Rory Stewart pledges to set up EU university exchange scheme for London if he wins mayoral race

Exclusive: Former cabinet minister who quit Tories says he wants city to be 'capital of Europe' after Brexit

Independent London mayoral candidate Rory Stewart has announced plans for a new Erasmus scheme for the capital’s universities if he wins the race for City Hall.

Speaking to The Independent, Mr Stewart said he would set up a mayoral scholarship to enable students from London to spend time in EU universities and London universities to host visiting students from Europe.

With a fund of £15 million, Erasmus More would help 5,000 London students and residents to study and work abroad each year. If the government negotiates continued participation in the existing Erasmus scheme, Mr Stewart's initiative would go ahead in parallel, focusing on the capital's most disadvantaged populations.

The former Tory MP also said he would establish a business mission for London in Brussels after Brexit, and warned the government should make continued access to shared crime-fighting databases a “non-negotiable” part of its future relations with the EU.

If he defeats sitting Labour mayor Sadiq Khan and Conservative challenger Shaun Bailey in the 7 May election, he is promising to invest mayoral funds in more UK border force staff to make it quicker for EU citizens to get through immigration queues at London airports and the Eurostar Channel Tunnel terminal.

And he called on Home Secretary Priti Patel to apply “a presumption of forgiveness and generosity” to the 900,000 EU citizens believed still not to have secured settled status allowing them to live in the UK after the end of this year.

Failure to take a lenient line with individuals who get the paperwork wrong or miss application deadlines would risk creating “another Windrush”, he warned.

The government earlier this month voted down an attempt to preserve the UK’s membership of the EU Erasmus+ scheme after Brexit, though ministers insist that the government remains open to continued participation, subject to negotiations with Brussels over the coming year.

Former cabinet minister Mr Stewart, who quit the Conservatives over his opposition to a hard Brexit, said a new university exchange scheme for London would be part of his effort to ensure the city remains “the capital of Europe” and culturally “very close” to the EU after withdrawal.

“We will have our own Erasmus scheme, which is the exchange scheme for universities which I was very disappointed the government voted against,” he said.

“London should have its own scheme, we should keep these links open. I would have a mayoral scholarship and work with businesses to encourage UK citizens to be able to got to European universities and vice versa.”

Writing in The Independent, Mr Stewart said that a loss of access to EU crime databases would have an impact on the streets of London.

“Our membership of the European Union gave us rapid access to an unprecedented quantity of data on people and criminals, which made it much easier to track and match individuals, and to make arrests and extraditions work,” he said.

“This data access and security relationship should not be bargained away to secure other trading advantages. It is fundamental in its own right. And must be preserved.”

Mr Stewart also urged Boris Johnson to listen to London businesses which want him to prioritise access to European markets over regulatory divergence during negotiations on a future relationship over the coming 11 months.

“We need to ask patiently and clearly ‘what exactly is the advantage of this?’ with every proposal on divergence,” he said.

“There are some possible advantages… but in general across most sectors any advantage of divergence is outweighed by the disadvantage of losing market access.”