European Union Exit (Further and Higher Education)

Part of the debate – in the Scottish Parliament at on 29 October 2020.

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Photo of Richard Lochhead Richard Lochhead Scottish National Party

In 63 days, the United Kingdom’s new relationship with the EU will begin. It will be a weakened relationship that, in the referendum of 2016, Scotland made abundantly clear that we do not want.

For our colleges, universities, researchers and learners, that matters greatly. They have benefited greatly from our membership of the EU, which has brought access to funding, talent and ideas. Our participation in programmes such as horizon 2020 and Erasmus+ have seen our institutions secure high levels of research funding and attract large numbers of students to study here. Likewise, many of our students have gone to live and study in other countries.

I had hoped to come to Parliament to report real and encouraging progress with the post-Brexit arrangements to continue our relationship with the EU, and to outline how Scotland will benefit from successor schemes. Instead, I have to say that we remain largely in the dark, and all the benefits that we have enjoyed for decades remain under serious threat as we head towards the end of the year. There remains little clarity from the UK Government on what it is thinking or what it hopes to achieve by then, and, as we all know, the clock is ticking.

To be clear, Brexit is potentially very damaging for our colleges and universities. It will lead to less funding and it will put off prospective researchers and students—exactly the sort of bright minds that Scotland needs—from coming to our shores. I share the views of Paul Nurse, a Nobel laureate and former president of the Royal Society, who said in July that the UK Government needs to make

“a concerted ... effort to change its rhetoric to be more welcoming, to fully embrace the future and think less about the past, and to engage the many young people and scientists who were overwhelmingly against Brexit.”

Paul Nurse has good reason to raise the alarm.

A recent report by the Wellcome Trust sets out that there will soon be an up-front cost of more than £13,000 for a family of four on a five-year UK global talent visa, in contrast to a £1,000 fee for the same family under the French talent visa. Although the global talent visa is a step in the right direction, aimed at reducing potential barriers in the new visa system for world-class academics, the exorbitant cost shows that the UK Government is out of touch.

It is no wonder that EU researchers are now choosing to leave and, in some cases, take their EU research grants with them. Of course, many will now choose not come to Scotland in the first place.

Those research grants come from programmes such as horizon 2020 and its successor programme, horizon Europe, which are of vital importance to Scotland and our researchers. They help us to foster invaluable partnerships across Europe and the world. Across disciplines and sectors, they provide opportunities for all experience levels, from early career researchers to Nobel prize winners.

Since horizon 2020 began in 2014, Scottish organisations have won €711 million. Scotland has won a higher proportion of funding relative to population than any other part of the UK. In fact, Scotland produces 12 per cent of the UK’s research with 8 per cent of the UK’s population and 10 per cent of its researchers. That was outlined in the Universities Scotland submission for this statement, which I am sure that all members have read. That is truly an excellent track record.

I am sure that we are all aware that it is not just a matter of funding alone. The Scottish Science Advisory Council’s report “A Metrics-Based Assessment of Scotland’s Science Landscape (2007-2016)”, which was published last year, demonstrated that research collaboration with EU countries brings the greatest academic impact, with six out of 10 of Scotland’s top international collaborating countries being in the EU. It is for those reasons that we want Scotland to remain involved with horizon.

In the immediate term, we have asked the UK Government to guarantee equitable funding to horizon 2020 participants in Scotland and to guarantee no funding gaps. We have urged it to associate as soon as possible, to fully fund continued participation in all parts of horizon Europe that are open to third countries and to plug all funding gaps where alternative schemes may be required if the UK becomes a third country.

In comparison with the clarity of our position on that issue, the UK Government’s approach to horizon Europe has been pretty murky at best. We had to wait until July this year for a clear public statement of the UK ambition for association, and key information is too often held back from us, such as the actual costs expected for horizon participation, or the cost of any alternative. At the same time, sufficient attention is not given to devolved options and devolved possibilities for alternative schemes.

I welcome, of course, the good engagement with us by the UK Government and UK Research and Innovation on the design of the discovery fund, which will be a key driver of academic excellence in international collaboration. However, the discovery fund is just one of three strands of alternatives for research collaboration that may be required. We have had minimal engagement by the UK Government recently on the other two. I think that we can all agree that that suggests a haphazard approach at best to information sharing or a selective approach at worst. That is no way to help our institutions to plan for the future in these very challenging times.

Just as horizon has been a key programme for our institutions in attracting funding and researchers to come to our shores, Erasmus+ has done the same for students. In facilitating the mobility of individuals across Europe—whether that be for learning, teaching or working—Erasmus has come to signify to many of us what is good about the EU. It brings people together, allows us to exchange cultures and ideas, and fosters a wider sense of community and belonging between the nations of Europe, and Scotland does exceptionally well from it. We attract proportionally more students from across Europe than any other part of the UK, and we send proportionally more students abroad through the scheme than any other part of the UK.

Between 2014 and 2018, our institutions secured over €90 million in Erasmus funding and, just this month, we have learned that the European Commission has confirmed a 55 per cent increase in the programme’s budget, which is now sitting at over €22 billion. It should therefore come as no surprise that we want Scotland to remain a member of Erasmus.

We have made our position clear to the UK Government time and again. We have provided it with evidence that shows in no uncertain terms the economic and social benefits that the programme brings to Scotland, but we have still to receive confirmation that that evidence has been used in the UK Government’s own assessment of the programme. I have also sent letters to the UK Minister for Civil Society and DCMS, Baroness Barran, and the UK Minister of State for Media and Data, John Whittingdale, concerning the incredibly important youth and community learning and development aspects of Erasmus, and I have yet to receive answers to them.

Although the UK Department for Education has now adopted our position that all mobilities at all levels should be funded fairly—we had a long debate about that for many months—the UK Treasury refuses to accept that. It tells us that, although we may not remain a part of the EU programme, the UK will develop its own version—a better version—that stretches right across the globe. In reality, we can expect a very pale imitation of the real thing. We are being presented with a replacement programme that may see Scotland’s funding for mobility cut by more than 50 per cent and support for our colleges, schools and community groups severely reduced and in some cases removed all together. Groups like Royston Youth Action, which I met earlier in the year, have been undertaking life-changing, transformational work through Erasmus.

Additionally, devolution will be ignored. If the UK Government fails to associate to Erasmus+ and looks to deploy the replacement scheme, it will, if it gets its way, prevent the Scottish Parliament from having any say in how that scheme is run in Scotland. Worryingly, UK ministers have refused to rule out using the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill to foist inferior schemes on Scotland, which would be completely unacceptable.

No matter the eventual outcome, however, I hope that we can agree that Brexit will be bad for Scotland. At this stage, it remains to be seen whether the EU programmes that are so vitally important to our colleges and universities will be part of any such deal.

It is in that context that the Scottish Government has been working closely with our sectors to prepare as best we can. We are considering, for example, the introduction of a new scholarship scheme to help preserve the bonds between our nearest neighbours and ourselves. We are continuing to speak with our European friends and reiterating that, regardless of the outcome of the negotiations, we want to continue to work with our EU partners through research collaboration. We continue to impress upon the UK Government the urgent need to confirm association to horizon Europe and Erasmus+, and, as members will know, we have guaranteed that EU nationals who choose to make their home in Scotland by the end of this year and are successful in gaining either settled or pre-settled status will continue to have access to our generous student support package, including the home tuition fee rate.

Those actions show our commitment to internationalism and our view that that remains a key strength of higher and further education in Scotland. However, despite those efforts, it can be easy to give way to despair in the face of such dire-looking prospects. The consequences for horizon Europe and Erasmus+ illustrate that Brexit, and even worse, a no-deal or poor-deal Brexit, is an act of self-sabotage that will cause severe injury to some of Scotland’s most important institutions, the life chances of current and future generations and the Scottish economy. That is the last thing that our colleges, universities and young people need on top of the impact of the global pandemic.

The devolved Administrations have been left in the waiting room outside, while the UK Treasury, the Department for Education and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy are inside Whitehall offices deciding the fate of those hugely important programmes. As we continue to pursue a no-detriment policy for EU programmes in terms of funding and participation, we will use the coming weeks to do all that we can to protect Scotland’s interests and prevent the UK Government from inflicting untold damage on our relationship with Europe.

I thank the Parliament for the opportunity to provide an update on those important issues.