TNAG-2629-FCO40-3820-Future-of-Hong-Kong-nationality-British-National-(Overseas)-1992 — Page 73

- E.R.

the obviate the need to specify that placements must be non-salaried and

supernumerary.

7. The BUNAC scheme operates under the third option. We know that the

Employment Service are not keen on having their local job centres used to police this

scheme. Arguably it is not necessary to apply a resident labour test to the jobs taken

by the participants of a reciprocal scheme and so the justification for involving local

job centres is not clear. The option is best left to one side unless a unilateral scheme

is to be seriously considered.

A unified youth mobility scheme

8. One long term possibility is a unified provision for youth mobility under the

Immigration Rules covering the many separate schemes and concessions that we operate at present. The working holidaymaker and au pair schemes are probably the most

significant, but there are others described in the Annex to this paper. The training and work experience scheme (TWES) has not been considered for inclusion in a unified

scheme. We see no advantage in including TWES since the age range where training and

work experience are valuable is considerably wider, and the time needed for training longer, than could be allowed under any well-controlled youth mobility scheme.

Essential elements of youth mobility scheme

9.

Arguably the greatest asset of the current working holidaymaker scheme is that

participants are free to take whatever job they like. In view of the evident success of the two-way arrangements between the UK and Australia we would be ill-advised to tie participants in a new, unified scheme to specific jobs or even specific sectors. Provided we screen participants at the outset and limit their stay, there should be no need to concern ourselves too much over what jobs they take. Any new unified scheme would

therefore need to keep the essential elements of the current working holidaymaker scheme as its basis and be operated separately from TWES. The following seem to be the essential components of any scheme if we are to keep abuse to a minimum and be