Europe: Youth Mobility

Baroness Bull Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Moraes, to this House and look forward to his future contributions. I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans for securing this debate with its focus on young people and the opportunities of mobility and exchange.

Young people had the most to lose but the least voice in the UK’s decision to leave the EU. The opportunities afforded to previous generations to explore and experience life, study and work in countries on our shared continent, and to enjoy the well-evidenced benefits of international and intercultural exchange—of which more later—are no longer available. For them, it will be more difficult and more expensive to build international friendships, networks and partnerships, and we will never know what cultural, social and economic innovations might have been born from collaborations that can no longer take place.

There are growing calls on the Government to grasp the opportunity to put this right. The British Chambers of Commerce has described the absence of arrangements for mobility for young people in the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement as a “serious omission”, affecting

“everything from school trips to summer jobs in both labour markets”.

ABTA has asked government to prioritise a youth mobility arrangement, arguing that it would rejuvenate opportunities for young people in the UK and foster growth for our essential businesses. YouGov polling from last year found that 68% of the British public would support a bilateral deal to allow 18-30 year-olds to live, work and study in countries across the entirety of Europe. Over half of those people who voted leave said that they would support such an agreement.

Nowhere is the mood music louder than among young people themselves. Last year, the European Economic and Social Committee of the EU published a report highlighting the challenges that young people on both sides of the channel are facing as a result of restricted mobility, and their aspirations for a future relationship between the UK and the EU. Based on extensive consultation among youth organisations and individuals, the report includes direct quotes from young people which express their deep sense of loss and a perception that the current relationship is broken, fractured and closed.

The EESC report makes a series of recommendations, echoing those from the European Affairs Committee of your Lordships’ House and of the Parliamentary Partnership Assembly, of which I am a member. There is “universal and unanimous support” for the full reintegration of the UK into Erasmus+ and shared disappointment in the replacement Turing Scheme, with its limited offer and funding and no inward mobility—a scheme assessed as inadequate in the Government’s own analysis.

It is worth noting, as we have already heard, that Erasmus+ encompasses far more than funding for university students to undertake international placements. It is a vehicle for youth voluntary exchanges and a vital financial lifeline for thousands of young activist networks, organisations and youth councils. It has a proud 38-year record of delivering for young people and organisations across Europe, with a particular emphasis on marginalised groups. Post-Brexit, without access to Erasmus+, dozens of the UK’s youth charities have gone under, including the British Youth Council, which entered insolvency in April 2024, unable to meet ongoing financial challenges without the support that had come from Erasmus+.

This House has often discussed the loss of Erasmus+, but less attention has been paid to the impact of our leaving Creative Europe, the EU’s flagship programme to support the cultural, creative and audio-visual sectors. Between 2014 and 2019, Creative Europe delivered £100 million in funding to UK projects. The UK was the third most successful country in the number of funded projects over that period, with a particular impact on creative and cultural projects in the nations and regions. The Welsh Senedd’s 2024 Culture Shock report calls for government to prioritise association with Creative Europe at the forthcoming review of the TCA.

Rejoining Erasmus+ and Creative Europe would allow young people to apply for joint funding for projects that enable exchange at home and abroad. This would offset at least some of the damage of the current arrangement, helping today’s young people build and nurture the intercultural networks that underpin their development and careers and that inspire innovative new ideas. It would be a positive step on the journey towards a comprehensive and reciprocal scheme of the kind we are debating today.

The idea of a scheme that allows young people to live, work and study in the EU and the UK for a limited period is not a radically new concept. Indeed, according to the Library’s research, the UK already has such agreements in place with 13 countries around the world. Clearly, we believe in the personal, professional and social benefits that accrue from international and intercultural communication, and the increased understanding between nations that grows from this kind of exchange. However, the overwhelming majority of the exchange programmes already in place can be accessed only with a significant and costly long-haul flight, which likely puts them out of reach for many young people. Surely the Minister would agree that enabling exchange between the EU and the UK makes sense, not just because our histories are interwoven but because the relative ease and lower cost of access makes the benefits of exchange available to a wider and more diverse range of young people.

As we have heard, the introduction of a reciprocal arrangement would have significant benefits for the creative and cultural sector, which has been so severely impacted by an agreement that the noble Lord, Lord Frost, himself said, in March 2022, was “too purist” on youth mobility and touring artists, was

“making life difficult on both sides”,

and should be reviewed. The 90 in 180 days agreement, to which this and the last Government so often refer, does not address a fundamental issue, in that it does not permit artists to undertake work that is paid.

The hardest hit by all this are the younger, early-career artists, working on low profit margins and with limited administrative support. The bureaucracy involved in securing visas and permits for sets, costumes, instruments and merchandise is not only time-consuming but the cost is often prohibitive. Artists can no longer take up the last-minute engagements that have so often fast-tracked their careers. In some cases, visa restrictions disproportionately impact younger artists, because the waivers exempt only established artists or require minimum income thresholds, which of course younger artists cannot meet. A youth mobility scheme would not solve all the challenges for post-Brexit touring, but it could significantly improve the situation for early-career artists, who are more likely to be travelling alone or in splitter vans, to be carrying their own costumes and instruments, and to be transporting merchandise using the “merchandise in baggage” rules.

One of the most striking issues highlighted in the EESC report is the absence of institutional structures for youth engagement between the UK and the EU and in the groups that oversee and advise on the implementation of the TCA. I hope that this omission will be addressed at the review point next year.

Listening to young people and structuring their voices into the processes by which decisions are reached is more important now than it has ever been. Generational divides have always existed, but some of the factors that differentiate young people today from the decision-making generation are particularly profound. The climate and housing crises may well be unparalleled sources of intergenerational tension, as is the burden of future debt. Brains that have been shaped, quite literally, by the printing press technology of Johannes Gutenberg have to work hard to imagine how a generation whose brains are shaped by the technology of Gates—the “click to read more” technology—thinks, experiences and communicates. Therefore, it is all the more important to involve young people in policy development and to structure their voices into discussions and decisions about the longer term.

I welcome this Government’s commitment to reset our relationship with the EU. I hope that this includes fresh thinking, informed by the voices of young people, on intercultural and international exchange mechanisms, including Erasmus+ and Creative Europe, and an agreement that opens up the rich experience of living, working and studying across our shared continent.

A youth mobility agreement would not be a return to free movement. These schemes can be tailored to national interests and limited in terms of numbers or duration. But it would harness the transformative potential of youth connections in unlocking a closer bilateral relationship between the EU and the UK based on good will and intercultural understanding.

This is not just about restoring opportunities for individuals. A systematic review published last year determined that intercultural competence is one of the main requirements for success in today’s globalised world, and its absence a crucial factor in failure. The review found that these skills of cultural awareness, intercultural sensitivity, language proficiency, empathy and flexibility are best developed through studying and staying in different cultural environments and participating in cultural programmes across geographic borders.

This is the real win of exchange and mobility with our nearest neighbour and our key trading partner: not just a future generation enriched by the experience of studying, living and working in different environments and among different peoples, but a future generation better equipped to help ensure the future success and prosperity of the UK.