(C) OpenDemocracy This story was originally published by OpenDemocracy and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Labour and Tories fail to commit to exposing universities’ secret donors [1] [] Date: 2024-06 The Conservatives and Labour have failed to address calls to tackle the flow of dark money into British universities. More than 120 academics, politicians and campaigners signed an open letter in April urging the political parties to commit to legislation that forces universities to publish a register of large donations and research funding. The letter came after openDemocracy revealed that hundreds of millions of pounds of anonymous donations have been poured into Russell Group universities since 2017 – much of it from wealthy foreign donors. Other actors ploughing cash into prestigious British universities include fossil fuel companies, which have subsequently been given “horrifying” influence over academic degrees, and defence companies that are arming Israel. Get our free Daily Email Get one whole story, direct to your inbox every weekday. Sign up now Labour’s shadow education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, did not respond to the open letter, while the current education secretary, Conservative MP Gillian Keegan, responded by shrugging off responsibility for the issue, saying universities are independent and should deal with it themselves. Keegan wrote: “I assure you that we recognise concerns about overseas interference in our higher education (HE) sector and regularly assess the risks facing academia. HE providers are independent autonomous organisations and therefore responsible for ensuring they have adequate governance and risk management procedures in place when accepting donations. “The Department for Education expects the HE sector to be alert to risks when collaborating with any international partners.” George Havenhand, investigative researcher at Spotlight on Corruption, told openDemocracy that the minister’s response was concerning. “It’s welcome that the Department for Education recognises the risk of foreign interference over universities,” he said, “but the response suggests that there is little appetite to address this or wider concerns about the lack of transparency in university funding, which could come from dodgy companies or individuals in the UK as well as from unsavoury regimes.” Jinsella Kennaway, executive director of Demilitarise Education, said it was clear that current risk assessments over donations “are not to an adequate standard”. She said: “It is the Department for Education's job to set a standard for higher education that promotes objectives of making positive contributions to society rather than accepting dirty money and, therefore, perpetuating complicity, in the very injustice education should steer society away from.” In her letter, Keegan pointed to new legislation which “strengthens the existing freedom of speech duties” that universities must stick to, adding: “We will work in collaboration with the Office for Students to implement the remaining provisions in the Act by 1 September 2025, and we will be consulting on the requirements for the monitoring of overseas funding in relation to freedom of speech.” Under the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, the Office for Students – the regulator of higher education in England – has the power to monitor overseas funding received by universities to assess whether that funding may present a risk to free speech and academic freedom. But this falls short of what campaigners and MPs have called for. When the Act was going through Parliament, backbench MPs tried to improve transparency over overseas donations. Led by Conservative backbencher Jesse Norman, they introduced proposals to force universities to publish the names of any foreign donor who gives a university more than £50,000. Ultimately, the move failed: it was watered down by the government and Norman described it as a “missed opportunity”. John Heathershaw, professor of international relations at the University of Exeter who signed the open letter and who worked with Norman on the proposals, said: “The UK continues to lack a general transparency requirement with regard to donations to universities. The Higher Education Act of 2023 did not change this as the government amended it to remove the duty to disclose donors. This means while it is an ethical requirement for academics to disclose their research funders, there is no such expectation in place for universities.” Senior MPs have also written separately to the government, calling for more transparency. In a joint letter sent to the education secretary, Labour MP Margaret Hodge and the former Conservative minister Robert Buckland warned that universities “cannot become tainted by anonymous money extracted from potentially corrupt sources”. The APPG for Anti-Corruption & Responsible Tax – of which Margaret Hodge is chair – and the APPG for Fair Business Banking recently brought out an economic crime manifesto to tackle the UK’s “dirty money epidemic”. The manifesto highlights how universities are not covered by money laundering regulations, one of several sectors where there are “no duties to check the origin of the funds they receive.” Transparency International’s Steve Goodrich said: “Universities need to be more transparent and discerning about the donations they receive to prevent money of malign provenance funding academia. “It’s clear relying on higher education providers to voluntarily do the right thing isn’t working, and that this risks our institutions being exploited by corrupt individuals and regimes looking to whitewash their reputations. Whichever party wins the forthcoming election should finally step in and make clear to universities that dirty money isn’t welcome here in Britain.” [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/uk-universities-anonymous-donations-labour-conservatives-response-open-letter/ Published and (C) by OpenDemocracy Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/opendemocracy/