Cambridge University’s slavery inquiry is “virtue signalling on steroids” which was only initiated to make “white liberal academics” feel better about themselves, one of the country’s leading equality campaigners has said.

Trevor Phillips, the former chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, criticised the University’s decision to investigate how it benefitted from the slave trade, calling on its vice-chancellor to “change the future rather than attempting to rewrite the past”.

His comments come as details of a similar inquiry launched at University College London (UCL) in November last year have emerged, looking into their “historical and present role in the teaching and study of eugenics”.

The UCL investigation will deliver recommendations on current financial benefits the University receives from “instruments linked to this field”, as well as how to manage the naming buildings after prominent eugenicists.

This includes Victorian scientist Francis Galton, the man responsible for coining the term ‘eugenics’. UCL students are currently campaigning to get his name stripped from a lecture theatre and a laboratory.