EU Programmes

Debate between Lord Liddle and Viscount Camrose

Thursday 7th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

I welcome this deal. despite the fact that it is very late and overblown. We are glad to have it. I was chair of Lancaster University for seven and a half years, and the Horizon programme was one driver of a great interchange of staff across the continent. Some 20% of our staff at Lancaster were EU citizens not from the UK. Does the Minister think that that degree of freedom of movement will still be allowed as a result of the reinstatement of Horizon?

Secondly, does the Minister accept that there is a real problem, as a result of Brexit, in the decline in students from EU countries? It makes our universities more dependent on recruiting students from potentially problematic parts of the world, such as China, with respect to the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, opposite.

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for that question. I slightly struggle on the subject of who is or is not allowed to work in our universities as a result of this. I am not aware that anything has changed there, but I have committed to come back to many noble Lords on visas and health charges. On the noble Lord’s other question, there is a whole world of researchers out there and it is incumbent on us to recognise our circumstances as a nation and engage globally with as broad a population as possible, recognising that good scientists are good scientists, wherever they happen to come from.

Horizon Europe

Debate between Lord Liddle and Viscount Camrose

Wednesday 28th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for the question. The Government really do see benefit in our past and, I hope, future association to Horizon and its predecessor programmes. Analysis of our participation as a member state in the previous framework programmes found that UK participants received approximately €7 billion in framework programme 7. That represented 15.4% of the total awarded, which exceeded by 16% what would have been anticipated on the basis purely of our GDP share. As regards the pillars we would join, I note that under the terms of the TCA, we opted out from the Pillar 3 equity fund but otherwise elected to join all the remaining pillars, and those are the terms under which we continue to seek association today.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

Does the Minister accept that the main benefit that universities see in Horizon is the potential to build close and lasting partnerships with institutions on the continent, for which there can be no domestic substitute? It is from those partnerships that the benefits about which the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, inquired flow in great measure.

[Viscount Camrose (Con)]

Indeed, and the Government recognise very strongly the benefits of collaboration not merely with the EU 27 but globally. The range of benefits includes not just academic benefits but the ability to build our R&D capacity; employment effects; commercial benefits, of course; and leveraging in additional investments as a result of the research.