Universities: Racism

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Wednesday 10th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

I am aware of the meeting and the letter which Minister Skidmore wrote—on 16 May, I believe. I can tell my noble friend that there have been some replies, so I believe that the message is getting through. However, I am the first to say that there is more work to be done. King’s College London has adopted the IHRA definition, but I believe that that happened before the letter was written. Just to complicate matters, we have to respect institutional autonomy as regards how higher education providers operate, although obviously government has a role.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, last week I was speaking at a sixth-form college where the students were almost entirely black and minority ethnic. They were thrilled when one of their bright girls got a place at Cambridge, and devastated when her father refused to allow her to go on the grounds that she must live at home and go to a local university. What more can be done to encourage ethnic minority communities not to discriminate against girls in this way, and to ensure that they have the opportunities that others have, both before they go to university and afterwards?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

The noble Baroness raises an important point. It is important to encourage more females to go to university, when it is right for them, as well as BAME students. I know that a number of universities, including but not exclusively Oxford and Cambridge, are doing a lot of work to try to encourage and improve entries from this particular group, and the work is getting through.