Cultural and Education Exchanges

Lord Norton of Louth Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Norton of Louth (Con)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Earl on securing this debate. I declare an interest as an academic. I have taught, and do teach, exchange students. I also had the benefit of doing one of my degrees in the United States, at the University of Pennsylvania, where I was a Thouron scholar.

As we have heard, existing exchange programmes are wholly beneficial for the student, the sending and receiving institutions, the local community and the sending and receiving nations. As a nation, we benefit enormously from overseas students.

I advocate utilising more of the overseas aid budget to fund exchange scholarships. This could be through using aid to allocate scholarship vouchers to developing nations, enabling them to send bright students to study at UK universities. The vouchers would be wholly redeemable at UK higher education institutions. The developing nations would gain graduates who can contribute to the economic well-being of the nation; aid would thus be an investment for the future. UK universities would benefit from having these students, as would local economies where the universities are based. The United Kingdom would benefit from the expansion of soft power, and utilising aid in this way would avoid problems of tracking where the money is going.

We already have some excellent scholarship programmes for overseas students. Expanding substantially what we already offer is in everyone’s interest. I hope my noble friend the Minister will indicate a willingness, at the very least, to discuss the proposal with colleagues and feed back the result of her deliberations.