4. Will the First Minister make a statement on the future of the Erasmus Plus programme? OAQ54932

I thank Lynne Neagle for that. It is deeply disappointing that, last week, the new Conservative Government defeated efforts to require UK participation in Erasmus+ once the UK leaves the European Union, and this, Dirprwy Lywydd, despite consistent calls from both the Welsh and Scottish Governments for that participation to be guaranteed.

Thank you, First Minister, and I share that disappointment about the vote last week. I was an Erasmus student. I, from a working-class home, from one of Wales's most deprived communities, who had never even had a family holiday abroad, was able to go and study at the University of Paris under the Erasmus programme, and have always been grateful for that opportunity. 

Continued participation in Erasmus is not in any way incompatible with leaving the EU. Will you, working with your Minister for Education, do everything you can to impress upon the UK Government the enormous benefits that Erasmus+ brings to young people, especially our most disadvantaged young people, and do whatever you can to ensure that Wales can continue to play a full part in this life-changing EU programme?

Well, can I thank the Member for that? Her individual testimony is very powerful. Surely, we ought all to be determined that young people in the future are not denied opportunities that have come the way of others as a result of participation in Erasmus and Erasmus+.

I know that the education Minister, Kirsty Williams, has consistently argued in meetings with UK Ministers for the UK to continue to participate in it because, as Lynne Neagle says, it's available to third countries; there is nothing in leaving the European Union that means that we have to leave Erasmus+. And Wales has been a huge beneficiary of it. Over €40 million have come to Wales for Erasmus+ projects between 2014 and 2018, and we had €13.6 million invested in giving young people those experiences last year alone. It's often not well understood, Dirprwy Lywydd, that as well as the sort of university experiences that Lynne referred to, it's also now available for further education, for schools, in adult education, and crucially, for the sort of young people that Lynne Neagle referred to, through the youth service as well. I, too, have had direct experience of taking groups of young people to Europe under the Erasmus+ scheme who would never ever have had that opportunity were that funding not available to them, and it is such a shame that, given an opportunity to guarantee that future participation last week, the new Conservative Government turned its back on it.

After the vote you referred to on this clause, the Channel 4 News FactCheck website said that voting the clause down is not the same as scrapping UK involvement in the scheme, and the UK Government made clear that the vote does not end or prevent the UK participating in Erasmus. How therefore do you respond to the statement by the UK Government that, as we enter negotiations with the EU on the future relationship, we want to ensure that UK and European students can continue to benefit from each other's world-leading education systems and that it is wrong to say that the vote by MPs last Wednesday means that the UK will quit the Erasmus scheme?

Well, if the vote by MPs changed nothing, Dirprwy Lywydd, then why did his Government defeat it? If their intention is that everything we have now should be continued into the future, they had a way to guarantee that that would happen. He asked me what I fear, and here's my fear: that when the UK Government come to design their own system, it will be a slimmed-down system, it will be a less generous system, it will cut out of participation the sort of young people that Lynne Neagle highlighted in her question.

There was a very simple, direct, unambiguous way in which the Government could have sent its message about continuing participation in Erasmus+: it could have allowed that amendment to go through last week. It didn't, and there must be a reason for that. The reason is that they don't intend to replace Erasmus on a like-for-like basis in future, and young people in Wales will be worse off as a result. 

I'd like to concur with some of the comments made previously that this is an amazing opportunity for many young people, not only academically, but it can change their lives and the people they meet and the type of lifestyle they'll go on to lead in this country. And I do think that, as a party of aspiration, the Conservatives are taking the wrong stance here, because if they believe that everybody should have the chance to study abroad, then they will deny, potentially, the chance to working class and middle class people and it will only be the rich that will be able to take part in these particular schemes. And that is an embarrassment for them.

I've heard, and I've read the fact-checking, that they are looking—only looking—to have negotiation on the future of Erasmus in any trade negotiations in the future. It doesn't guarantee that we will stay within Erasmus. In that eventuality, what type of discussions are you having with the European Union? For example, if the Conservatives come up with this watered-down project that you have anticipated, what will you be able to do from a Welsh perspective in terms of an alternative plan? I know that you can't directly liaise, because we are not a nation state in that regard, to be able to have those conversations, but can we do it by institution, or will that prove to be more difficult to do? Are there other options on the table, albeit that we all want to fight for the current Erasmus programme? What other alternatives are you looking at at the moment as a Government?

There will be other ways in which we can try and support the very important work that's carried out in Erasmus through institution-to-institution links and so on, but the first thing, Dirprwy Lywydd, we would need to do would be to secure the money for it, because the money for Erasmus is not held in the education department at Westminster, it is held by the Treasury. And if the UK Government choose to spend less on Erasmus in the future, then they must give us the money that would previously have been spent in Wales. That's what I believe was meant by the Conservative Party claim that Wales would not be a penny worse off. We should have the money that is spent on Erasmus now, and if they won't spend it, they should give us the money so that we can create those opportunities for young people in Wales.

First Minister, many non-EU countries, as you well know, participate fully in Erasmus+, including Turkey. No-one is arguing that UK students wouldn't actually enjoy the same educational and cultural opportunities that Turkish students would. The Government doesn't need to bind itself by statute to negotiate this at all. Does the First Minister agree that this is an area that both Government and all political parties could be united on in the upcoming negotiations with the EU?

Well, I certainly hope that the UK Government will negotiate an equivalent involvement in Erasmus+ as we have enjoyed up until now, and I agree with this point that Mandy Jones made: there is no reason why they couldn't, because a third country can have full participation in Erasmus+. That's what I'm looking for from the UK Government, not some diluted, slimmed down, made-at-home version. I want Welsh young people to have exactly the same opportunities after we leave the European Union as they have had now. The rulebook doesn't preclude that, and that's what they must secure.