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

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Monday 1st April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to be able to follow the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts. Sadly, I cannot, as he did, declare an interest as a member of the committee, because when I had the temerity to vote for some amendments to the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill last year, I was dismissed from the committee for failing to support the Government. Had the Government listened a little more carefully to some of the amendments we passed in your Lordships’ House, we might not be in the predicament we are in at the moment. But, sufficient for that, this is a very good report, and I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Jay, and his colleagues for producing it. It is a forensic analysis of a very difficult situation and a potentially disastrous one.

The noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, talked about the problems if there is no deal. I would like every Member of your Lordships’ House, although there are not many, and every one of the ERG and others in the other place who have said they do not mind no deal—some have even said they would relish no deal—to be locked in a room, instructed to read this report, and then to go out of the room and meet 20 or 30 students, their constituents in the case of the other place. This deals a potentially devastating blow to many young people. I speak as the grandfather of two university students, one a postgraduate and the other an undergraduate, both of whom are attracted by the possibility of continuing work and research in other countries. I fervently hope that when we come out we will be able to continue to take advantage, but I take no comfort from the words “until 2020”. That is not good enough. We have got to come to an arrangement with our friends and neighbours so that we can participate as closely as possible for a non-member state from 2021 to 2027 and beyond.

The great Erasmus himself personified one of the fundamentals of civilised truth: learning knows no boundaries. If you prevent or do not assist young people to know other countries as well as their own, you are depriving them. The Erasmus programme has at least one unique feature, in that it gives enhanced grants to the disadvantaged and the disabled. It has every reason to be proud of that. That is very much in the tradition of Erasmus and his time, when all the great institutions of this country and most of those in continental Europe particularly gave of their learning to young men—they were all men in those days, I am afraid—who did not have the advantage of a wealthy background. Much of that learning was given in church institutions, but our own colleges in Oxford and Cambridge and in the Scottish universities very much kept to that tradition. It is something we should not contemplate separating ourselves from.

Horizon 2020 is enormously exciting and invigorating, and the continuation from 2021 to 2027 will be as well. I address these remarks particularly to my noble friend—and he is my friend—on the Front Bench, for whom I have very real affection and regard: please talk to your colleagues in government, because we really have a duty to our young people, and to those pioneers in research and learning of whatever age in our country, to continue to collaborate in the best possible way with our European friends and neighbours, and 2020 is not a satisfactory answer.

With regret, I accept that we are leaving the European Union. I would have voted for the Prime Minister’s deal last week, and I have made that plain in this House on a number of occasions. It would have brought with it some safeguards. Whatever replaces it has got to bring safeguards, and we would be delivering a real blow to the future prospects, hopes and aspirations of our young people if we turned our back on programmes of this nature. We must participate, in association or even as a third country. I was particularly struck by two paragraphs. Paragraph 13, on page 56, says:

“As a non-associated third country, the UK would not even have a seat at the table in Erasmus programme committees”.


Paragraph 19, on the same page, says:

“As an associated third country, the UK would have observer status in Horizon Europe programme committees but no vote”.


That is not good enough; we have got to get it better.