Good morning. Bore da. I wondered if we could start off with you telling us what evidence you can see that the Brexit process has had any impact on Welsh higher education so far.
Can I preface the response by just reminding you that we are, by contract and by role, apolitical, and a lot of the judgments about the impact of Brexit essentially reflect where people sit politically in terms of whether they think it's a good thing or a bad thing? We're not going to go there, obviously, today, so we'll stick to the facts as we can see them, and hopefully we'll be able to help you, but there are areas where we are unable to help. That's part of the reason.
We certainly do not expect you to enter the political fray in any way.
Thank you. But even in terms of your assessment of whether this is going to be a good thing or a bad thing, a good impact or a bad impact, some of that inevitably in the end becomes a matter of your politics on it, so we will be as careful as we can be on that. In terms of the impact of Brexit on higher education, clearly, the significance here is about the contribution that higher education can make to Wales. So, we fund provision; we don't fund providers, technically, although obviously there's not much provision without providers. So, we are interested in the sustainability of higher education providers, but fundamentally the issue is: what does the HE system in Wales do for Wales, and what impact might Brexit have on the capacity of the system to continue to deliver for Wales? So, we know that universities make annually about £5 billion of impact; 50,000 jobs. Of course, in Wales, all of that economic impact is really very significant, and uncertainty about the relationships and the arrangements with Europe is one of the most significant issues confronting university management at the moment. That has an impact in a number of ways. We can identify at the moment the extent to which the HE sector in Wales is exposed to sources of income that are located from the EU, so EU students, structural funds, and EU research funding, and so on, from the EU. We can identify some of that, but, actually, what happens in the future is much harder to be clear about. We are beginning to see some impact in terms of applications from EU students and I'll ask Bethan to share some details on that in a moment. We're also beginning to pick up, only anecdotally, some signs that there are increasing difficulties in the UK sector, and the Welsh sector as part of that, in playing in some of the EU collaborative research activities. And that, I think, just reflects the extent to which EU partners consider that British partners might be a stable partner as we go through this transition period. We don't have data on that—that's anecdotal—but there are signs that some of those relationships are beginning to become a little bit more difficult. In terms of the financial impact of that, clearly, if it is accepted that the UK is a net contributor to the EU then, presumably, some of the money—we're almost immediately straight into politics if you're not careful—but some of the money will be available back to the UK, and the extent to which Wales benefits or not from that returned money is a function of the political relationship between the Welsh Government and Her Majesty's Government. It's not necessarily the case that Wales will always lose out in that relationship, but that will become a matter of politics. There's a broader dimension, which is about the economic impact of Brexit on the UK economy and how much tax revenue there is and all of that. I think it's very hard for us to be definitive about how that's going to play out. I think that depends on the deal and how it all unfolds over the next several years. But we can certainly anticipate some turbulence and exactly how that plays for institutions remains to be seen. We can touch later on on the extent to which they are sighted on this and preparing for it. So, in terms of recruitment, Bethan.