Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what briefing was prepared by her Department to ensure the panel for appointments to the Board of the Office for Students had sufficient background information on applicants' use of social media to ensure they were able to do due diligence on their decision.

The Higher Education representative who served on the panel for appointments to the Board of the Office for Students, referred to by the Universities Minister on the 8 January 2018, was Gordon McKenzie, Chief Executive of GuildHE.

Panel members received application details of candidates that they had shortlisted ahead of the interviews. This included declarations on conflicts of interest and political activity which were then discussed with candidates at interview.

Due diligence took place ahead of interviews and appointments. Neither panel members nor the department were aware of the offensive tweets by Toby Young before his appointment was made. These remarks were years, in some cases decades in the past. It is not reasonable or proportionate for government to trawl through tens of thousands of tweets over many years when making public appointments though we will reflect on the lessons that we can learn from this experience.