WHY HARD BREXIT ‘COULD DO UNTOLD DAMAGE TO WALES’
Here, Geraint Talfan Davies, a former chairman of the Institute of Welsh Affairs and a member of the executive committee of Wales for Europe, argues why we must act for the sake of Wales’ higher education plus arts and culture...
A‘HARD Brexit’ could do untold damage to the educational and cultural fabric of Wales, and would harm our economic competitiveness, a report published today warns.
The document from the Institute of Welsh Affairs says safeguarding these sectors must be a “red line” for the Welsh Government in any talks with the EU.
The report, The Single Market of the Mind, looks at the implications of withdrawal from the EU for higher and further education and for the cultural sector in Wales.
It says Wales has more to lose than the rest of the UK because of the disproportionate levels of EU funding for research and development here and comparatively lower funding from private business.
EU money represents roughly a third of the competitive funding distributed by the UK’s Research Councils and Innovate UK across the UK but for Wales that EU funding represents nearly two thirds.
Wales is also disproportionately dependent on higher education for research and development, making it even more vulnerable to losing EU funding, the report adds.
In Wales by 2014-15 the EU was contributing £35.1m, or 16.4%, of Welsh higher education’s research income, while between 2011-12 and 2014-15 Welsh HE’s income from the EU rose more than three times faster than the income from the UK Research Councils – the EU by 14.3% and the Research Councils by only 4.4%, the report shows.
Meanwhile, the private sector is responsible for 45% of the €226.3b spent on research and development across the UK, while in Wales the private sector accounts for only 10%.
Restricting movement of people will also hinder research and cultural collaboration.
Free flow of people has allowed ideas and talent to flourish in academia and in cultural projects such as Welsh National Opera co-producing with 11 other EU countries and EUfunded arts festivals.
“The UK is without question a world leader in higher education and in the arts and creative industries. That has been achieved in large part because we have been an intellectually open country with a high level of international engagement with peers in other EU countries.
“Sustaining this level of European engagement remains a vital national interest that has to be addressed constructively in any negotiation of our future relationship with the EU. “Whether we are in or out of the EU, the free exchange of ideas and talent will remain wholly necessary in both these spheres.”
The 72-page document also reveals Wales has been dropped as a case study in a major EU research project on regional innovation ecosystems, directly as a result of the prospect of withdrawal from the EU.
It quotes Professor Kevin Morgan, from Cardiff University saying: “This denudes Wales of the learning opportunities associated with the HESS project at a time when university/economy linkages are more vital than ever before.”
The report urges the British government to negotiate continued access to the three EU funding streams – the research fund Horizon 2020, the student/staff mobility programme Erasmus+, and the culture programme Creative Europe.
It also argues for an upgraded international strategy for Wales saying this should be “a red line” issue for the Welsh Government.
“If we are to leave the EU some way must be found to retain our full participation not only in the funding and programmes of the European Research Area but also its multitude of academic networks. In any negotiation the Welsh Government will have to make this a ‘red line’ issue.”
The document points out that according to Office for National Statistics figures the UK has been a net beneficiary in EU research and development funding contributing €5.4bn but getting €8.8bn back - a 63% return.
The “worry” for the UK is that research here is highly dependent on the EU with the British government and businesses relatively ‘poor performance’ in investment, it adds.
The report’s author Geraint Talfan Davies, a past Chairman of the IWA and a member of the executive committee of Wales for Europe said: “I have tried to chart Wales’ connections with Europe in these spheres in as much factual detail as possible. It describes what is at stake and, I believe, shows that ‘global is not an alternative to ‘European’, rather an extension of it.”
Auriol Miller, Director of the IWA, said: ‘This is both an important overview and a detailed study of two sectors that matter considerably to Wales, its citizens and our shared future. As progress towards Brexit continues, we must - as a nation - make sure that we also continue to safeguard engagement with the rest of Europe across educational, scientific and artistic endeavours.’
THE triggering of Article 50 opens a period of high risk for two vital components of Welsh and British life – our education system and our culture.
The UK is without question a world leader in higher education and in the arts and creative industries.
That has been achieved in large part because we have been an intellectually open country with a high level of international engagement with peers in other EU countries.
Sustaining this level of European engagement remains a vital national interest that has to be addressed constructively in any negotiation of our future relationship with the EU. Whether we are in or out of the EU, the free exchange of ideas and talent will remain wholly necessary in both these spheres.
International collaboration is the name of the game in research. It has been estimated that in 1981 90% of UK research output was entirely domestic, whereas by now that domestic portion is down to one half, with almost all the growth in research over the last three decades attributable to international collaboration.
The EU has been at the forefront of that, with the research budget increasing from a mere €3.3bn in 1984-7 to €80bn for 2014-20.
The world of the intellect knows no boundaries – ideas cross them with a speed our forebears could not have imagined. But in the last 50 years the EU has built a habit and depth of collaboration, and an intricacy of connections – intellectual, practical, financial, personal and professional.
It is no longer a simple transactional arrangement, rather an evolving natural single market of the mind.
Any withdrawal from that single market of the mind poses a threat, but particularly to the UK’s research base where our national investment in research and development is already significantly lower than that of many competitor countries, and yet more reliant on EU funding.
The UK is 20th in the world league table of R&D spend as a percentage of GDP. That spend has dropped from 2.4% of GDP in 1981 to 1.63% today, considerably less than Germany’s 2.85%.
And yet the UK is the second-highest recipient of EU funding over the decade 2006-15 – just behind Germany – and undoubtedly a net beneficiary. The ONS has calculated that in the period 2007-13 the UK contributed €5.4bn to the EU research funding pot but received €8.8bn back – a 63% return.
If the prospect of losing access to this pot is a concern at the UK level, it is doubly so for us in Wales. Across the UK EU funding represents roughly a third of the competitive funding distributed by the UK’s Research Councils and Innovate UK. For Wales that EU funding represents nearly two-thirds.
We are also disproportionately dependent on higher education for R&D, and therefore even more vulnerable. Across the UK the private sector is responsible for 45% of the €226.3bn spent on research and development.
In Wales the private sector accounts for only 10%. Wales has more to lose, and just at the wrong moment.
In recent years the research record of Welsh universities has been on an upward trajectory, in both volume and quality. In quality terms the proportion of research at Welsh universities classified as 4* “world leading” rose from 14% in 2008 to 30% in 2014.
The volume of research is a bigger problem.
Any improvement has to be sustained over many years to come before we can be content that we have established a truly competitive quantum of R&D that can help close the gap with the rest of the UK in terms of Wales’ economic performance. If the Welsh research effort is allowed to stall we will pay a high price.
No less than €117m of research funding came into the HE sector in Wales from the EU during 2007-13, without counting the contributions from the ERDF that in recent years have amounted to £174m and which have funded major capital developments in almost every institution. Higher education has not been the only beneficiary. In further education the European Social Fund contributed £93m to 14 projects during 2007-13.
It’s not just a funding issue. It is also a matter of preserving unconstrained access to expertise and deep participation – by right as well as by inclination – in increasingly numerous formal European academic networks, often with connections to research and development by European companies.
By now 16% of academic staff in the UK are from other EU countries. At Swansea University, to take one example, there are 127 academic staff from other EU countries, 27 of whom are at professorial level. Many of them have been seriously unsettled by the referendum result.
At the same time, between 2007 and 2013, 4,500 students and 733 members of staff from Welsh universities studied in other countries under the Erasmus scheme, which hopes to see 20% of students spending some time abroad by 2020.
The value, quality and intricacy of the research connections thus created will not be easily or satisfactorily sustained undamaged without continuing formal commitments by both the UK and the EU. Were the Welsh Government permitted “red lines” in the negotiations, this would undoubtedly be one of them.
Similarly, in the cultural sphere, where Wales is internationally deeply engaged in many fields, quality has been enhanced by the absence of any unnecessary barriers to the
free flow of ideas and talent – a more important factor even than funding.
Whether it is Welsh National Opera co-producing with 11 other EU countries, or companies such as our National Dance Company or NoFit State Circus benefiting hugely from European talent, and touring regularly to EU-funded festivals, our culture has been hugely enriched by that sense of a borderless community of art.
The sector fears the return of clumsy and costly restrictions that it had thought were things of the past.
Whether in the field of university research, student and staff mobility, or in the artistic sphere, we will have to cope with three challenges: the threat to funding and to free movement, and the choice either of negotiating continued access to the architecture of collaboration that the EU has built – the European Research Area, Erasmus+ and Creative Europe – or of constructing new bilateral/ multi-lateral arrangements that can have the same effect.
“Global” is not an alternative to “European”, it can only be an extension of it.
The Single Market of the Mind: Education and Culture in Wales after the Europe referendum, is published by the IWA.