9. What are the implications for Wales of the UK Government's decision to cancel UK participation in the European Erasmus programme? OQ56157

Llywydd, the decision by the Westminster Government not to participate in Erasmus+ means that the benefits of a highly valued programme are being denied to our young people. For the first time this year, organisations and institutions in Wales will no longer be able to submit new applications to Erasmus+, in an act of cultural vandalism. 

Thank you, First Minister. I would agree with you—it is indeed an act of cultural vandalism. One of the most disappointing aspects of the UK Government's decision to turn its back on Europe and the opportunities that Erasmus offered for young people, particularly those from disadvantaged families, is that my understanding is that the Turing scheme, which they hope to replace it with, does not allow youth services to nominate people who may not be taking the academic path in their future career path, but those who need to, nevertheless, broaden their horizons, understand what the innovations are that already exist in Europe and which could be strengthening their capacity to run successful businesses here in Wales. So, what options are now open to young people to engage with their global responsibilities in an informed way?

Llywydd, I think it's a very good question from Jenny Rathbone. Let me repeat what I said here once before, Llywydd. The Turing scheme is an English scheme being imposed on the rest of the United Kingdom. It is an early example of the way in which the Conservative Party intends to use the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020, because instead of providing money to Wales for us to discharge our devolved responsibilities for higher and further education and the youth service, this is to be a scheme imposed on us, funded directly from Whitehall with no reference at all to the particular needs, circumstances and democratic preferences of people here in Wales. Jenny Rathbone is absolutely right—we have made greater use of the Erasmus programme for young people through the youth service than any other part of the United Kingdom. It's been a distinctively Welsh feature of the use that we have made of it, and that's now going to be denied to us. That is part of the disgrace of the UK Government's failure to negotiate proper participation in the scheme, and then to compound that by imposing on us a scheme that simply doesn't meet the needs and preferences of people here in Wales.

We will now have to build up, in answer to the Member's final part of the question, those schemes that we already have in operation in Wales: the Seren programme, which sends young people to Yale, Harvard, Chicago and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the scholarships that we promote through Global Wales; the MIT global teaching laboratories, in which 25,000 learners in Wales participated in 2020. Llywydd, when I met the German ambassador a week ago, he very positively put to me the prospects for bilateral arrangements between young people in Wales and young people in Germany outside the arrangements that the UK Government is contemplating imposing on us. We will pursue those bilateral opportunities—those opportunities we've already invested in—to try and make good the fact that young people in Wales are now to be denied opportunities that generations of young people have been able to enjoy up until now and were quite certainly promised to them by the UK Government, and have failed to be delivered in the deal that they have struck with the European Union.

Thank you, First Minister.