Education: Turing Scheme

Lord Bassam of Brighton Excerpts

Tuesday 5th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord is right. Erasmus was a scholar at the university of which the noble Lord was vice-chancellor. Inbound student participation is important as well. That is why we are pleased that there are nearly half a million international students studying in the UK and why the Government have an international education strategy to continue to build on that number. We have four of the world’s top 10 universities and remain an attractive destination.

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, Monsieur Barnier said that pulling out of Erasmus was a choice the Government made. Why was that? If the Turing scheme to replace Erasmus is to succeed, it must reach a high bar. How will it genuinely encourage higher participation rates from disadvantaged students? How will it cover incoming students? Will participants have to pay extra fees at international student rates? And will the net gain to the UK economy be as high as it was under the Erasmus scheme?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, we were clear throughout the negotiations that we were willing to pay a fair price to continue participating in Erasmus+, but we could not justify a large net contribution such as the new programme was envisaging. We would have been paying in nearly £2 billion more than we got back, and we did not think that would represent value for money. We put forward a number of ideas in the spirit of compromise, but, unfortunately, the EU was unwilling to consider any of them. That is why we are setting up our new Turing scheme, which, as the noble Lord says, will focus on people from disadvantaged backgrounds. As I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Royall of Blaisdon, we will be working directly with education establishments to ensure that people from around the whole UK, particularly from underrepresented backgrounds, can benefit from it.