UK Research and Innovation: Ethnic Minorities
Debate between Lord Swire and Lord Vallance of Balham(2 days, 5 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Swire (Con)
The Minister has made his career—and to an extent his reputation—on statistics. Can he clarify something for me? According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency, of all academic staff whose ethnicity is known, 22% were from ethnic-minority backgrounds in 2022-23. Is that a reflection of society at large, or is it disproportionate?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
The data for postgraduate research numbers in 2023-24 was that 74% were from white backgrounds, 9% were Asian students, 5% were black students, 5% were mixed students and 3% were students categorised as of “other” ethnic background. I think that this is a fair representation. I go back to the striking statistic that, out of 22,885 professors, only 160 are black and of those, only a quarter are women.