The government has been asked to relax labour market restrictions limiting industry's access to migrant workers from Romania and Bulgaria in order to help ease “short-term” staff shortages facing the food and drink manufacturing sector.

Giving evidence before the government's Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), Jack Matthews, chief executive of food and drink sector skills council Improve, said the immigration quota placed on Bulgarian and Romanian workers was “inconsistent when matched against need” and unfairly penalised certain food and drink sectors.

Matthews was giving evidence in the wake of recent research published by Improve, which revealed that workers from EU states such as Poland and Slovakia, who are not subject to the same restrictions as those placed on Bulgarian and Romanian nationals, were starting to head home in large numbers.

Matthews said: “Just under one in five workers in the food and drink industry is classified as migrants, with the majority originating from the so-called A8 group of eastern European countries admitted to the EU in 2004. That is a relatively heavy reliance on migrant labour, but it stems from basic need - food and drink companies simply haven't been able to source workers in the numbers they need at home for some years now. Even with the current economic downturn and rise in unemployment, it is difficult to recruit local people into certain jobs in the food and drink sector.

“In the long term, we know that migrant labour is not a sustainable answer and the industry is working hard to plug gaps in the domestic labour market. But that will not happen overnight, and in the meantime, while Polish, Slovakian and Lithuanian workers are heading home, companies are being left short-staffed in key occupations.

“We have asked the government to look again at the rules affecting Bulgarian and Romanian workers because they are still applying to come to this country in large numbers. However, their availability to companies is restricted by what many in the food and drink industry see as arbitrary, unbalanced immigration quotas. Workers from any other EU member state can move freely to the UK to work in whatever business they like, but, as far as the food and drink industry goes, Bulgarian and Romanian workers can only be employed in meat, fish and mushroom processing, and their numbers are tightly controlled. This means other sectors such as fresh produce, chilled and convenience foods are being penalised,” he added.