The Government thanks the committee for its report into labour shortages in the food and farming sector. We welcome the opportunity to present a joint Home Office and Defra response to the report’s recommendations. It is a Government priority to enable an innovative, productive, and competitive food supply-chain, which invests in its people and skills. We are aware that there are both short and long-term challenges to recruiting across the food and farming sector, which has faced difficulty in securing sufficient labour in recent years. Despite this, the UK has a highly resilient food supply chain, which has coped well in responding to unprecedented challenges, including fluctuations in the supply of labour. We have worked closely with industry and across Government over the past year to respond to labour shortages in affected sectors. We extended the Seasonal Worker route until 2024, delivered emergency, temporary visa schemes for the poultry, pork, and HGV food transportation sectors in response to specific challenges last autumn, and introduced an accompanying package of non-immigration measures to alleviate pressures in the pig sector, including Private Storage Aid and Slaughter Incentive Payment Schemes. We continue to closely monitor pressures in the food and farming sector and work closely across Government to ensure that the labour needs of the sector are understood.