minute basis, it is $2.36 per kilogramme right now compared to a peak above $2.60 four years ago). If there were actually a shortage of chicken, the price would be far higher.

There may well be a fall in British production, but since the UK is only the 13th largest producer in the world, what happens here is hardly that significant. If there is a shortage, then we can just import some of the 14m tonnes made in Brazil, or the 2.5m tonnes made in Poland, or the 2.2m from Turkey. And, hey presto, Nandos will be able to start dishing up grilled meat with peri-peri sauce again.

The same is true of most other meats, and indeed many other industries. The UK may end up producing less, and importing more from other countries where wages are typically lower. There is nothing wrong with that. It makes more sense to take the work to the people than to move the people to the work.

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Now is not the time to chicken out of Brexit and its end to mass immigration - Telegraph.co.uk