Have foreign academics been “barred” from advising on Brexit?

Scottish Labour Leader Kezia Dugdale has written to the Foreign Secretary in light of media reports that foreign academics have been ‘barred’ from advising the Foreign Office.

Dear Foreign Secretary,

Foreign nationals advising the UK Government

I am writing to you following media reports that foreign academics may have been ‘barred’ from advising the UK Government on Brexit because of their nationality.

I would be grateful for a clear confirmation that this is not the case now and will not be the case in the future. Academics from all around the world work at Scotland’s universities and it is my view, which will be widely shared by people across Scotland, that they should not be disbarred from providing advice on this important issue.

Five of the world’s best universities can be found in Scotland and their success is due in part to their ability to draw the best academic talent from around the world to our shores. We should celebrate this success and use such expertise to enhance the policy process. Not denigrate it and then shun those experts who have chosen to make their lives here.

Following on from the events of Conservative Party conference, the eyes of the world are on the United Kingdom. There is widespread revulsion at the insular and intolerant direction the UK government appears set on taking.

These latest proposals come just days after a suggestion that firms should list how many foreign workers they have, and the NHS should become ‘self-sufficient’ from immigrant doctors.

I fear the UK government risks becoming so enthralled to nationalism that it is prepared to ignore expert advice on the most complex geopolitical and socio-economic event in modern history on the simple basis of where that expert was born.

I look forward to a prompt reply.

Kezia Dugdale
Leader of the Scottish Labour Party

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One thought on “Have foreign academics been “barred” from advising on Brexit?

  1. It looks to me, that the Brexit result has unleashed a squalid chauvinistic xenophobia within the breast of the right wing of the Conservative Party. Sadly we now read daily of the beating up of some Polish person, or verbal abuse of “foreigners”, on the street or on public transport.
    It also feels that the Scotophobia remarked on by Neal Ascherson some years ago, is now more mainstream and likely to surface on BBC panel shows in a way it never did before.
    Unelected by the public, Teresa May has accumulated all “sovereignty” and the Powers of the British State into her own hands and is set upon usurping the role of Parliament in exiting the EU, the manner which this same public is not trusted to know the details of.

    Yet Kezia Dugdale and her sub-Party apparently prefer to keep this bunch of narrow nationalist, separatist Tories in office rather than enter into an electoral understanding with the SNP, of the same type they have had with the SDLP in N Ireland for many years.
    It seems that for Scottish Labour, British Nationalism is the first and the only preference, even if that nationalism causes serious economic damage to Scotland.

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