Resetting the UK-EU Relationship (European Affairs Committee Report)

Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell Excerpts

Thursday 26th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell (Con)]

My Lords, as speaker number 31, I am relieved to have picked an aspect of the report that has yet to be discussed in much detail. I will use my time to concur with recommendation 24 of the report, which asks the Government to set out how joining Erasmus+ brings added value to the UK. I question whether this scheme, set up in 1987, aligns with the travel preferences of young people in 2027. I question the quality of the education that they will receive and its cost effectiveness.

I can appreciate how, in the immediate post-war period, young people were excited about studying in France, Germany and Italy. My father speaks fondly about his cycling tour around France between school and university. But that picture has changed dramatically. In 2024 a British Council survey found that the most attractive countries for 18 to 30 year-olds were Australia, the United States and Canada. That is backed up by the data. Of the 51,000 18 to 31 year-olds who left the UK in 2023, just 9,000 went to the EU. In contrast, 17,000 flew to the other side of the globe, to Australia and New Zealand, and 13,000 went to North America.

Perhaps we are joining Erasmus+ because the EU has the best universities in the world—but, again, that does not appear to be the case. According to the Times Higher Education supplement’s world university rankings for 2026, none of the top 25 universities is located in the EU. There are 16 in the United States, four in the UK, two in China and one each in Switzerland, Singapore and Canada. Zooming out to the top 50, the UK has more top universities than France, Germany, Italy and Spain combined.

If young people are not looking to the EU as somewhere they want to live, and if the world’s top universities are mainly located outside the EU, perhaps rejoining Erasmus+ is extremely good value for money—or, since the UK has proportionately more top universities, perhaps the EU is paying us to join the scheme. Sadly, this is not the case. Our membership fee for Erasmus+ is set to be £570 million in 2027. We paid £296 million for the scheme in 2019: just over £400 million with inflation. Despite the purported 30% discount negotiated by the Government, we are set to pay £170 million more in real terms than our contribution to the scheme in 2019. I hope that the person responsible for the negotiation is not going on holiday to Turkey this year to buy a carpet.

By contrast, with the same £570 million budget we could quintuple the size of the Turing scheme, which covers universities across the world, or we could keep the Turing scheme and create an additional 69,000 apprenticeships, which would do more to help the million NEETs struggling to find work. To conclude, the Government clearly need to be up front about the cost of joining Erasmus+ and why they deem it to be cost effective. We should not simply assume that a scheme set up in 1987 is still fit for purpose in 2027.