First Word

THE CUPBOARDS ARE BARE

The lack of HGV drivers in the supply chain industry is replicated in the racing and bloodstock industries, and there must be action before serious issues develop

I WALKED INTO THE LOCAL M&S garage shop last Sunday afternoon to pick up something for supper – two weeks in Newmarket for the Tattersalls October Yearling Sales meant my cupboards were bare.

When I got into the shop the shelves resembled my kitchen. There was almost no fridge food or fresh produce available – no ready-made meals, no fruit or vegetables, no dairy products. It was starkly shocking to see an empty supermarket, and afforded a growing realisation that, should the logistics industry collapse as has been threatened over the past few weeks due to the lack of HGV drivers in Britain, this is what would be the result.

Nations have fallen, riots ensued, and revolutions have been generated over food shortages in those countries that do not have the financial wellbeing to provide for its people.

Britain is a long way from those concerns, but the sight of empty shelves was a realisation as to just how quickly such issues do and could escalate.

And, while a country such as Britain is a long way from those issues, is it really?

Everyone demands cheap food, and food prices have not risen significantly for years.

However, if the pay for an HGV driver needs to be rapidly increased in order to attract anyone to do the job – it has reported that the pay structure for a good driver is already radically different from this time last year – then there is only one way to cover increased wage costs, with an increase in the cost of the end product.

If you add in growing agricultural labour costs –wages in the sector again already having to be increased for exactly the same reasons, some vegetable pickers are now on the equivalent of £30 an hour due to a lack of a local work force prepared to pick vegetables for the historic pay packet that was received for the job – then the price of food will surely have to increase exorbitantly.

The Telegraph’s feature writer Helen ChandlerWilde visited Cornish-based vegetable farmer David Simmons for an article run in the paper on October 17 and she wrote: “As it stands, the situation could have severe consequences for the British agricultural sector.

“This year, Simmons estimates that he had to leave vegetables worth upwards of £500,000 to rot in the fields, having been unable to recruit enough staff to pick them.

“He sees three ways out of this limbo. Firstly, visa rules could change to allow more “lower-skilled” migrants to take seasonal work on farms. Secondly, food prices could increase to cover the cost of paying British workers even more to attract them. Or, finally, many British farms could shut, costing thousands of jobs and leading to increased food imports instead.

“‘The Government is saying we need to invest in better machinery,’ he says. ‘But we can’t with no money coming in. If something doesn’t change, it’s curtains for us all.’”

So what does this have to do with the similarly short-staffed racing industry? In a similar fashion to the labour intensive sectors of the agricultural world, the British industry has relied on cheap labour for years – decades ago workers travelled over the Irish Sea boasting generations of horsemanship, more recently staff have arrived from Europe, South America, India and the Middle East. (As an aside British staff now do the reverse trip to Ireland to work at Ballydoyle, Closutton or Cullentra).

Now that supply has stopped, or many have returned home in Brexit fall-out, the British Conservative government is announcing via its policy of hindsight that it is “pushing for a high-wage, high-performing economy”. All the employment problems, apparently in a Johnson dig at business, are the fault of companies for not investing in machinery to do the manual jobs.

Boris, as far as I aware, there has not yet been a robot who can successfully sweep a yard, feed a horse, and certainly not one with the ability to ride a piece of work. If there is, I am sure there are plenty of stud farms and training yards who would willingly invest in such a bot.

Just as Simmons the farmer clarifies for the agricultural industry, the racing industry, trainers and stud farms will need to increase pay in order to attract any staff, let alone the best, to work the outside hours as required by life with horses.

With other sectors able to up pay packets, this will become even more of an issue for racing.

SOME OF THE larger yards and stud farms might be able to sustain that additional financial burden, or will have the support base to weather an increase training fees and keep fees, but where does that leave the remaining industry, particularly in this racing world of reduced prize-money funds?

I have already heard tales of yards that are so short on staff they are riding out huge numbers of lots each day, that they are working “round” as a norm; the days of looking after three horses and riding three lots are now long-distant memories recalled as a fond memory over a drink. (And that won’t be affordable soon either if the recently reported rates of inflation in the hospitality industry, due to, yes you can guess, staff attractive wage levels, are true).

Many yards are operating with dangerously low levels of experienced staff, a solution needs to be found and worked on before an accident happens

Lewis Porteous’s “Big Read” in the Racing Post on October 24 reported that Beck Edmunds, who was crowned Employee of the Year at the Godolphin Stud and Stable Staff Awards in February, has left her job at Bryan Smart’s yard and is now working outside of racing. She cites in the article a lack of available staff making her job a misery.

In a yard scenario, without enough good staff, experienced and talented horsemen and women, the level of care and equine attention given has no option but to compromised with possible ongoing implications to safety and welfare. For staff such as Edmunds it is no fun not being able to do the job properly.

So what would it take for the government to be persuaded to open up the visa system, much as it is promising in order to fill the HGV gap and as Farmer Simmons suggests for the agricultural industry, in order to allow in enough experienced equine staff in to work in our post-Brexit Britain?

A request from the BHA, NTF, TBA or NARS?

Or do we have to wait until there is a serious on-yard injury to a member of staff? An injury caused by someone rushing and not focused, just trying to get through the necessary daily jobs? Or injured after falling off an horse that was too fresh because there was not enough staff in a yard to exercise the whole string everyday? A stud farm tractor incident caused by someone not properly trained to use such equipment because no one experienced around to do a job?

Or maybe it will be a welfare case because inexperienced staff fail to notice an issue with a horse?

These are the realities that we are looking at if racing yards and stud farms are understaffed.

Of course, more training courses and PR campaigns can be brought into play to encourage more people to or back to the industry, but that us just too long term, and too late, a solution.

Over 100 job vacancies were posted on the BHA’s careersinracing website between October 1 and October 18, mainly for equine staff, but also for on-the-ground jobs on racecourses, as well as the odd lower to middle level admin job. The problem is now.

If this situation is not dealt with soon, the third option that farmer Simmons see as the only solution for the agricultural industry could well become the reality for the horseracing industry.

By acting quickly and decisively the racing industry found a way successfully through the pandemic, while the integral quality of the horses produced in this country and in Ireland created this autumn’s unexpected hugely buoyant sales season.

Action is needed now to ensure that the quality of our world-leading leading industry is not undermined by a lack of good, top-level equine staff.