Universities: European Union Students

Debate between Lord Polak and Viscount Younger of Leckie

Wednesday 15th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

The noble Baroness makes the important point that there are uncertainties arising from Brexit, but the Government have moved rapidly to give assurances to this sector. Within five days of the referendum result being announced we gave assurances on the 2016-17 year, then we followed up in October 2016 with assurances for the 2017-18 year students. We have also provided similar assurances that EU nationals starting courses in 2016-17 and 2017-18 remain eligible for Research Council postgraduate support. As I have said, we will ensure that students starting in 2018-19 have the information well in advance.

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Royall; I think that the Government could be doing a bit more here. It is not just overseas students who need reassurance—staff and lecturers and their families who may move here need some certainty. What we are doing for them?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My noble friend is absolutely right and, on the statistics for 2015-16, there were 33,700 EU national academic staff at UK higher education institutions, accounting for around 17% of the total academic workforce—so it is an important point. The Prime Minister has been clear that we want to guarantee rights for EU nationals in Britain and British nationals in the EU as early as we can. Our European partners agree with this and, as my noble friend Lord Bridges said the other day,

“the Polish Prime Minister has said: ‘Of course, these guarantees would need to be reciprocal. It is also important what guarantees the British citizens living and working in other member states of the European Union will have’”.—[Official Report, 13/3/17; col. 1719.]