"AG recruitment loses license to sponsor migrant agricultural workers,"14 Feb 2023

AG Recruitment, which had brought more than 1,450 Indonesian nationals to work on farms in the UK last year, has lost its licence as a sponsor of workers on the seasonal workers’ visa (‘SWV’) scheme for agricultural workers. The decision to revoke the licence followed accounts of some workers arriving in the UK with up to £5,000 of debt to brokers and in some cases being sent home only weeks after their arrival in the UK. AG Recruitment was one of four ‘scheme operators’ responsible for recruiting and sponsoring workers on the SWV scheme in 2022...

Issues of debt appear to be related to the revocation of AG Recruitment’s licence in only an indirect way. Concerns over workers’ rights and welfare do not appear to have been central to the government’s revocation decision.

The reported reason for revocation was non-compliance with a rule in the SWV scheme that at least 97% of workers must return home ‘on time’ at the end of their six-month visa. Starkly, even those who claim asylum – as some Indonesian workers have reportedly done – are counted as breaching this requirement.

The decision over AG Recruitment therefore indicates that regulation of the SWV scheme continues to be focused on controlling migration, rather than taking steps to genuinely guarantee workers’ rights.