OPPORTUNITIES for “our young people to experience study, work, leisure, sport, music, and so forth in the broader 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 of the more vital, especially with those countries which 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 necessity for closer ties with our European neighbours . . . more pressing now than it has been for a while.”
He was keen to look beyond the EU and never revisit the Brexit arguments: “That decision has been made.” He wanted to contemplate “positive engagements and relationships in any respect levels in science and research, education, culture, and sport, and, critically, opportunities for residents to live and work together, each here and across mainland Europe”. Youth arrangements, he said, had “diminished” and grow to be “more complicated and much more competitive”. Overseas school trips were one example: the dwindling variety of British students learning a foreign language was an extra concern.
Dr Smith referred to his own “wealthy experiences in other cultures over prolonged periods, and as someone who cares deeply in regards to 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 make clear that “youth mobility schemes are usually not the identical thing as freedom of movement”.
He once more used the “sustainable and resilient” theme: that “close ties with our neighbours are essential to UK interests in the present 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 starting to realize some traction”. On the EU, he advocated the Government’s “making the approach, because to achieve this would profit 1000’s of young people within the age group characterised as Gen Z”. In his view, “a youth mobility scheme . . . needs to be simpler to agree than other areas, reminiscent of dismantling trade barriers. . . These schemes are usually not designed, nor intended, to be a route for economic growth or to deal with specific labour shortages. They are about giving young people the very best early probabilities of their life and dealing 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 “definitely made a superb political case for the changes in rules in our relationship to the EU”. He was “not completely convinced that we want a reset with the EU. The relationship appears to be working perfectly well for the moment.”
Lord Hannay (cross-bench) added to the concerns that “young professionals in an entire range of specialisations have ceased to have quick access to jobs on each side of the Channel”. For Baroness Wheatcroft (Conservative), “soft power is delivered in massive quantities by youth mobility.” Lord Berkeley (cross-bench) argued for the worth of cultural exchange and learning for the humanities, and was “extremely concerned to listen to that the British Council is heavily in debt, owing to lack 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 motion “for the sake of our young people and our place on the earth”.
