UK-EU Common Understanding Negotiations

Lord Kerr of Kinlochard Excerpts

Thursday 18th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

My noble friend is absolutely right that one of the tests of this success will be making sure that my former constituents and his have access to this scheme and genuinely participate. As I said, the Association of Colleges’ chief executive said yesterday that this was “brilliant news” for staff and students of all ages in further education colleges:

“For students, it widens their perspective on the world, opening their eyes to different cultures and different ways of life, and for staff, the opportunity to learn from other countries on how they deliver technical education and skills is invaluable”.


We need to make sure that this is embedded going forward, and one of the tests will be to make sure that working-class kids, too, have access to this scheme.

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

My Lords, the £570 million is a gross number; the net number would take account of grants to our own people benefiting from the scheme. I hope that the Minister will not be too distracted by the ghosts of Christmas past rattling their chains and coming up with absurd estimates of the cost of this scheme. It is, as the noble Lord, Lord Reid, said, an unalloyed benefit that we are going back to Erasmus.

It is the other bits of the Statement that I would like to press the Minister on. She rightly pointed out that this is of considerable economic benefit, potentially. The Statement and what was said in the other place makes it clear that the negotiations on electricity are intended to move swiftly. If it is possible to achieve more efficient use of the interconnectors, that will be an immense benefit to the United Kingdom and to our continental friends. Obviously, it is crucial that we get the SPS agreement, and it would be good to have a firm link between the emissions trading schemes.

My understanding is that the intention is to do all that before the next summit. But the one thing that did not appear in the Statement was any indication of the date for the next summit. Can the Minister confirm that it will be, at the latest, no later than one year after the first summit—that is, by May?

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

I was doing so well. What I have been told I can say is that it will be happening in 2026, so there will definitely be a summit next year.

We genuinely are moving at pace, and there is the reality that some of the things we are hoping to bring forward, not least SPS, require a number of contributions from Members of your Lordships’ House to get this over the line. On that basis, we will be discussing these issues in some depth. I expect to be doing so with Members of your Lordships’ House, at this Dispatch Box, next year, which suggests that we are moving—in civil service language—at pace.