UK fishing industry gets green light to hire more workers overseas

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Ministers have quietly agreed to allow more foreign workers to join the UK’s fishing industry as the sector struggles with labor shortages and post-Brexit export regulations.

Share fishermen, trawler skippers and sailors on large trawlers are to be added to the government’s Shortage Jobs list, a scheme which allows UK employers to pay overseas workers around 80% of their normal wages in some sectors.

The move comes after ministers agreed in March that more foreign workers could join Britain’s construction industry. Other sectors, including retail and hospitality, are lobbying to be added to the Home Office’s shortage list.

Ministers accepted the need to continue allowing skilled foreign workers into the UK despite backlash from the Conservative Party over high levels of net migration. The total reached a record 606,000 in 2022, equivalent to the population of Sheffield.

Opening the UK’s doors to more overseas fishermen is a tacit recognition that Brexit has not brought about the boom in the industry that Boris Johnson and other Leave campaigners promised at the time of the 2016 referendum.

Johnson has been accused of “selling out” the industry in negotiations with the EU over fishing rights that were part of a trade deal in 2020, despite his insistence that as a result of the deal Britain would be was able to “catch and eat prodigious amounts of extra fish”.

“Promises were made that didn’t materialize,” said Mike Cohen, chief executive of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations, a trade body representing fishermen in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. “We still don’t act like an independent state like other coastal states do. France holds the vast majority of the cod quota in the Channel.”

Tight profit margins have forced fishing boat captains to keep wages low, and few British workers want to work in cramped and difficult conditions.

“The fishing industry is not perceived as the best place to work,” said Aoife Martin, director of operations at Seafish, a public body that supports the UK’s fishing industry. “There is a growing dependence on foreign labor.”

According to Seafish, around 30% of the UK’s total fishing crew come from overseas. They are typically recruited from the Philippines or Ghana, nations with a strong seafaring tradition.

“We would like to recruit local staff, but it is difficult to find enough manpower,” said Cohen.

While the industry has welcomed the addition of fishermen to the shortage list, barriers remain to addressing labor shortages.

Alistair Carmichael, Liberal Democrat MP for Orkney and Shetland, said immigration secretary Robert Jenrick’s refusal to lower the required level of English proficiency made the move “absolutely meaningless to the fishing industry”.

Jenrick on Tuesday said looser rules for hiring fisheries workers from overseas are part of “a comprehensive support package” to ensure the industry can “take full advantage of fish in UK waters” .

In 2021 the government announced a £100m UK seafood fund to support the industry after access to its main EU markets was thrown into disarray by new controls and paperwork.

Transporting seafood from the UK to the EU used to take one to two days, but now it takes two to three, Martin said. “This is a big problem when, for example, you try to export highly valuable live shellfish.”