Examination of Witness (Questions 80-82)
Wednesday 7 May 2003
Mrs Marilyn Day
Q80 Mr Wiggin: On that, would you
not suggest that perhaps the Government has quite a lot of responsibility?
After all, they are responsible for the issuing of a visa or allowing
people into the country or accepting whether someone is a student
or not and actually the legislation that you would like to see
brought in, from what you were saying earlier, some of it already
exists and just is not being enforced properly. Is that fair?
Mrs Day: That is correct and some
of it can be adopted. I think with a bit of thought with what
is happening already, plus some extra tweaks, we could probably
bring the whole thing in fairly quickly.
Q81 Mr Wiggin: And the abuses you
were talking about of the SAWS scheme, that should be dealt with
immediately?
Mrs Day: Well, it should be dealt
with because the thing is that we are dealing with foreign nationals
and what are they going to think of us when they go back? What
sort of impression will it give to the rest of Europe? Also with
the enlargement of Europe, we are going to have a much more fluid
workforce and, therefore, traceability is going to be even more
important.
Q82 Chairman: Mrs Day, thank you
very much indeed for coming. Is there any final parting shot you
want to make? There are journalists sitting here and I am afraid
we cannot offer you protection when you leave.
Mrs Day: Basically I just hope
you go ahead and do this. There are one or two other agencies
which still exist from those times and we are really keen because
we do not want to see agricultural labour decimated and we do
not want the training schemes to go. We want to continue the high
standards we have in agriculture in this country and if we do
not do something about it, we fear that it will be gone and we
will never get it back once it has gone as there are too many
hungry industries out there.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed,
Mrs Day.
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