European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-26
Topic: Mixed Topics
Christopher Francis Patten (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I will not only say that I will be brief but will be brief. I shall not pursue what has been said about Erasmus, with which I strongly agree—Erasmus must have been very grateful for all we have said about him today, although I think he would have some doubts about the present state of rationality in some of our political debate in this country I will instead follow the point made so well by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall. I declare an interest, which is not financial. As the noble Lord will know, I was chancellor of a Russell group university in the north-east of England. I am chancellor today of another Russell group university. Perhaps just as significant, when I ceased to be a European Commissioner, I was asked to chair the committee which established the European Research Council. It did so on the basis of the recommendations in particular of Lord May, one of the greatest contributors to the debate about research and about universities in this country We established the research council on the basis that it would distribute funds by peer group review—not according to what individual countries had contributed but according to the research capacities of those countries and of particular institutions. And guess what? It demonstrated that we have the second-best higher education system in the world and arguably the best higher education system in Europe: we did extraordinarily well out of that research budget. As the noble Baroness pointed out, we get a great deal more back from the European budget than we put into it, which indicates how good our research community is in this country I realise that there are constraints under which the Minister has to operate—he has our sympathy and our prayers as he moves forward. I agree with what my noble friend Lord Deben said earlier: we do not expect him to do wonders. I am not sure that he will be able to tell us now what the Government’s intentions are in relation to the European research community. I do not blame him if he cannot do that, because I do not think that anybody in the Government has the faintest idea—certainly, I do not know anybody in Europe who has the faintest idea of what we want to happen—but I hope that, at the end of the day, as right reverend Prelates might put it, we will still be members of that research community So I do not expect the Minister today to be able to spell out precisely what arrangements we will have in the future—whether they will be similar to those which Switzerland has today, whereby it is part of the community but takes no management decisions about it. Israel is in a similar position. However, I hope that, even if he cannot tell us exactly what the relationship will be, he will at least give us one simple guarantee—and I am sure that the Chancellor of the Exchequer would want to stand over this very strongly When we leave the European Union we will lose the considerable surplus that we have at the moment in research spending—as I said, getting back more than we put in. Will the Minister guarantee this evening, even if he cannot give us any details about our future relationship with the European research community, that any shortfall in that funding after we leave the European Union will be made good by the Government?