To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what estimate her Department has made of the number of (a) Romanians and (b) Bulgarians (i) available to fill the agricultural labour requirement in 2008; and what assessment she has made of whether they possess the necessary skills. (151699)

[holding answer 23 July 2007]: The seasonal agricultural workers scheme is a low skilled scheme designed to help meet any shortfall in the supply of seasonal labour from within the UK and those ED states with access to our labour market. As this is a low skilled scheme, we contract with operators to undertake with the individual the necessary assessment of suitability.

A recent International Organisation for Migration (IOM) survey in Bulgaria and Romania shows there is good reason to believe A2 nationals will offer an adequate pool of SAWS recruits. The survey found that 5 per cent. of the sample of respondents (which was representative of the population at large) would consider working in the UK. Of those 50 per cent. would consider working in agriculture and 38 per cent. intended to remain for less than six months. We are in regular contact with the operators and our embassies in Romanian and Bulgaria and will continue to monitor the situation.