Oral Answers to Questions

Catherine West Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Baker]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. I feel sure that all sides in this negotiation are conducting their analyses of everyone’s negotiating capital. The electorate of all Members of this House will note who is asking for which negotiating position to be revealed, and what that says about their acceptance of the referendum result.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

8. What steps he has taken to maintain UK access to the Horizon 2020 programme and the Erasmus+ programme after the UK leaves the EU.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Mr Robin Walker)]

As the Prime Minister set out in her Florence speech, the Government would like to continue working with the EU on ways to promote the long-term economic development of our continent. That includes continuing to take part in specific programmes that are greatly to the UK’s and EU’s joint advantage, such as those promoting science, education and culture, and those promoting our mutual security. This will be a matter for the negotiations.

[Catherine West]

Why has the Secretary of State not engaged on the issue with more energy with the Commission? If access is not maintained, will there be a commitment to funding UK researchers as third-country participants?

[Mr Walker]

We are engaged with great energy on this issue, but of course the structure of the talks means that this is for the future partnership. We have published a paper on these issues setting out our intention and a very open offer to the EU to discuss these issues. We look forward to seeing its papers in response, but they have not been published yet.