Yvette Cooper’s ‘one in, one out’ EU youth mobility scheme could work – but what took her so long?

The home secretary is now said to be open to a plan that would allow young Brits to work and study across the European mainland – but please, nobody mention ‘free movement’, says John Rentoul

Don’t call it a youth mobility scheme. The word “mobility”, from the same Latin root as “movement”, makes it sound too close to EU free movement, which is a red line for the Labour government. Etymology rules.

That was why Ruth Smeeth, a minister in the House of Lords and now known as Baroness Anderson, said in a written answer last month: “There are no plans for a youth mobility scheme.”

So whatever is unveiled at the EU-UK summit next month, it will be called something else.

Suggestions have included Youth Opportunity Programme, which was the name of a training scheme to help teenagers into work under James Callaghan’s government, the Labour government before the last one. It was not a brilliant success, and the acronym “Yop” sounded silly, so presumably some other name not including the M-word will be dreamt up.

What ought to matter, though, is not the name but the substance of the scheme. If Yvette Cooper, the home secretary, gets her way, it will be “one in, one out”, so that the number of young people coming to the UK is matched by the number of British youth going to the EU.

This means the scheme will be “immigration neutral”, and will have no effect on the net immigration figures, which the government has promised will come down.

Previously, Cooper had argued that the scheme should be limited to visits of 12 months, because any arrivals who stay for longer than a year are counted in the migration statistics. This was unacceptable to EU negotiators, who wanted to allow longer stays.

Someone has come up with the “one in one out” plan as a neat way of achieving the same objective. Cooper’s spokesperson denied that it was her idea: “These are matters for the Cabinet Office,” they told Politico. “No proposals have been put to the home secretary or suggested by her.”

It doesn’t matter: the plan satisfies the Home Office’s demand for control over the numbers, and means that a deal can be done at the EU-UK summit in London on 19 May.

Cooper recognises how important the immigration figures are: she is one of the most powerful cabinet ministers, because facing down Nigel Farage is the central political objective of the prime minister, as dictated by Morgan McSweeney, his chief of staff.

It is presumably why Angela Eagle, the border control minister, and Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the Treasury, visited a migrant processing centre in Dover on Thursday.

And it is why Cooper has been trying to obtain a different kind of “one in, one out” scheme with France for dealing with the small boats – hoping that Emmanuel Macron will allow the UK to return failed asylum seekers in return for Britain allowing genuine refugees in. It does not look as if that deal will be ready in time for the London summit, but the youth work-study scheme will be.

There should be much rejoicing on both sides of the Channel about this. A youth definitely-not-free-movement scheme is obviously in the interests of all the nations of Europe.

The only question is: why has it taken so long? This ought to have been sorted out in the first 100 days of the Labour government: both sides wanted it, and the issue of migration controls was straightforward to sort out.

To be fair, negotiating anything with the EU is cumbersome, but once again it seems that Labour’s “plan for change” is a slogan that was dreamt up after the election rather than evidence of any serious preparation for government.

The same goes for the renegotiation of the terms of the post-Brexit trade deal. It seems that there will be a deal at the London summit to ease trade frictions, but given the urgency with which Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, talks about going for growth, should this really have taken 10 months?

Reeves even admitted to the BBC while she was in Washington that Britain’s trading relationship with the EU is “arguably even more important” than that with the US – “because they’re our nearest neighbours and trading partners”.

It sounded as if the talks with the US were not going so well. She said: “Obviously I’ve been meeting Scott Bessent this week whilst I’m in Washington, but I’ve also this week met the French, the German, the Spanish, the Polish, the Swedish, the Finnish finance ministers.”

In which case, why didn’t the Labour government put more effort into securing a trade deal with the EU, which is a stable and predictable (if bureaucratic) entity, rather than one with the US, which depends on the whims of a president who is anything but?

Keir Starmer should have been ready with drafts of an EU trade deal and a youth exchange scheme from day one.