Anti-Semitism: University Campus Incidents

Lord Leigh of Hurley Excerpts

Thursday 21st January 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I warmly welcome my noble friend Lord Wolfson to our House and look forward to his maiden speech. I declare my interests as I hold a number of positions in the Jewish community and that I have two daughters at university right now. How depressing to learn that they are facing anti-Semitism as I did 40 years ago; in those days, all the talk was about “Perdition” and, of course, anti-Israel rhetoric.

I welcome the CST report, but we have to recognise that it covers only reported anti-Semitism, not the huge amount of non-reported anti-Semitism, much of it online and some of it well away from campus, but which still affects the mental health of Jewish students, with torrents of vile extreme right and left-wing material. Does the Minister agree that we must ensure that higher education does not follow where the Labour Party went and even some parliamentarians seem to be going, of attacking Israel as a proxy for anti-Semitism?