Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Education – in the Senedd at 1:42 pm on 3 July 2019.
Well, you're absolutely correct in saying that these are serious allegations that have been made, and my expectation is that the university will deal with them promptly, coherently and completely, and address any issues of individual behaviour or, more importantly perhaps, to address the entire culture of an individual department or school or the university as a whole. As I said, we take this very seriously. We are in touch with the university to understand what actions they are taking, and I would urge anybody that feels they have been subject to inappropriate behaviour of any kind to ensure that they come forward to give of that testimony so that we can have a full picture of what is going on. We also understand that incidents of this kind may potentially put people off from studying at university, and therefore all universities have fee and access plans that set out how they will support equality of opportunity for groups that are under-represented in HE—and BAME communities are often very much under-represented—to ensure that they have a very positive experience in higher education, and we have also made over £2 million available via HEFCW this year to support universities to develop their responses to supporting students with mental health issues, which potentially could arise out of any incidents of bullying of this kind.