UK Withdrawal from the EU and Potential Withdrawal from the Single Market

Baroness Coussins Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coussins (CB)]

My Lords, I want to focus on two specific groups of EU citizens living in this country: teachers of modern foreign languages in our schools and foreign-language assistants. I declare interests as co-chair of the All-Party Group on Modern Languages and vice-president of the Chartered Institute of Linguists.

Thirty-five per cent of MFL teachers are non-UK EU citizens, and the figure for language assistants is 82%. Quite simply, unless they are guaranteed residency status in the UK after Brexit, language teaching in our schools will collapse. The UK alone is not producing enough languages graduates to fill the teacher shortage, which is already estimated at 3,500. These points are among those made in a checklist on Brexit and languages published by the all-party group which is intended to assist government negotiators.

There are, of course, many reasons why learning other languages is a good thing, but given the terms of this debate, I will focus only on the economic benefits, and that boils down to two factors: economic growth, and the employability and mobility of our workforce. Research shows that the language deficit is already costing the UK 3.5% of GDP, or £48 billion every year. The CBI and the British Chambers of Commerce have called for better language skills among British graduates and college leavers in order to boost export performance. They say that language availability rather than market strategy is driving export decisions. We are overdependent on Anglophone markets, and 83% of SMEs operate only in English when over half of them say that language skills would help expand their business opportunities and build export growth.

The employability of UK citizens in a post-Brexit world is also a vital part of our economic well-being. Many employers are forced to recruit from overseas if they need language skills. The all-party group has heard detailed testimony from many businesses and employers’ organisations to this effect. It is no coincidence at all that graduates—in all subjects, not just languages—who have spent a year abroad on the Erasmus programme have an unemployment rate 23% lower than others.

In summary, we need to reverse the decline in language skills in the UK. A reasonable start has been made at GCSE level, but A-levels are in sharp decline and the number of languages graduates has fallen by 57% in 10 years. For the sake of our economic health and competitiveness, we need to do a lot better. I hope the Minister will agree that we should not shoot ourselves in the foot by forcing out EU nationals who are teaching languages in our schools. It is not enough to say, as the Government are currently doing, that residency status will be guaranteed only if reciprocated for Britons abroad. That is self-defeating and I ask the Minister if he will commit to reviewing and improving the position in the long-term national economic interest.