Brexit: The Erasmus and Horizon Programmes (European Union Committee Report)

Baroness Smith of Newnham Excerpts

Monday 1st April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I am delighted to speak in this debate and to follow the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. Over the past months and years, he has stood up for what he believes in on European questions, even, as he made clear, to the detriment of his own position on a committee in your Lordships’ House.

Unlike many speakers in this debate, my interest is not that I am a member of your Lordships’ European Union Committee. However, I do have an interest to declare. As an academic at Cambridge University, and reader in European politics, I am actively involved in a whole range of European-funded projects: Horizon 2020 projects, Erasmus+ projects and, slightly more tangentially, a network on the Marie Curie programme. I am not unusual in this. As we have heard, academics in the United Kingdom have benefited more than most from European funding schemes. The United Kingdom has been a significant net beneficiary of EU research and higher education funding.

The UK has always had a rather utilitarian approach to understanding the nature of the European Union. Margaret Thatcher never fully understood that participating in the European Community, as it then was, was not simply about putting money in and getting the same amount of money out; it was about participating in networks and a whole range of policies.

In the area of research, however, the United Kingdom had a very good story to tell. UK research and development is of the highest standard; our universities are some of the best in the world. Our partners across the European Union have been very keen to collaborate with the United Kingdom, and various institutions across the UK have been significant net beneficiaries.

It might seem as though this will be a speech that simply says, “Oh woe is me”, from an academic who has benefited from EU funding and who might be going to lose it. Certainly, during the referendum, there was a lot of suspicion among those advocating Brexit that anyone advocating ongoing membership of the European Union had naked self-interest in doing so. Any beneficiary of EU grant funding was viewed as having a purely personal interest, and therefore not one that should contribute more generally to the debate. However, in the past few days, inevitably there have been letters from Universities UK and the Royal Society stressing the importance of European research collaboration, not just for the individual but for the wider research community and for society as a whole.

While my research might be about social sciences, and perhaps not the blue-sky thinking that research in medicine or other hard sciences might be, for many of those who benefit from funding from the European Research Council and other parts of Horizon 2020 funding, it is about global leadership. As the president of the Royal Society, Venki Ramakrishnan, has stated:

“The UK is a global leader in science because top home-grown and international scientists want to work here. We must do everything we can to ensure that the UK maintains its role at the heart of European science, because that is in everyone’s best interests. If science loses, everyone loses”.


It is not just about the individuals concerned; it is about British scientific research. It is not just about funding; it is about collaborative networks, as other noble Lords have made clear.

If you are a theoretician, your research might be done sitting at your computer, on your own, in isolation. But for most research scientists, research is done in collaborative groups, where the tools of that research are costly. Working together on a transnational basis is far more effective than working in isolation. By leaving the European Union, the danger is that the United Kingdom will cut itself off from some of those key networks. Already, leading European scientists have begun to leave the United Kingdom. They have decided that they would rather hold grants in other European countries. The uncertainty of Brexit means they are no longer sure that they will be welcome in the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom has already lost, before we even leave the European Union.

If we leave the European Union with no deal, this raises huge questions about our ongoing relationship with research funding bodies and collaborative networks across the European Union. We have already heard that, if we have third-country status, we will not have a seat at the table or any opportunity to influence research funding priorities. As the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, made clear, that is not desirable. The committee’s report is very clear: if we are to be outside the European Union, it would be better to have associated status, which would at least give us a seat at the table. But we still would not have a vote. It is clearly a suboptimal position to be in. The report also suggests that, if the UK is to leave the European Union with no deal, we should have a UK mobility fund. That is so far second best that I hope we never have to work on that recommendation. It is essential that the Government find a deal that leaves the United Kingdom as an associated third country, able to participate as fully as any third country.

Earlier, I looked round the Chamber in the hope of seeing a Brexiteer who might be listening to the debate. During the referendum, we were reminded on countless occasions—usually by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, who is not in his place—that it is not necessary to be part of the European Union to be part of Erasmus. It is not necessary to be part of the European Union, but if we are a non-associated third country, our ability to participate in such schemes is much weakened. We need to find ways to be associated. Can the Minister tell us that the Government are trying to achieve that?