Still time to rescue Erasmus scheme imperilled by Brexit

WE were told to expect Brexit to be like a slow tyre puncture and that you’d not be able to tell which economic damage was caused by it, and which related to Covid-19.

In fact, what’s happening is more like an economic blowout. No-one is falling for Ministers calling economic turmoil “teething problems”.

Severe damage to British industry – right from fishing through to financial services – is now inevitable. But some of the harm can still be avoided.

Ripping Britain out of Erasmus – which encourages young British people to study and work in Europe, and continental counterparts to come here – didn’t have to be part of Brexit. Barely a year ago, when an MP suggested it might be, Boris Johnson told him he was “talking through the back of his neck”.

He wasn’t. Erasmus was ditched in Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal. The substitute Turing scheme is terribly inferior and only likely to be viable for a minority of students.

Fortunately, young people from Northern Ireland can still access Erasmus, courtesy of the generosity of the Irish government, and the Welsh government is doing what it can to replicate it. Scotland may follow suit.

So, how do parents and grandparents in Yorkshire feel about their offspring being denied similar opportunities? The damage has not been done yet, and a rapid U-turn by our government could still avert it.

LIKE Jenny Eaves (The Yorkshire Post, March 29), I would ask that people ‘spare a thought’ for those with family members on the European continent.

My daughter and her partner live in the Netherlands and I became a first time Nana yesterday. I now have to consider the 90-day limit to visiting any EU country in a 180-day period. This right to freedom of movement within the European Union has been taken away from me by those who voted to leave the EU.

I am heartbroken at the effect leaving the EU will have on this country. But I am seething with rage at the people who have denied me and my wider family the opportunity to visit my grandson without keeping a tally of the amount of time I have used.

The politicians who lied, and continue to lie, about the many impacts of leaving the EU, both personal and economic, should hang their heads in shame.