Lord Broers
Main Page: Lord Broers (Crossbench - Life peer)
Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)
My noble friend is right to point out the inbound element, and the UK remains an attractive destination for international students, with nearly half a million studying at our world-class universities. On some of the other elements of Erasmus+, sport, for instance, represented a very small part of the programme, representing only 1.8% of the overall budget, but, through our own government schemes such as through Sport England, we have been investing more than £1.2 billion between 2016 and this year on grass-roots sport and physical activity programmes, so we are ensuring that attention is given to them.
Lord Broers (CB) [V]
My Lords, as has already been mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, and the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, Erasmus is as much about students coming to the UK as it is about our students going overseas. Indeed, I believe we have been receiving twice the number of students that we have sent away, which is a tribute to our universities and effectively balances the cost of our students going abroad. Surely the Turing scheme or others must provide the means to continue that balanced exchange of students, their teachers and those involved in coming up with innovations needed to keep our economy competitive.
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.