Ministry of Cake managing director Chris Ormrod has spoken to ITV News about immigration, ahead of the Brexit referendum.

Talking about the impact of immigration on his business, Ormrod said: “We’d be a much smaller business without it.”

At the Ministry of Cake factory in Taunton, most of the 226 workers are from abroad. Forty per cent are from Britain, 40% from Poland, 5% are from Portugal, and the rest are from around the world.

The ITV News report said that at school, young people are discouraged from going to work in factories. But Ormrod said that without his immigrant workforce, his business wouldn’t survive.

He said: “I suspect that, without them, we’d either be a much smaller business, or we’d be a more difficult business to attract good talent and we’d have to go somewhere else.”

One Italian worker interviewed said she had no plans to go back to Italy in the next five or 10 years “as the outlook there isn’t very good at the moment, and I am building my family here”.

Diversity

ITV News used a sliced Victoria sponge cake to demonstrate the diversity of the workforce and also spoke to Ministry of Cake head chef Lubo, as well as various workers who hail from around the world, from areas as diverse as Brazil and Vietnam.

The programme said that British workers at the factory “do not feel they are taking our jobs”, as one woman put it. She went on to say: “The jobs are advertised in this country as well, so there are opportunities for people from this country to take the jobs if they want them - they just don’t.”

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