The Government is grateful for the committee for highlighting the importance of a long-term shift away from a reliance on immigration in the food and farming sector. An increased focus on domestic workers and technological innovation, including automation and training, will be vital to ensure a sufficient and suitably skilled workforce for the food and farming sector in the medium to long term. We are pleased to inform the committee that, as announced in the Government Food Strategy, Defra will commission an independent review to tackle labour shortages in the food supply chain. This will consider the roles of automation, domestic labour, and migration in the labour market, the last of these with reference to the wider work by the MAC, to ensure UK businesses can access the labour they require. In 2021 Defra led a Review of Automation in Horticulture. It will provide a better understanding of what is required to accelerate the development and uptake of automation technologies in both the edible and ornamental sectors, in England, with the view to reducing the sector’s long-term dependency on seasonal migrant labour from 2022 onwards. Defra will publish this Review of Automation and a Government response in summer 2022.