Vexatious complaint

Our attempts to fact-check Michelle Donelan lead to a surprising conclusion from the education department

Readers will have noted that further and higher education minister Michelle Donelan has been productive of late. We started the week with an interview she gave to The Mail on Sunday about “boots on the ground” inspections of universities over online teaching. Last week, we saw an address at Policy Exchange on freedom of speech, and a follow-up article on Conservative Home. Yesterday, there was a Telegraph op-ed referencing “bonkers zero-Covid” policies in universities.

While reading this prodigious output, Playbook began to wonder whether the examples used to justify the minister’s policymaking were entirely accurate. So we decided to fact-check them.