Just 23,000 people came to the UK last year to work as part of the British youth mobility scheme, a fraction of the overall net migration figure, which may allay fears in the Labour government as it comes under pressure to let in young EU holiday workers. Most of the people on the youth mobility scheme (YMS) visa programme in 2023 were from Australia, with 9,900 workers, and New Zealand, with 5,300. The YMS allows people from 12 countries to come to the UK for a two- or three-year period to work. Since Brexit, no exchange programme has existed with the EU. Home Office data, obtained by the Guardian, showed that the YMS is more popular this year, with 15,259 young people arriving in the first half of 2024, but the figure is still a small portion of the overall net migration of 685,000 in 2023. EU countries are working on fresh proposals for a bloc-wide mobility scheme with the UK after the rejection of a scheme offered by Brussels in April. The rejected scheme involved an offer of a four-year exchange programme for people aged 18-30, including the opportunity to study in each other’s universities and pay tuition fees at the same rate as home students.
The offer was dismissed by both Labour, in opposition at the time, and the Conservative government. Since Brexit, EU students coming to the UK can no longer pay tuition fees at the same rate as home students, and are charged anything from £16,000 a year to £59,000 as foreign students. University sources said reverting to home fees for EU citizens was not financially viable as they would effectively be asked to subsidise them. EU diplomats say the new proposals being discussed by the lead member states, including France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands, will reduce the number of years for the programme to three. This would bring the proposed scheme in line with the UK-Australia agreement, which changed last year from a two-year to a three-year scheme, with conditions such as working on a farm for three months for the extra year now removed. Both governments also expanded the age range of their mutual visa schemes from 18-30 to 18-35. EU diplomats are hopeful that the new proposals, which will provide a fresh mandate for negotiations to be opened by the European Commission, will be seen as a viable opening for talks. One diplomat said they believed that the numbers of citizens who would avail themselves of the scheme would be in the “tens of thousands” and could not see why the new UK government saw it as such a risk to migration. The current British scheme is open to 12 non-affiliated countries: Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Japan, Andorra, Iceland, Japan, Monaco, San Marino, Uruguay, Taiwan and Hong Kong as well as citizens of British overseas territories. Australia’s “working holiday visa programme” and a second “work and holiday visa programme” is much bigger and attracts up to 167,000 people a year. It is open to 22 of the EU’s 27 nations along with 20 other countries including the UK, Turkey, China, Canada, Indonesia, Peru, Uruguay and Vietnam. Canada, which also has bilateral programmes with several EU countries, including France and Germany, accepted 56,000 young people under its “international experience programme”. EU diplomats are confident of a deal being sealed, saying the language Labour ministers have been using has been more positive.