Michelle Donelan apologises for making Hamas damages claim on social media

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Michelle Donelan has apologised for publicly posting a letter on social media falsely suggesting an instructional had expressed sympathy for Hamas.

The Science Secretary later retracted her feedback about Professor Kate Sang and agreed to pay her £15,000 in taxpayer cash.

She accepted there was “no evidence” the tutorial, who had lately been appointed to the UK Research and Innovation’s (UKRI) advisory group on equality, range and inclusion, was a Hamas supporter.

Speaking on the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee on Tuesday, Ms Donelan mentioned she ought to have privately written to UKRI elevating her alleged issues, as an alternative of posting the letter on X, previously referred to as Twitter.

She additionally mentioned that civil servants had been conscious that she was going to publish her letter on the platform.

Ms Donelan advised the committee: “While I always err on the side of transparency, I am now clear that in this case, I could have sent the letter in confidence to the UKRI in order for them to undertake the investigations privately.

“And I do apologise for not having done so, and for any distraction that this decision has caused from this Government’s positive agenda.”

She added: “I highlighted it on the platform that the original tweet was done on – Twitter, or X – and that was something I have apologised for.

“With hindsight, I could have just sent it privately and if I had the ability to do it again, I would certainly just send it privately.

“So I’ve said that publicly as well as retracting the original comments, which I do think is important.

“In terms of advice, of course, with long-time precedent, we don’t get into the actual nature of the advice.

“But what I can tell you here today, is that both policy and legal were not only cited but also cleared the approach taken.”

The letter written by Ms Donelan expressed “disgust and outrage” that Prof Sang and one other educational, Dr Kamna Patel, had “shared extremist views” and, in Prof Sang’s case, expressed sympathy for the terrorist group after the October 7 assaults in Israel.

This adopted a tweet by Prof Sang saying: “This is disturbing. Suella Braverman urges police to crack down on Hamas support in UK” with a hyperlink to an article by the Guardian describing the response to the Hamas assaults within the UK.

Ms Donelan has since accepted that Prof Sang’s feedback referred to the story as an entire, and never simply the headline.

The Science Secretary advised the committee she is a champion of educational freedom of speech and that the incident needed to be considered within the context of the latest Hamas assault on the time.

Ms Donelan continued: “And we have seen a great deal of hatred across online social media platforms – something that I had addressed directly with the platforms themselves – and we were very worried about potential violence on our own streets.”

She additionally advised the friends: “My actions were never motivated by any political desire.

“They were motivated by a concern around whether proper process and due diligence had been followed.

“And as I outlined at the very beginning, in my initial statement, the specific tweet, or X, that I saw I felt was concerning especially given the context at the time, and that is why I highlighted it for an investigation by UKRI.”

Ms Donelan additionally defined that there’s “no surveillance at all” of teachers and he or she had been alerted to the preliminary tweet by an official inside the division.

Asked how the injury attributable to the incident may be repaired, the Science Secretary mentioned there could be an “internal review of processes to ensure that we learnt the lessons of this and that we don’t ever repeat those”.