Should young Europeans be able to travel freely in the UK?
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Labour is weighing up a new visa scheme that would allow young Europeans to live, work and study in the UK. The initiative, similar to existing arrangements with countries like Australia, has gained support from over 60 MPs ahead of next month's UK-EU summit in London.
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In brief:
- Keir Starmer is considering a youth mobility scheme that would allow Europeans aged 18-30 to live, work and study in the UK as part of an EU reset deal.
- The proposed visa-based scheme would be similar to existing arrangements with countries like Australia and Canada, potentially lasting 1-2 years with caps on the numbers, and has support from over 60 MPs who signed a letter urging ambition ahead of the UK-EU summit.
- Polling suggests two-thirds of Brits favour such a reciprocal scheme, with Labour MPs emphasising it wouldn't constitute a return to freedom of movement.
What’s the story?
Keir Starmer is considering allowing thousands of young Europeans to live, study and work in the UK in a youth mobility scheme that will act as part of an EU reset deal.
The scheme, which Chancellor Rachel Reeves is said to be supportive of, would allow 18-30-year-olds to travel freely between the UK and Europe.
More than 60 MPs have signed a letter ahead of the UK-EU summit in London on May 19 urging the UK government and the European Union to “show ambitions, flexibility and trust to rise to this moment of possibility together”.
A youth mobility scheme such as this has been a key European demand in order to get relations - and a trade deal - back on track since Brexit.
Details of what such a scheme would look like are yet to be determined, with home secretary Yvette Cooper reportedly pushing for a cap on the number of people who could enter the UK, with those entering only allowed to do so for one year, so as not to inflate migration figures.
Reeves said that discussions with colleagues in the European Union about a youth mobility scheme are “ongoing,” but added that there will be “no return to freedom of movement,” in an interview on LBC.
“This is the moment to get the most ambitious deal possible.”
MP Andrew Lewin, the author of the letter signed by MPs, said he wrote to urge the government to be as “ambitious as possible”.
“It's clear that negotiations are live, and we want to make our case that this is the moment to get the most ambitious deal possible.”
Levin says Europeans would have to apply for a Visa to enter the UK, and visa versa.
“It would be based on the model that we already have with lots of other countries across the world. We have youth mobility schemes with Australia, Canada, New Zealand - perhaps not a surprise - but we also have them with San Marino and Uruguay. So there's an established principle”.
How long people would be able to visit is to be "negotiated," he says, but would typically be “for a year or two”.
He adds it would be “realistic and pragmatic” for the scheme to be “subject to a cap” much like the one the UK has with Australia, where there’s a cap of 35,000 people a year.
Lewin says “there was no nod” from the government to go ahead with the letter, but he believes Reeves “shares the ambition to get closer to Europe”.
What’s The News Agents’ take?
“If growth is your main concern, and you want young people working in all sorts of jobs where maybe this will foster economic growth, then why not have bright young things coming into the country, who may have skills that they can offer that we have lost since we left the European Union?” Emily Maitlis asks on The News Agents.
But the question is not that straightforward for cabinet ministers with conflicting goals to achieve in their jobs, Jon Sopel points out.
“You’ve got Rachel Reeves saying ‘I've got to bring back growth’. And you've got Yvette Cooper who says, ‘I've got to bring down net migration. Why do I want to open up a visa scheme which could allow tens of thousand more people in?’”
Government tensions are not the only thing that could stop the scheme getting approved. The timing for this discussion is somewhat "catastrophic", Emily says, as with local elections being held in May, Labour will also be thinking about how their opposition parties - or one in particular, Reform UK - would respond to the idea.
“It feels like a sitting duck target for Farage to just say; ‘You see! They hated Brexit! I knew they'd do this!”
On the other hand, Emily goes on, “this is still a visa scheme”.
“We do have these schemes already - we have them in parts of South America and with Australia. These schemes are already in place. They are not a new thing.
“But what we don't have is anything that would include all 27 EU countries.”
The concept leads Jon to ask; “Does Keir Starmer need to be as cautious as he has been over Europe?”
A recent YouGov poll suggests not.
Of 15,000 Brits polled, two thirds of respondents were in favour of a reciprocal EU-UK mobility scheme which would give young Brits, two years in the EU and young Europeans two years in the UK to work and travel.
“The public are way in front of him,” Jon adds.
“Nobody's suggesting that we reopen freedom of movement. Nobody's suggesting that we re enter the EU, but this is something that has a time limit on it, has the flexibility to work both ways - which is why it's probably a no brainer for the government,” Emily says.
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