B

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 15 December 2025

Debate

UK Research and Innovation: Ethnic Minorities

Contribution

My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree with the multiple analyses of major funders, including UKRI and the US National Science Foundation, which have consistently found that white applicants have higher grant awards than ethnic minority researchers? Indeed, in 2020-21, UKRI PI awardees were 81% white and 1% black. The major reason, I suggest, is that black, Asian and other minority ethnicities are underrepresented in academia; we have just 160 black professors, of whom only a quarter are women. Does the Minister agree that efforts to address these stark inequalities should be welcomed rather than criticised?

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