European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 26th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coussins (CB)]

My Lords, I rise to speak briefly in support of Amendment 10, with particular reference to the Erasmus+ programme, for two specific reasons. First, if we were no longer part of Erasmus+, there would be adverse consequences for the employability of our young people in general. Secondly, Erasmus+ is an essential part of the pipeline for modern foreign language teachers, where there is already a significant shortage. Uncertainty over our continued participation in Erasmus+ is one of the reasons for the continued decline in university applications to study modern languages. Over the past 10 years, applications have dropped by 57% and more than 50 universities have now scrapped some or all of their MFL degree courses.

Of course, Erasmus is not just for linguists and I cannot emphasise strongly enough how important Erasmus+ is for employability prospects across the board. Not only does the Erasmus year abroad help to improve language skills, it also helps to develop an international mindset and a cross-cultural attitude to work. We know from British Academy research and from a recent US study that employers rate these skills in some cases even more highly than expertise in the STEM subjects. We also know that graduates who have spent their year abroad under the Erasmus+ programme are 23% less likely to be unemployed than those who have not done so.

So, as others have said, it really is not good enough for the Government to commit to funding Erasmus+ only to 2020. That is no help at all to people in their first year of university now, whether they are linguists or studying some other discipline, who do not know whether they will be able to spend their third year abroad. It is of no help to sixth-formers or those coming up shortly into the sixth form who might be thinking about keeping up a modern language.

We need a clear commitment to be part of Erasmus+ beyond 2020 in exactly the same way as Norway and other non-EU countries, including Macedonia, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Turkey, which are all full programme partners. We would certainly be cutting off our nose to spite our face if we do not do this, not least because the European Commission is planning to double participation in Erasmus+ by 2025 by extending opportunities for exchanges and placements to school pupils, which, it is very easy to see, might turn out to be a critical factor in encouraging the continued take-up of modern languages at A-level and university. At the moment, we are simply not producing enough graduate linguists to meet the needs of teaching, business or the body of interpreters and translators working in international organisations such as the UN.

The other element of self-inflicted backlash if we ditch Erasmus+ would be to turn our backs on a vital part of the supply chain for modern language teachers. The Department for Education estimates the current shortage to be 3,500 if the Government are to meet their EBacc target. This shortage risks getting worse and more precarious post Brexit because such a significant proportion of MFL teachers and language classroom teachers are non-UK EU nationals. If they are not guaranteed residency status post Brexit, language teaching in our schools will become very precarious indeed. I implore Her Majesty’s Government to exercise a massive amount of enlightened self-interest and ensure that the UK remains a full programme partner and a full member of the Erasmus+ programme in the long term.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I will talk about two aspects of Horizon 2020. One is the question of certainty and the other is how this links with freedom of movement. I declare two interests. My wife has been on some of the advisory committees concerned with the definition of Horizon 2020 and what happens beyond it. British participation in defining research priorities across the European Union has been high in the last two or three exercises. That is not something that has been imposed on us and it is one of the things that we will lose.

My second interest is that I have a son who is a mathematical biologist and who spent his graduate and postgraduate years—up to 10 years—in the United States and came back to this country under an EU-funded scheme to bring bright young researchers back to Europe. He had his two-year Marie Curie fellowship and was advised not to apply for European Research Council fellowship, which would have naturally followed on, because we were perhaps leaving the European Union and that would make it difficult for him. The uncertainty is absolutely there. Happily, he now has another grant. He was persuaded to return to the University of Edinburgh by an Italian professor who led a multinational team there. That is how British universities work. I have been to many universities in other European countries where the overwhelming majority of staff and students come from that country or, in one or two countries such as Belgium and Spain, from that region. Those universities are not of the same quality or calibre.

I sometimes fear that there are hard Brexiteers in this country who think that we have too many foreigners in our universities already and that it would be much better if we went back to being proper British universities again, which would be much more in tune with the British national spirit.

As a mathematical biologist, my son is currently in Paris for six weeks at the Institut Pasteur, having spent some weeks last year in Heidelberg, because the sort of work you do in the life sciences is multinational and naturally collaborative. That requires easy movement, short term and long term. Anything which raises difficulties of travel in and out of this country, which is part of the intention of leaving the European Union, will make it much more difficult for our universities to go on being quite as good as they are. So I stress that, as we leave the European Union, we have to ensure that we remain internationally competitive and, in our universities, this matters.

Since the Government intend to leave the European Union in 13 months’ time, we need some rapid certainty on Horizon 2020. I suggest to the Minister that, well before the Bill leaves this House, the Government should have a clear answer, highly relevant to the Bill which takes us out of the European Union, on what the implications are of leaving and on which bits we are not leaving. Please may we have an answer?

[Lord Patten of Barnes (Con)]

My Lords, I will not only say that I will be brief but will be brief. I shall not pursue what has been said about Erasmus, with which I strongly agree—Erasmus must have been very grateful for all we have said about him today, although I think he would have some doubts about the present state of rationality in some of our political debate in this country.

I will instead follow the point made so well by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall. I declare an interest, which is not financial. As the noble Lord will know, I was chancellor of a Russell group university in the north-east of England. I am chancellor today of another Russell group university. Perhaps just as significant, when I ceased to be a European Commissioner, I was asked to chair the committee which established the European Research Council. It did so on the basis of the recommendations in particular of Lord May, one of the greatest contributors to the debate about research and about universities in this country.

We established the research council on the basis that it would distribute funds by peer group review—not according to what individual countries had contributed but according to the research capacities of those countries and of particular institutions. And guess what? It demonstrated that we have the second-best higher education system in the world and arguably the best higher education system in Europe: we did extraordinarily well out of that research budget. As the noble Baroness pointed out, we get a great deal more back from the European budget than we put into it, which indicates how good our research community is in this country.

I realise that there are constraints under which the Minister has to operate—he has our sympathy and our prayers as he moves forward. I agree with what my noble friend Lord Deben said earlier: we do not expect him to do wonders. I am not sure that he will be able to tell us now what the Government’s intentions are in relation to the European research community. I do not blame him if he cannot do that, because I do not think that anybody in the Government has the faintest idea—certainly, I do not know anybody in Europe who has the faintest idea of what we want to happen—but I hope that, at the end of the day, as right reverend Prelates might put it, we will still be members of that research community.

So I do not expect the Minister today to be able to spell out precisely what arrangements we will have in the future—whether they will be similar to those which Switzerland has today, whereby it is part of the community but takes no management decisions about it. Israel is in a similar position. However, I hope that, even if he cannot tell us exactly what the relationship will be, he will at least give us one simple guarantee—and I am sure that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would want to stand over this very strongly.

When we leave the European Union we will lose the considerable surplus that we have at the moment in research spending—as I said, getting back more than we put in. Will the Minister guarantee this evening, even if he cannot give us any details about our future relationship with the European research community, that any shortfall in that funding after we leave the European Union will be made good by the Government?

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

The Minister says it is too early to decide whether we will co-operate. Can he tell us in what circumstances we will decide that it is not in the national interest for the UK to participate in the next Horizon programme?

[Lord Callanan]

I very much expect that it will be in our interest to participate in it. As I said, we are taking part in discussions. We have not yet seen the detail of how it will be financed, but, given a fair ongoing contribution, I suspect that we will want to participate. But they are a matter of negotiation. It is fine for us to say that, yes, we would like to take part; we need the EU side, the other side to the negotiation, to say that, yes, they would like us to take part as well. It is a negotiation. We can give a commitment that we would like to; we cannot give a commitment that we will be accepted.

As part of the new deep and special partnership with the EU, we will recognise our shared interest in maintaining and strengthening research collaboration. The UK will seek an ambitious agreement, one that promotes science and innovation across Europe now and in future. For the avoidance of any doubt, in response to the many questions that have been asked, let me say that we support Erasmus, we support Horizon 2020, but, contrary to what many noble Lords have suggested, these are EU programmes. The UK cannot adopt a unilateral stance; there has to be bilateral agreement on them. That agreement depends, first, on understanding the shape of the Erasmus programme in May and framework programme nine, when it is clarified by the Commission, and finding a mutually acceptable financial arrangement. Subject to those conditions, we would be very happy to be able to participate in both those programmes in future.