Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill (First sitting)
(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)
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The Chair
We are now sitting in public and proceedings are being broadcast. I have a few preliminary announcements. The first is that obviously there is not room for all the members of the Committee to sit around the horseshoe. Therefore, some are already sitting in what we used to call the Public Gallery. For those who are sitting in those places, it will not be possible to speak from that position, so if you wish to speak you will need to go to the microphone, which is situated over to the right. I am very sorry, but that is the disadvantage to those who have arrived and found themselves without a seat around the horseshoe.
We are asking people with speaking notes to send them to hansardnotes@parliament.uk, but I hope that this morning’s proceedings will be rather brief and we that will concentrate on questions rather than statements. We will obviously try to keep mobile phones off and ensure that we do not breach the rules in relation to refreshments: tea and coffee are not allowed during sittings. Today, we will first consider the programme motion, then the motion to enable the reporting of written evidence, and then a formal motion to sit in private while we discuss among ourselves who will do what in relation to asking questions of our witnesses.
I call the Minister to move the programme motion standing in her name, which was discussed yesterday by the Bill’s programming sub-committee. I think that the Committee will probably be in agreement.
The Minister for Universities (Michelle Donelan)
Thank you, Sir Christopher. I beg to move, Date Time Witness Tuesday 7 September Until no later than 10.30 am Professor Kathleen Stock OBE, Professor of Philosophy, University of Sussex; Dr Arif Ahmed, Reader in Philosophy, University of Cambridge and Fellow of Gonville and Caius College Tuesday 7 September Until no later than 11.25 am Trevor Phillips OBE; Professor Nigel Biggar, Regius Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford Tuesday 7 September Until no later than 2.45 pm Professor Stephen Whittle, Professor of Equalities Law, Manchester Metropolitan University Tuesday 7 September Until no later than 3.30 pm Shakespeare Martineau Tuesday 7 September Until no later than 4.15 pm Policy Exchange Tuesday 7 September Until no later than 5.00 pm Free Speech Union Monday 13 September Until no later than 4.15 pm Professor Eric Kaufmann, Professor of Politics, Birkbeck College, University of London; Professor Matthew Goodwin, Professor of Politics and International Relations, University of Kent and Director of the Centre for UK Prosperity at the Legatum Institute Monday 13 September Until no later than 4.45 pm British Future Monday 13 September Until no later than 5.15 pm Office for Students Monday 13 September Until no later than 6.00 pm Jonathan Grant, Professor of Public Policy, King’s College London; Paul Layzell, Principal, Royal Holloway, University of London Monday 13 September Until no later than 6.45 pm Antisemitism Policy Trust; National Union of Students
That—
1. the Committee shall (in addition to its first meeting at 9.25 am on Tuesday 7 September) meet—
(a) at 2.00 pm on Tuesday 7 September;
(b) at 3.30 pm and 5.30pm on Monday 13 September;
(c) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Wednesday 15 September;
(d) at 11.30 am and 2.00 pm on Thursday 16 September;
(e) at 3.30 pm and 5.30pm on Monday 20 September;
(f) at 9.25 am and 2.00 pm on Wednesday 22 September;
2. the Committee shall hear oral evidence in accordance with the following Table:
TABLE
3. proceedings on consideration of the Bill in Committee shall be taken in the following order: Clauses 1 to 9; the Schedule; Clauses 10 to 12; new Clauses; new Schedules; remaining proceedings on the Bill;
4. the proceedings shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at 5.00 pm on Thursday 23 September.
The motion will ensure that the Committee has sufficient time to fully scrutinise this piece of legislation. I am delighted that the House has been given the time that it requires to thoroughly debate the contents of the Bill, and draw evidence from the experts, many of whom, I am pleased to say, my Department is already talking to or working closely with, such as Nicola Dandridge of the Office for Students, Danny Stone and Trevor Phillips. I therefore invite colleagues on the Committee to agree to the motion.
Question put and agreed to.
The Chair
We will therefore proceed to line-by-line consideration on Wednesday 15 September. That means that the deadline for tabling amendments to be considered on the first day is the rise of the House on this coming Friday, 10 September.
Resolved,
That, subject to the discretion of the Chair, any written evidence received by the Committee shall be reported to the House for publication.—(Michelle Donelan.)
Mr Jones
Q
Dr Ahmed: I do not think that the employer—that is, the management of the university—gets up in the morning and thinks, “How am I going to stop free speech? How am I going to fire these people?” They are responding to pressure from what I think is quite a small group of activists within universities. If this legislation has the effect of creating some kind of countervailing pressure, then you are right. Of course it is not going to solve the problem; I have been a trade union official myself and I know something about what these issues are. Of course it is not going to solve the problem, but it will help, because I think it will create pressure in the opposite direction.
The Minister for Universities (Michelle Donelan)
Q
Dr Ahmed: You can distinguish between hard censorship and soft censorship. Hard censorship, in my understanding —the distinction is evident in the written evidence that I submitted—means universities actively suppressing certain kinds of speech by enacting certain kinds of regulation. I think we have seen different examples of that, which I am happy to discuss.
Soft censorship is where there is not any regulation, but people know—people sense it themselves, because they know that if they say this, or they say that, or if they present these views, they will be regarded adversely. If they are a student, they might be ostracised
. It might make difficulties for their academic career. That is the result. Because, as it happens, we have an academy, which, at least in some parts, is predominantly in one part of the political spectrum, the result is that certain kinds of research do not get done and certain kinds of views do not get defended by people who, in their hearts, perhaps, believe in them.
Michelle Donelan
Q
Dr Ahmed: Yes, I do. Obviously the Bill itself does not go into great detail as to what it means by the word “promote”, and I think that is sensible, because it may mean different things in different institutional contexts, but it could mean, for instance, things like events at induction for students, so that people are made aware in ways that they are not now made aware, certainly at my university, just how essential freedom of speech and freedom of thought is to the very functioning of the university, and indeed to being able to function as an adult in a healthy democracy.
It could mean things like making it central to decision-making processes at all levels of the university, so that when we make decisions, we do not just think about the equality and diversity implications of this planned decision, which we do as a matter of course, but that it becomes just as reflexive that we think about the free speech implications of a measure. That is something that certainly Cambridge and I expect most other universities and other academic bodies are not doing.
Michelle Donelan
Q
Professor Stock: I echo that. I think it was implicit in my earlier answer, that one of the attractive things about this Bill is the promotion aspect—that it is not just a defensive crouch and it is not just punitive; there is an opportunity. I believe in academic freedom, so I think I could explain to people why it is an important thing and we could discuss that—argue about it, even. It would be encouraging that sort of aspect of university life, which would have knock-on effects all over the place—on Google in particular.
Michelle Donelan
Q
Dr Ahmed: That was one of three amendments that went through on a large majority. The reason for the concern was that the use of the word “respect” and the requirement for respect in that context meant respect for all kinds of ideas and identities as well. That would preclude, for instance, mockery. It would preclude views that give offence to people who hold religious views. My own particular interest is religion. For instance, I teach the work of David Hume. David Hume was about as offensive in his mocking of religion as anyone was in the 18th century. Would I be able to teach that, because his views were certainly disrespectful towards religion?
Another point, of course, is that whether something counts as respectful depends on how willing the person you are disrespecting is to take offence. So, more sensitive people will end up with a kind of veto. We all have our own examples of people who are especially sensitive taking offence. Those people will end up having power over what we can say and what we cannot. The effect would be absolutely to strangle any form of rigorous academic discussion over the most important things in life. That was why I thought the word “tolerate”, which has no connotations of admiration and is completely compatible with mockery—it simply rules out stopping people from practising or having those beliefs—was more useful, and, evidently, many of the dons at Cambridge agreed.
Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
Q
“freedom within the law to question and test received wisdom”
to
“freedom within the law and within their field of expertise”.
I have concerns that a Bill that is allegedly intended to promote academic freedom could in fact limit academic freedom if you are limited to defining what is your field of expertise. I welcome your comments on that.
The other point in the Bill which concerns me around the alleged promotion of academic freedom versus the reality of the Bill is that it talks about academics and not academic staff or those working within the university. They seem to be exempt from coverage under the Bill, as are visiting academics. What are your thoughts on what the Bill does to promote academic freedom? Where can it be strengthened or changed to actually promote the academic freedom that I believe we all support? Maybe Kathleen first.
Professor Stock: I suspect that we differ on this answer, but I think the difference between academic freedom and freedom of expression, assuming there is one, can only be in principle grounded in expertise. That is what makes the difference between the person who has freedom of expression generally and the person who has special protections as an academic. To put it briefly, that is because academics are perceived to have a certain authority, so their authority should be rigorously tested. They should not be able to get away with just saying, “It is just like this, and you have to accept my word for it.” At the same time, there will be people who want to shut them up or buy them off, so we have to keep them protected.
However, I do see that in practice in a university it might be quite difficult to distinguish between these. For instance, there are a lot of professional services that have PhDs who are looking to get into academia. There are students studying and also working for the university in various capacities, so the blurring is quite present. In practice, it might be that that clause does cause problems and may need to be rethought. In principle, though, that is the rationale for this whole conversation on expertise. There is a further discussion about how to differentiate different fields of expertise.
Matt Western
Q
Trevor Phillips: No more so than in any other Administration. By the way, there may be a sound problem, but I think you called me “Sir Trevor”. Her Majesty has not made that mistake; that would be a major error. The creeping edge of censoriousness is, to be honest, rather little to do with Government. There is often confusion about the word “independent”, particularly in higher education. People tend to use the word “independent” when they actually mean opposition to Government.
I do not think there is any danger of the higher education sector as a whole developing a culture of deference to the existing Government. My reference to the creeping edge of censoriousness was far more in relation to peer pressure and the emergence of self-censorship. We have noticed something at Index. Over the past couple of years we have run a campaign to try to increase the resilience of students in being able to express their opinions. We have run some training courses and so on. We do not think that the real big problem here is that everybody is looking over their shoulder and saying to themselves, “What does the Secretary of State for Education or Secretary of State for Culture think about what I am about to say in a seminar?” They are more concerned, if they are students, about whether an unfashionable or “unorthodox” view may get them marked down in exams. If they are junior academics, I think they are more concerned about whether their professors, who have no qualms about expressing their political views, may decide that the next time there is an opportunity for preferment, their views make them less likely to be favoured than someone else. My view about the issue of censoriousness is that it is far more a question of self-censorship. What we are concerned about, I guess, in relation to the legislation is that you can do quite a lot with law, but you need to support it with a clear cultural programme that supports, advocates and promotes diversity of opinion within the institutions.
Michelle Donelan
Q
Trevor Phillips: It is a short Bill, which perhaps begins to close some gaps. Simply, the process of debating it will help to highlight some of the issues about which we are concerned, but the central proposition, which is that there should be some regulatory apparatus and guidance, is valuable. We think that it is important that there is not a wild west here. To be completely honest, my own view is that if the university authorities had been doing their jobs properly, behaved like grown-ups and taken responsibility for what is happening on campuses, this would not be necessary.
However, what in the last three to five years we have seen example after example of where university authorities have essentially abdicated their responsibility to protect their own academics and students. That is why the Bill appears to have value. Because the university authorities are not doing their jobs, the Government have felt it necessary to step in. That does not mean that I think that everything that is being proposed is absolutely on the money, but I can see why it is felt necessary to do something of this kind.
Michelle Donelan
Q
Trevor Phillips: Some of these are public. There is the case of the Cambridge porter who said something that was regarded as disobliging on the issue of gender and trans. Eventually, he had to step down from his role. There is the case, again, of Noah Carl at Cambridge. I suspect that Professor Biggar will probably have more examples to offer you, but if you would like I can certainly follow up with a note on that.
If I may respond honestly, my view is that the bigger risk is not that there are a few celebrated, or notorious, I should say, cases of people who have lost their livelihood; the bigger issue for me is that what is happening now is that people can see that they could lose their livelihood and therefore do not engage in what universities are for, which is free and open debate and, even more importantly, unbiased, courageous inquiry. One of things that we know—this I cannot give you examples of, because I do not have permission—is that there are some lines of inquiry, not just in the humanities but in science, that are not pursued because people who would pursue them think that it would be too controversial.
Perhaps I can give you a very simple example. Twelve years ago, when I was in public office as chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, I tried very hard to get a university or some other research body to do some work on the academic success of children of Chinese heritage. For two years we offered money. No institution would take up that research project because they said—I had this from three or four of them—that it would stigmatise other ethnic groups. I thought that was an important thing to understand, not least because other minority groups and, we now know, the majority community in this country, could learn from the success of that group. Up until now—right to today—we have no knowledge of why that group is so consistently successful academically. That surely is one of the losses we are seeing because of what I may have called creeping censoriousness.
Michelle Donelan
Q
Professor Biggar: My view is that the Bill would protect lawful free speech. The law as it stands prohibits speech that would incite violence or racial hatred or hatred against people for their religion and so on, and the Bill would not change that. We have already heard concerns about holocaust denial. Under the law as it stands, in the light of European Court of Human Rights case law, holocaust denial is not unlawful; it is just that if you give expression to such a view and you are denied a platform or suffer some detriment, you cannot claim the protection of the law. It is a delicate position. I do not think this Bill is going to protect unlawful speech.
Michelle Donelan
Q
Trevor Phillips: Yes. I do not really see what in the text of the Bill would produce that result. I think you would have to construct a very outlandish scenario for that to happen.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Q
Trevor Phillips: Forgive me—you say I mentioned the what?