The UK’s immigration policy came under fire during a lively session at the NFU conference, in Birmingham, with discussions narrowing in on the government’s enthusiasm for automation as a means to addresses skills' gaps.

Delegates heard from CBI director-general, Tony Danker, during a session on ‘delivering growth in a changing world’ that more national discourse from politicians would be needed on immigration to address some of the big labour challenges facing businesses.

“The government’s view is you don’t need immigration, you need automation. But when you look into it, I don’t think the government has thought through the feasibility and viability of automation in agriculture,” Mr Danker told delegates, adding that there needed to be an honest conversation about what that really looks like, what the timescales might be and which skills would always need to be filled by humans.

“The message from government is we are going to have a high wage, high skilled economy and no British person will ever have to work in low wage, low skilled roles, yet at the same time there will be no immigration, therefore everything else will be automated. It is dreamland thinking, it is not the way the economy works,” he argued.

Calling for a new and simplified deal on immigration, he continued by arguing that the government had to ask two questions, what were the skills needed and whether they were available in the UK?

“If the answer to the second question is 'no', then the simple answer is to solve it first with immigration, to create a bridge and then we need to start changing FE curriculum, or start building a supply of skills in the school system that responds to that," said Mr Danker.

"This is so utterly elementary that it defies logic that we don’t have a skills and immigration policy which works that way and I think we are paying the price for it now.”

Reflecting on some of the other big challenges which impacted businesses in recent years around Brexit, Covid disruption and high inflation, he called for a future economic strategy which would rebuild confidence and stimulated investment and growth.

“Businesses right now are saying planning is a disaster, regulation is overly burdensome, and the government has cut off immigration. The government can’t have it both ways," he said.

"They can’t have an economic strategy which on the one hand says, 'sorry we have no money, so we can’t offer tax incentives', or spend money on infrastructure, then at the same time, says all the stuff that is free, regulation, planning, immigration, on-shore wind and solar, 'you can’ t have that either'. Then you are left with nothing.

“The British industry is desperate to get going after Brexit stasis. We need the government to either find ways to incentivise growth using fiscal powers or unlock barriers to growth businesses are facing every day,” he concluded.