OPPORTUNITIES for “our young people to experience study, work, leisure, sport, music, and so on in the wider world beyond our shores” were a priority for the Bishop of St Albans, Dr Alan Smith, in his latest House of Lords debate last week, on “Europe: Youth Mobility”.
“The need for international co-operation is all the more important, especially with those countries that are quite literally our neighbours,” Dr Smith said in his opening speech. He considered “migration issues” to be exacerbated by “increasing geopolitical stability”, including the Ukrainian war. All pointed, he felt, towards “the need for closer ties with our European neighbours . . . more pressing now than it has been for some time.”
He was keen to look beyond the EU and not revisit the Brexit arguments: “That decision has been made.” He wanted to consider “positive engagements and relationships at all levels in science and research, education, culture, and sport, and, critically, opportunities for citizens to live and work together, both here and across mainland Europe”. Youth arrangements, he said, had “diminished” and become “more complicated and even more competitive”. Overseas school trips were one example: the dwindling number of British students learning a foreign language was a further concern.
Dr Smith referred to his own “rich experiences in other cultures over extended periods, and as someone who cares deeply about the opportunities for our young people to travel, learn languages, and be exposed to the world and the cultural exchange of ideas, and for our creative industries”. He asked the Government to clarify that “youth mobility schemes are not the same thing as freedom of movement”.
He once again used the “sustainable and resilient” theme: that “close ties with our neighbours are essential to UK interests in the current global climate . . . underpinned by a mutual understanding of and respect for other nations, cultures, languages, and customs”.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Labour) welcomed Dr Smith’s initiative, describing it as “a topical subject beginning to gain some traction”. On the EU, he advocated the Government’s “making the approach, because to do so would benefit thousands of young people in the age group characterised as Gen Z”. In his view, “a youth mobility scheme . . . should be less complicated to agree than other areas, such as dismantling trade barriers. . . These schemes are not designed, nor intended, to be a route for economic growth or to address specific labour shortages. They are about giving young people the best early chances in their life and working life.”
The former Brexit negotiator Lord Frost (Conservative) also remarked that, although he had been waiting “for the moment at which he would show how his positions derived from the doctrine of the Church of England or Christianity more broadly”, the Bishop “certainly made a very good political case for the changes in rules in our relationship to the EU”. He was “not completely convinced that we need a reset with the EU. The relationship seems to be working perfectly well for the moment.”
Lord Hannay (cross-bench) added to the concerns that “young professionals in a whole range of specialisations have ceased to have easy access to jobs on both sides of the Channel”. For Baroness Wheatcroft (Conservative), “soft power is delivered in massive quantities by youth mobility.” Lord Berkeley (cross-bench) argued for the value of cultural exchange and learning for the arts, and was “extremely concerned to hear that the British Council is heavily in debt, owing to loss of income from English-language teaching during Covid”.
After almost three hours, Baroness Twycross (Labour) responded for the Government, and Dr Smith noted the consensus to take action “for the sake of our young people and our place in the world”.