[1andrew1]

More taxpayers' money being wasted by baseless allegations.

Michelle Donelan, the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, has today tweeted a full retraction of her false allegations about Professor Kate Sang and agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to her.

In October 2023, Michelle Donelan wrote to the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) suggesting that newly appointed members of an EDI board, Professor Kate Sang and Dr Kamna Patel, had shared extremist material or, in the case of Professor Sang, had expressed support or sympathy for Hamas in the aftermath of the Gaza attack. She also claimed they had breached the Nolan principles and suggested they should be removed from the Board. Unusually, the Minister posted this letter to her personal X account to very large numbers of people.

In fact, the allegations were false. Professor Sang is not a Hamas supporter or sympathiser. She had tweeted a link to a Guardian article which described the wider aftermath in the UK of the Hamas attack and simply commented ‘this is disturbing’. Dr Patel had not shared extremist material and there had been no breach of the Nolan principles as Ms Donelan had suggested.

Unfortunately, the basis for Michelle Donelan’s false allegations was a seriously misleading press release from the lobby group Policy Exchange which did not include the link to the Guardian article tweeted by Professor Sang, just the headline which referred to a crackdown on Hamas support by Suella Braverman.

https://www.bindmans.com/knowledge-h...ments-on-gaza/