Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, pursuant to the Answer of 24 July 2020 to Question 76019 on Postgraduate Education: Equality, (a) when and (b) how regularly the Government plans to publish diversity statistics for the UK’s research sector.

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) monitors diversity data of the research and innovation funded through the research councils, Innovate UK and Research England. UKRI published its first set of harmonised diversity data for all seven research councils for the past five academic years in July 2020 and are committed to publishing diversity data annually. The next harmonised diversity data release is scheduled for early 2021.

UKRI are also committed to expanding their data collection and analysis capabilities including of grants funded by Innovate UK, and publishing other diversity data more regularly, such as the detailed ethnicity analysis of grant applications due to be published in Autumn 2020.