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Seasonal workers: no halt to exploitation as visa scheme expands

Migrant workers’ legal precarity reveals incompatibility of Labour’s policies on worker’s rights and immigration

By Frey Lindsay
Seasonal workers: no halt to exploitation as visa scheme expands
Farm workers sort through freshly cut asparagus in a packing room at a farm in Minster near Ramsgate, UK, in April 2024 | Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg/Getty Images. All rights reserved
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In February 2025, the UK government announced the Seasonal Worker Scheme would be extended for a further five years.

The scheme has existed since 2019. Every year it sees tens of thousands of people working on Britain’s farms or poultry factories – businesses that would not be able to operate without migrant workers since Britain left the EU. The scheme has been expanded several times in the intervening years, from 2,500 workers in the initial pilot to 45,000 in 2025.

This latest extension was widely seen as an attempt by the Labour government to placate farmers amid a highly politicised protest over inheritance taxes. When it was announced, the head of the National Farmers Union said the five-year commitment was a “huge relief”.

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