Tory MP Owen Paterson has said Bulgarian and Romanian immigrants in the UK can't use mobile phones, but are good at picking strawberries.
Speaking about his time as an agriculture minister at a fringe event for the new "hard Brexit" pressure group Leave Means Leave at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham, Paterson said:
"The angriest people I met at DEFRA [the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] were fruit and vegetable growers who were deprived of the Seasonal Agricultural Workers’ Scheme that allowed Bulgarians and Romanians to get proper accommodation and catering, for a limited time for the growing season, then went home.
"It’s a skilled job: You wake up, you pick strawberries, you can’t squash them. They may not be able to use mobile phones but it’s picking strawberries; our Brits won’t do it."
The scheme was closed in January 2014 and British workers were told to fill the roles. Around 22,000 eastern Europeans were employed under the scheme each year.
At the time the scheme was closed, according to a book written by former Lib Dem minister David Laws, Paterson had suggested recruiting OAPs to pick fruits to solve the shortage of labour.
"We'll try to get more British pensioners picking some of the fruit and vegetables in the fields instead," he was reported to have said in a meeting during the coalition years.
In August this year, the country’s biggest fruit and vegetable producers warned that British fruit and vegetables could disappear from shops if Brexit meant foreign workers were not able to come to the UK. They said production would ultimately move abroad.
During the fringe event, Paterson said his aim was to replace EU migrants with international ones if the UK leaves free movement behind, saying: "We won’t be short of fruit pickers, we can take whoever we want from around the world – we will be completely colourblind."
Agriculture minister Andrea Leadsom today told the conference: "We want a rural economy that works for everyone. So wherever you come from, wherever you live, you can play a part in the nation’s success."