European Research Council Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateLord Lennie
Main Page: Lord Lennie (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Lennie's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
(2 years, 7 months ago)
Lords ChamberThe Northern Ireland protocol is a completely separate agreement. It is different from the agreement that the EU signed. I am sorry, but we should not accept the EU’s excuses on this. The EU signed an agreement, and it should abide by it. I wish that noble Lords would sometimes be on the UK’s side rather than wanting to see fault in everything that we do. We should allocate the blame where it belongs.
We should all live by the agreements that we sign. Should the European research grants be withdrawn from the UK-based researchers, have the Government sought or received any assurances that these grants will be restored once associate membership of the Horizon Europe programme is re-achieved?
The UK has provided a guarantee to all those researchers. If the ERC continues to say that they will not be eligible for grants, as long as the EU itself refuses to agree participation in the Horizon programme, then the Government have said that we will guarantee all those researchers’ grants.