EU Programmes Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateLord Liddle
Main Page: Lord Liddle (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Liddle's debates with the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology
(11 months, 3 weeks ago)
Lords ChamberI welcome this deal. despite the fact that it is very late and overblown. We are glad to have it. I was chair of Lancaster University for seven and a half years, and the Horizon programme was one driver of a great interchange of staff across the continent. Some 20% of our staff at Lancaster were EU citizens not from the UK. Does the Minister think that that degree of freedom of movement will still be allowed as a result of the reinstatement of Horizon?
Secondly, does the Minister accept that there is a real problem, as a result of Brexit, in the decline in students from EU countries? It makes our universities more dependent on recruiting students from potentially problematic parts of the world, such as China, with respect to the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, opposite.
I thank the noble Lord for that question. I slightly struggle on the subject of who is or is not allowed to work in our universities as a result of this. I am not aware that anything has changed there, but I have committed to come back to many noble Lords on visas and health charges. On the noble Lord’s other question, there is a whole world of researchers out there and it is incumbent on us to recognise our circumstances as a nation and engage globally with as broad a population as possible, recognising that good scientists are good scientists, wherever they happen to come from.