Michelle Donelan, the UK science secretary, has apologised for the public nature of her “intervention” against members of UK Research and Innovation’s equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) advisory group, conceding she could have contacted the organisation “in confidence” rather than tweeting her concerns.
Appearing before the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee, Ms Donelan raised the subject of the affair, in which the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology paid £15,000 of damages on her behalf to settle a legal dispute with an academic whom the minister had wrongly accused of expressing support for Hamas. Ms Donelan - who also told the committee there was no "crisis" in university funding - has since faced calls to resign.
Kate Sang, professor of gender and employment studies at Heriot-Watt University and member of Research England’s EDI group, had shared on X a Guardian article about government plans to clamp down on pro-Palestine marches and called the plans “disturbing”. Ms Donelan had also criticised Kamna Patel, a development studies academic at UCL, who had retweeted a post describing Israel’s actions in Gaza as “genocide and apartheid”.
“Officials within my department alerted me to a tweet,” Ms Donelan told the committee.
