Can I thank Llyr for introducing this debate and commend many of the contributors already who’ve spoken in support of the motion? I make no apologies for reiterating some of the points that have been made already, because I think they are worth stating very emphatically. Can I also thank very much Cardiff University, Universities Wales and others for the briefing materials that they supplied in advance of this debate, which raised some of the very pertinent issues that have already been aired within this Chamber?

It’s good that we now have a universities group, a cross-party group, set up within the Assembly that looks at these matters, as well as the group chaired by Rhun ap Iorwerth on Wales in the international sphere, which has looked at many of these aspects of our reach with our education, with our students and our staffing expertise internationally, but also the importance of continuing as a very attractive place to come and to study, to do research, and also to work as well and to extend those employment opportunities. It is worth saying that in the backdrop to this debate and the context for this debate is the mood music that we set as a Welsh Government and also as a UK Government internationally: how does it sound overseas? We know we’ve been through a pretty difficult period. There’s a highly competitive international market for students. We know that the evidence will show that people have been voting with their money and with their feet and choosing other locations, partly because of the disruption last year—the feeling that we were less than welcoming to those from overseas.

I think we need to turn this around, and it was good to see that both the Cabinet Secretary’s speech at Cardiff University and the First Minister’s speech at Bangor University in November as well, in Sian Gwenllian’s constituency, were very well received by the university sector in Wales. They said that they were very reassured that the priorities for the Welsh Government were the right priorities for the university sector domestically, but also the right things were said about how we should look outwardly facing to the world, welcoming international students from the EU and wider afield, but also welcoming the opportunities that we have and making sure that we retain those opportunities and that our expertise and our students also go out into the world and that our staff expertise is shared as well. These points have been made in some way already by the contributors to the debate so far.

But I want to put down some salient facts into the debate. As we speak, there are currently nearly 5,500 EU students of all modes, all levels, full and part-time, postgraduate and undergraduate, within Welsh universities this year. It is equivalent to over 4 per cent of the student population. Those EU students in Wales have generated around about £150 million for the Welsh economy—if you add to that all international students it’s around £235 million to the Welsh economy—and this is, as I say, not only significant in contribution but it’s also a highly competitive market out there as we go forward. I hear the reassurances from Darren Millar that, whilst it’s uncertain, things will be okay in the future. We hope very much that is the case but I have to say the uncertainty at the moment is why Universities Wales are raising these concerns, particularly after the year that we’ve just come out from.

If you look at the staff impact, the criticality of EU staff in supporting the excellence of our Wales university sector, as we speak, there are nearly 1,400 staff from other parts, other countries within the EU—and we’re still within the EU at the moment—within our Welsh universities, both academic and, by the way, non-academic. So, when we look at the issue of visas—skilled, non-skilled, different grades of skills and so on—we have to be careful that, as the Home Office is looking at this issue, we don’t actually by default suddenly find the negative consequence that we’ve drawn certain people into being allowed to be here and we’ve excluded others who are equally essential to the higher education sector within Wales.

Finally, I just want to touch very briefly, Presiding Officer, on the importance of EU research: collaboration and the income we receive. As we speak, the total EU research grants and the contract income for Wales is around £46 million. Others in this Chamber will reassure us that that money can be found elsewhere. I’m glad they are so confident. I’d like to know where it is going to come from. But that is significant, that’s 20 per cent of our income in terms of research, and it’s why we are doing so well at the moment. I’ll stop on that point, because many of the points that I was going to make have been made already. But we do need to get this right here ongoing. But I come back to the context in which we are speaking, which is being an internationally attractive destination for students from the EU but also wider afield. We need to retain that and the expertise that comes with it.