The Red Scare You Are Paying For
Investigative reporting from Poppy Woods at the i newspaper has shown that the taxpayer is footing the £15,000 legal bill for an out-of-court settlement that the science minister has had to pay for defaming two researchers.
The story begins in October last year when Professor Kate Sang and Dr Kamna Patel were appointed to an advisory group on equality, diversity and inclusion for UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), an organisation that promotes and invests in research and collaboration.
This attracted the interest of the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, Michelle Donelan, because of views expressed by the new hires. She wrote to UKRI claiming that Sang and Patel held extremist views and, in the case of Sang, openly expressed support for Hamas, a proscribed terrorist organisation.
If this were true, then it would be a close for concern. The problem was that it was not accurate whatsoever.