Most migrants working on UK farms take out big loans to cover their upfront costs, without knowing whether they will earn enough to pay off their debts, according to research published on Tuesday.

Almost three-quarters of workers recruited through the Seasonal Worker Scheme, which allows UK growers to hire around 45,000 people a year on six-month visas, borrowed an average of more than £1,200 to come to the country and most had little certainty over how much they would earn once they arrived, the research organisation Focus on Labour Exploitation (Flex) found.

The findings will add to existing concerns that the design of the UK’s visa scheme — a lifeline for a sector that has struggled to recruit since Brexit — is leaving workers at risk of debt bondage and exploitation, unable to quit jobs even if they find the work and living conditions worse than promised.

They come on the back of a damning report by the UK’s borders and immigration watchdog on the UK’s visa scheme for care workers, described as leaving migrants vulnerable to “shocking” exploitation.

Lucila Granada, Flex’s chief executive, said it was “disappointing” that farm workers were still being put at risk when concerns had been flagged as early as 2021...

Sophie de Salis, sustainability policy adviser at industry body the British Retail Consortium, said retailers had been working with the rest of the industry and government since 2022 to improve workers’ experience and were funding a feasibility study this year to explore how the scheme could move to an “employer pays” principle.

But she added that the government needed to address “systemic issues driving illegal recruitment fees”, including by recruiting from a set list of countries and setting a five-year rolling quota for recruitment.

The Home Office said the department was “clamping down on poor working conditions and exploitation” and had made improvements to the scheme in each of the four years it had been running...

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