This blog was written by former Universities Minister the Rt Hon Chris Skidmore MP. It is adapted from a speech delivered via video link from the UK Parliamentary Partnership Assembly in Brussels to a roundtable event organised by London Higher and Oxford International Education Group in May 2022.
I very much hope that higher education and research will be part of our dialogues for the future – and will do all I can personally to impress upon the UK Parliamentary Partnership Assembly the importance of shared partnership, collaboration and exchange. Indeed, the last time I was in Brussels, back in May 2019, I had continued to make a stand for what I believed was vital during the Brexit negotiations: that we should not see the lives and livelihoods of young people as bargaining chips in any future deal or no deal scenario. Then I announced that the UK would continue to offer home fee status for EU students for the 2020/21 academic year. Already by then, there was widespread concern on the impact that Brexit was happening on EU student recruitment. And as we have witnessed, with the subsequent removal of home fee status for EU students, universities, particularly those in London, have been faced by a sharp reduction in EU students studying in the UK.
