Education: Turing Scheme

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Tuesday 5th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, we were clear throughout the negotiations that we were willing to pay a fair price to continue participating in Erasmus+, but we could not justify a large net contribution such as the new programme was envisaging. We would have been paying in nearly £2 billion more than we got back, and we did not think that would represent value for money. We put forward a number of ideas in the spirit of compromise, but, unfortunately, the EU was unwilling to consider any of them. That is why we are setting up our new Turing scheme, which, as the noble Lord says, will focus on people from disadvantaged backgrounds. As I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, we will be working directly with education establishments to ensure that people from around the whole UK, particularly from underrepresented backgrounds, can benefit from it.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I am minded to ask what price one can put on life-changing opportunities such as those lost with the Erasmus scheme. I declare an interest as an academic involved in Erasmus+ programmes over the years. What thought are the Government giving to ensure that modern foreign language training remains and that students have the opportunity to become embedded in other cultures, because that is vital to ensure that we have important networks in future?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right to point out the life-changing opportunities that educational exchange provides. People had life-changing experiences taking part in Erasmus. Under the new Turing scheme, they will be able to do that globally, learning languages not just from the European continent but languages such as Japanese, Mandarin and Arabic, and representing the truly global outlook that we want for the UK.