MORE migrant workers are needed to pick crops because some Britons do not have the required work ethic.

That is the belief of the president of the National Farmers' Union who claimed many unemployed British people were unwilling to get up in time to start harvesting at 6am.

Herefordshire is home to many fruit farms and bosses employ migrant labour to help with the work of gathering the crop.

And  Meurig Raymond, the president of the NFU, urged the government to allow temporary visas so more crop pickers from outside the EU could work in the country to meet demand.

The Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme, which allowed Bulgarians and Romanians to work for up to six months at a time, was closed last year.

Ministers, at that time, claimed the vacanices could be filled by unemployed people from the UK.

But Mr Raymond told the Times: "It's so easy for the government to say the locals, the unemployed, should be involved.

"There are some huge cultural issues here. The work ethic isn't what it ought to be.

"The whole work ethic and discipline that is required with harvest work needs to be improved a lot in parts of the British workforce.

"It's the benefits system and years of inactivity. They will do it for a few days, but they won't continually stick at it.

"A lot of farmers are not going to plant next year's crops if they are concerned they are not going [have the workers to] harvest them. It's a huge conundrum."

A Home Office spokesman said there were no plans to bring in a new scheme to allow nationals from non-EU countries such as Ukraine, Russia and Turkey to work on UK farms during peak harvest seasons.