European Union (Withdrawal) Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-26
Topic: Technology
Philip Alexander Hunt (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, we now come to an amendment which concerns two EU programmes which are clearly at risk as a consequence of the Brexit withdrawal. The first is Horizon 2020, which is a major funder of research, principally in our universities. One cannot talk about this funding programme without making reference to the impact on the UK economy I remind the Minister that the Government’s industrial strategy sets a goal for the UK to have the world’s most innovative economy. It states that we are recognised as a global leader in science and research but that neither the Government nor the private sector are investing enough in R&D. As the Government’s paper points out, we spend 1.7% of GDP, compared with 2.8% in the US and 2.9% in Germany. Commendably, the Government have set the goal to raise total research and development investment to 2.4% of GDP by 2027. They state their intention to work with universities and research institutes to increase global investors and R&D activities taking place in the UK. That is highly commendable but also challenging in the context of Brexit There are a number of factors in this. First, I hark back to our previous debate on regulation. The Minister says that because 90% of medicines in use in the UK are licensed by the MHRA, we should not worry if there is no deal, and the MHRA becomes a stand-alone regulator. That misses the point that any medicines licensed by the MHRA in this country can then be taken to be licensed throughout the EU. The reason is that we play by the same rules. Unless we reach a mutual recognition agreement with the EU, it is absolutely clear that pharma’s investment in research in the UK will fall dramatically. It is not just regulation, it is funding, it is multicentre research collaboration, it is research policy and it is movement of researchers At the moment, many of those research programmes are at risk, none more so than Horizon 2020. This is a programme which funds major research in our universities. Rather like the UK’s general research position, we have a hugely impressive number of universities engaged in high-quality research. We know that despite the relatively low share of global investment in R&D, UK research accounted for 50% of the world’s most highly cited research articles. Part of that success has been in attracting more than £1 billion from overseas every year, with £840 million coming from the EU in 2015-16. Horizon 2020 is the biggest EU research and innovation programme and the UK has done very well out of it. It is the second in order of recipients of that programme within the EU. Around 15% of funds allocated from Horizon 2020 have gone to the UK. Indeed, Cambridge, UCL, Imperial and Oxford universities are the top four recipients to date. Other universities, including Edinburgh, Manchester and Birmingham have also done well Clearly, the question is: what will happen with withdrawal from the EU? At the moment, the position is that UK researchers will remain fully eligible for EU funding for at least the next 17 months. The Government have given a guarantee to pay out any funding applied for and awarded before we leave. But, of course, the question is: what happens post 2020? The Government’s position on that is non-committal. We have had positive messages from the Prime Minister in her Lancaster House and Florence speeches, and in the Government’s science and innovation discussion paper, but since then, there has been no clarification at all of the UK’s status in relation to this funding after Brexit Of course, the worry is that simply the loss of funding will have a big impact on our research capabilities and also collaboration with European universities. My amendment would ensure that we either remain a member of, or seek to maintain some kind of participatory relations with, Horizon 2020 and its successor programmes. I should say that part of the problem is that if academics do not know, it is very difficult for them to plan research collaborations with European universities going beyond the due date. Any week lost in terms of uncertainty is sure to put some of those programmes at risk I propose a similar approach in relation to the Erasmus+ programme. I should have thought that, post Brexit, the need to encourage young people from the UK to maintain and develop links with the rest of Europe is self-evident if we are to avoid drifting apart from the continent. Yet our withdrawal from the Erasmus+ programme could make that more difficult. This EU-funded scheme has enabled 600,000 people from the UK to go abroad to study, train or volunteer over the last 30 years. It is open to education, training, youth and sports organisations across all sectors of lifelong learning, including school education, further education, adult education and the youth sector, as well as higher education, for which I suspect it is most well known. For young people, this has had a hugely positive impact, leading to better job prospects and lower unemployment. The British Council, which oversees it, reports that young people who participate in international opportunities return with increased language and intercultural skills The programme is not just about the EU—it has enabled UK universities to develop new or to reinforce existing partnerships with universities in Asia, Latin America and the US. The British Council believes that the UK should seek to remain in a successor Erasmus+ programme, and I very much agree with that. If we do not, the UK will have to set up numerous bilateral relationships which will be time consuming and costly, and frankly, I doubt the capacity of government to be able to do it any time soon. Here we have an entirely positive programme, enabling young people from this country and other countries of the EU to enjoy fulfilment and open their horizons. I should have thought that at least in this programme, it would have been possible to agree our future participation. I hope the Minister will be able to confirm that. I beg to move.