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Select committee: Foreign Affairs Committee

Conclusion 2

2nd Report - A cautious embrace: defending democracy in an age of autocracies Published 5 Nov 2019 Paragraph 22 Addressed to Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office

Foreign Affairs Committee Autocracies and UK Foreign Policy inquiry All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗

Conclusion (the committee's words)
The FCO’s role in advising universities on the potential threats to academia from autocracies is non-existent. There is no evidence that it has considered the threat from autocracies to academic freedom, which underpins the quality of UK higher education, nor engaged sufficiently with other departments to develop a co-ordinated response. We believe that it is vital for the FCO to take the lead across Government on this issue, given that foreign influence falls directly within the Department’s remit.

From: Foreign Affairs Committee, 2nd Report - A cautious embrace: defending democracy in an age of autocracies (HC 109), paragraph 22, 5 November 2019

Government response

No government response is linked to this report.