North Wales Assembly Member Mark Isherwood has hit out at the First Minister for his anti-Brexit scaremongering over the future of a European Union student exchange programme.
Speaking in the Welsh Parliament yesterday, Mr Isherwood shot down claims that the future of the Erasmus+ scheme, which funds opportunities for young people to train and study across Europe, is in jeopardy.
The matter was raised in the Chamber after MPs last week voted against a clause in the UK Government’s European Union Withdrawal Agreement Bill that would have required the Government to seek to negotiate continued full membership of the EU’s Erasmus+ education programme, casting doubt over the future of the scheme.
Speaking in the Chamber, Mr Isherwood said: “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?”
Responding, the First Minister said: “Well, if the vote by MPs changed nothing 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.
“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”.
Mr Isherwood added: “This was yet more irresponsible anti-Brexit scaremongering from an unrepresentative Labour First Minister. It is already the case that not all the countries which participate in the Erasmus Programme are EU members. However, if MPs voted to require the UK Government to negotiate continuing full membership of any EU Programme after Brexit, the UK Government’s position would be weakened in its forthcoming negotiations with the EU on the future relationship between the two”.
