Europe: Youth Mobility

Baroness Wheatcroft Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Wheatcroft (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans for securing this debate; it is clearly a popular subject. There have been Questions and other debates on it, but in this Chamber people have managed to provide many different answers to a similar question. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Moraes, on his interesting maiden speech. It showed humour and was, I think, a view of what we may come to expect from him in the future—insight and modesty—but he knows what he is talking about.

I am delighted to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Llanfaes. I am grateful to her for her advice on how to pronounce Llanfaes—so if I get it wrong, it is not my fault. Her point about widening the age range is one that I think many of us in this Chamber would take to heart. It is probably not quite the age she has in mind, but raising it at least to the mid-40s would be reasonable because, apart from anything else, it seems that the current younger generation seem to grow up rather more slowly than our generation had to.

It may have escaped the notice of some here, but earlier this month the Government launched the soft power council; it was so soft that nobody took much notice. Nevertheless, Foreign Secretary David Lammy and Lisa Nandy from DCMS got together to announce this new council because they believe that soft power is the one thing that is going to be incredibly important in making Britain great again. Of course, they are right.

As David Lammy put it:

“Soft power is fundamental to the UK’s impact and reputation around the world … But we have not taken a sufficiently strategic approach … Harnessing soft power effectively can help to build relationships, deepen trust, enhance our security and drive”—


you guessed it—“economic growth”. Well, nobody is going to disagree with that.

We all agree that soft power is delivered in massive quantities by youth mobility. Getting young people to see and experience this country, and getting our young people to experience life abroad, is all about delivering soft power. Tomorrow’s young people include tomorrow’s leaders. Previous leaders of the States, for instance, have been students in the UK and have reflected favourably on that experience once in office. So a youth mobility scheme should be an important part of any soft power initiative. Surely that will be a contributor to the growth that we are in search of and that is proving so elusive.

Yesterday, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said she wants a Government who remove barriers to growth “one by one”. She said she is intent on making it

“easier for businesses to trade”.

What happened just five years ago has not made it easier for businesses to trade. The right reverend Prelate said he hoped that in this debate we would not rehearse the arguments over Brexit, and I think we have all tried not to disappoint him. The latest poll from YouGov, published this week, shows that just 30% of people think that we were right to leave the EU—but let us not debate that now.

The UK is not going back into the EU, the single market or the customs union; we have heard that often enough to actually believe it. Instead, we are resetting the relationship—and we need to. In the interests of growth, we certainly need to reset that relationship as quickly as possible. Exports by small businesses are down by 30% since Brexit. Some 20,000 small businesses have stopped exporting altogether. The noble Lord, Lord Frost—I see him returning to his place—sees no need for this reset. He told us that he believes the relationship is working well, even though those small firms have stopped exporting altogether.

The noble Lord was at least a little more positive—just a little—on the subject of a youth mobility scheme. I confess that I share his view that the EU’s original proposal that we read about had flaws—not least the idea that we should be able to send people from the UK to only one EU country but then they would have Schengen rights to travel, which limits things somewhat and seems a little unnecessary. Nevertheless, it is a serious starting point for negotiations that the EU wanted to open. The majority of people in this country would be perfectly prepared to open those negotiations, and they would want them to lead somewhere.

In this debate we have heard much about the advantages for individuals of the opportunity to live and work abroad. The noble Baroness, Lady Featherstone, would not even be in this Chamber, she tells us, had it not been for taking advantage of that opportunity. The advantage is not just in soft power but in young workers coming to the UK. Our young people get experience that is useful to bring back here. The hospitality industry and ABTA have been very clear that, without that experience, the pipeline of people to work in the travel industry in this country is very badly hit. In the more short-term rush for growth, those young workers—who work not for a great deal of money but with much enthusiasm, particularly in our hospitality industry and probably in our care industries as well—are much missed.

The choice of existing schemes is, to say the least, somewhat idiosyncratic. It is all very well to have a youth mobility scheme with Andorra or Monaco. South Korea and Uruguay may have young people who look fondly on the UK, but I have not come across many of them recently. Perhaps they find places closer to home that they wish to visit and that they can afford to visit.

Since we started these specific youth mobility schemes, some of which date back to 2008, half the visitors who have taken advantage of them have come from Australia. Much as we all welcome the Australians who come and work in this country, we need to broaden our horizons and encourage people from our nearest neighbours in Europe. Our estrangement from the EU— from Europe—has been hard on this country, not just for trade, but from an emotional point of view for many people. As other noble Lords have said, it is time for us to really start rebuilding those bridges.

As the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, has said, school trips have been decimated. That has had a terrible effect on the language schools in this country. There are grave fears that this situation could get even worse and that short-term tourists will be deterred too by the prospect of the ETA coming into force—not next year, nor the year after, but in April 2025. The ETA scheme is already operating for further flung countries. If it is to come into effect for European countries in April, can the Minister reassure us that everything is up and running to cope with it; that Operation Brock will not be needed again; that coaches will continue to flow through the port of Dover, and that there is nothing to fear? Can she reassure us that businesses, particularly in Kent, will not be hit, because they are fearful that they will suffer terrible disruption?

I will finish on a more positive note, as the right reverend Prelate asked us to do. We should take the concept of town twinning as far as we can and encourage towns to build close relationships in Europe; to get together and travel to Europe. Again, I fear that the ETA may be an obstacle in the way of this happening.