FOI release

FOI2020/00242: Committee Ethnicity

This request was refused in part, so we didn't provide some of the information the requester asked for. This may include information where we can neither confirm nor deny that we hold it.

Case reference FOI2020/00242

Published 7 October 2021

Request

Request Received: 31 July 2020

I would like to see data pertaining to the ethnic composition of UKRI Research Council committees, from the
following Research Councils:

 Arts & Humanities Research Council
 Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council
 Economic & Social Research Council
 Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council
 Medical Research Council
 Natural Environment Research Council
 Research England
 UK Research and Innovation Future Leaders Fellowship Scheme (Cross-Council)

At this time, following advice from the FOI Team on narrowing the scope of the request to avoid engaging Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act, I agree to omit data from the following Research Councils:

 Innovate UK
 Science & Technologies Facilities Council

By "committee", I mean a group of people who collectively agree on assessing grant applications, making decisions relating to making grant awards, and groups of people who collectively advise on strategy. For example, in the case of BBSRC, this would be Committees A, B, C, D and E, because they are involved in assessment and decision-making. It would also include BBSRC Council, because this body advises on strategy. This would not include the 'Pool of Experts' because they are not collectively engaged in the process of making decisions - their members are invited to join Committees A-E from time to time as required.

If possible, please provide ethnicity data for each ethnic category (for example, Black, Asian or White colleagues), but I would be happy with a replication of the ethnicity-related tables in the "EPSRC Diversity Data on Peer Review Panel April 2019" report (https://epsrc.ukri.org/files/funding/edi/epsrc-peer-review-diversity-data-narrative-andtables-
april-2019-pdf/).

It would be informative to understand the evolution of these numbers over time, so if possible, please provide numbers per year, dating back over the last 5 years if available.

In order to make this more meaningful for my purposes, I think it would be important to supplement the data with the number of times that committee meetings have taken place in each year, and the fraction of meetings at which no BAME individual has participated in each year.

Response

Response Sent: 13 October 2020

Full details of this response are provided in the attached document.

Documents

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