Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on the potential merits of extending the Youth Mobility Visa to the EU to help tackle skills shortages.

The Home Office and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy are in regular contact regarding a wide array of issues, including the skills shortages in the UK.

Our Youth Mobility Scheme (YMS) agreements provide a valuable route for mutual cultural exchange and are not simply a one-way route for recruiting labour from overseas. We will therefore not add nations to the YMS route unilaterally.

We are open to negotiating YMS arrangements with other countries and territories, including the EU or nations within it. However, as each YMS is subject to a bilateral, reciprocal agreement which also provides benefit to UK Nationals, with the detail negotiated and agreed between the relevant parties, we are unable to disclose the status of ongoing negotiations with partner countries as they occur.

Further details of additional YMS agreements will be announced once they are concluded.