Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether HMRC's new international student levy will be charged on (a) EU students and (b) Erasmus+ students studying in the UK.

The international student levy, payable by English higher education (HE) providers, will be introduced from the 2028/29 academic year to raise revenue to be reinvested into the HE and skills system, including the reintroduction of maintenance grants. The government has already announced that transnational education delivered outside of the UK will be out of scope of the levy. As part of the ongoing policy development, the department is considering the merits of exempting any additional groups of international students and will update on this in due course.

The UK has committed to participate in Erasmus+ in the 2027/28 academic year. This is the year prior to the levy coming in, meaning providers will not be required to pay the levy for Erasmus+ students in 2027/28. Any continued UK participation in Erasmus+ thereafter will need to be agreed under the next Multiannual Financial Framework and interactions with the levy would be clarified as part of this.