Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Earl Howe

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 21st March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

To clarify, as I stated earlier—this really is important—I do not have a right to a platform and I do not care if people disagree with me. I do not mind if students invite me and then disinvite me. All I care about is if students are bullied into disinviting me. It is for the students that I made the speech, not for myself. Who cares about my feelings? They are of no relevance.

My point is that many academics and students have looked to this Bill and the amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Triesman, has talked to people who want the compromise. I have talked to people who think it is a fudge. Let Parliament decide—fair enough—but I do not think anyone can claim they have spoken to all the academics, and this is the only answer. I think that this is a cop out.

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, I just say to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that strictly speaking there should not be any interventions at this stage of the Bill.

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Earl Howe

Report stage
Wednesday 7th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, as we have heard, the amendments in this group relate to the important issue of academic freedom. I turn first to Amendment 4, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, which seeks to amend the definition of academic freedom set out in new Section A1 to make it explicit that academics can voice opinions about the institutions where they work, without fear of adverse consequences.

In responding to a similar amendment tabled in Committee by my noble friend Lord Strathcarron, to which the noble Baroness also put her name, I clarified, as the noble Lord, Lord Collins, kindly mentioned, that the definition of academic freedom as currently drafted already covers the questioning and testing of received wisdom, and the putting forward of new ideas and controversial or unpopular opinions. This speech is not limited to particular subjects, so it would include speech concerning the institute at which an academic works. The Bill will therefore already protect the freedom of academics to put forward opinions about the curriculum content adopted by their provider or third-party organisations with which the provider is affiliated.

As the noble Baroness highlighted, there is a reference in the explanatory statement to the UNESCO recommendation. It may be helpful for me to put on record that the Bill as drafted protects academics in a number of the ways listed in that recommendation. Specifically, it protects the rights to freedom of teaching and discussion; freedom in carrying out research, and disseminating and publishing the results thereof; freedom to express freely their opinion about the institution or system in which they work, as I have already said; and freedom from institutional censorship. However, the Bill does not cover conduct which is not speech, such as the act of affiliating with or joining an organisation.

The noble Baroness also referred to the 2015 case of Kharlamov v Russia, and I can confirm the essential features of the case that she set out. Mr Kharlamov was a physics professor who said during a conference that he was unhappy with the nominations process for candidates to the academic senate. The university sued him for defamation. The European Court of Human Rights in due course found in his favour on the basis that the Russian courts failed to fairly balance the relevant interests and establish a pressing social need for protecting the university’s reputation over the claimant’s freedom of expression. I hope that, in the light of what I have said, noble Lords are reassured that this amendment is not in fact needed.

Amendment 5 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, seeks to probe the workability, as he put it, of new Section A1(7)(b) in Clause 1. Taken at face value, it would amend the definition of academic freedom so that it would no longer specify that an academic should not be put at risk of a reduced likelihood of their securing promotion or different jobs at the provider. I realise that it is a probe. It is correct that this provision is not included in the existing legislative definition of academic freedom in the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 and the Education Reform Act 1988. However, we want to be clear in the Bill that academic staff should be protected in as expansive a way as possible—so not only from losing their job or privileges, but from being less likely to secure promotion or a different job at the provider. If we do not specify that these are also covered, there may be only partial protection. A person might not be fired but might be held back in their career, by not being promoted or given another role at the provider because of something they have said.

As I mentioned, the noble Lord wants to know how this provision will work in practice. An academic will of course need some evidence to support a complaint that they have been wrongly held back because of their views. They may have been told by a colleague the reason why they have not been promoted. There may be notes from an interview that suggest why this is the case. There may be an email which makes this clear. In the face of such evidence, the question will then be whether the provider has failed to comply with its duties under the Bill. I note the noble Lord’s point about the OfS guidance and I will ensure that the OfS also does so. This is the way that evidence in employment law is often presented. It is not new, nor is the concept of protection from not being promoted, since that can be a matter leading to constructive dismissal, which has been a feature of employment law for some time.

I hope that this explanation reassures the noble Lord that this is an important aspect of academic freedom in the context of freedom of speech, and that he agrees that the provision will protect academic staff to the fullest extent.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

I really appreciated the comments of noble Lords in this short debate. I want to stress a couple of things. This is not about the rights and wrongs of any particular examples I gave; it is perfectly legitimate if people want to support decolonisation or critical race theory, for example, but the point is that it is not imposed. I am also concerned about an ideological conformity that stifles the sort of professional exchanges that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, was advocating.

I was bemused when the noble Lord suggested that I was almost stuck in some social science nightmare. As the noble Lord, Lord Patten, pointed out, it is precisely the fact that this has now been extended into the hard sciences that may wake up even the noble Lord, Lord Saltaire, to the problems, as perhaps he should look quite closely at the decolonisation of physics, computing or mathematics. The noble Lord, Lord Patten, was right when he said, “Why does everybody not just leave the QAA?” In many instances during the discussions in this House, people talk as though we all run colleges. The problem is, if you are an academic in a college where the college vice-chancellor or principal does not resign from the QAA but rather likes it or cites it, what do they do? I hope everybody tears up their QAA membership because of this, but what if they do not?

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, really explained what is at stake here. I was avoiding mentioning Stonewall but, in a way, that is what got me interested in this very thing. It has become compelled speech for individual academics who are told that because of the institutional values that the university has signed up to—for example, around the compulsory use of pronouns and/or a particular attitude to biological sex versus trans identity rights, and so on—if you do not agree, you are open to being accused of bigotry and sent on mandated courses. I was not joking; individual members who criticised the music decolonisation were indeed put under huge pressure by people at the university to go along with this. I said “the university” but I do not always understand the institutions and it is fair enough if the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, wants to correct me.

I will finish with this point. I mentioned the Architects Registration Board. We are in a situation whereby a statutory body that the Government are involved in says that all architecture academics must teach all levels of architecture the realities of the ecological crisis. That is a national curriculum by the back door. It is a difficulty that has to be recognised. I want to take the reassurance of the Minister, who said, “Don’t worry, it’s all taken care of”, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, explained, references to and uses of these international examples can only strengthen the message, with which the Minister seems to agree, about the legal obligations on university management not to allow these kinds of things to get in the way of academic freedoms. It would be a great reassurance to individual academics to know that this is what the Bill wants to do and to see it spell it out. What harm could it do?

Although I will withdraw my amendment at this point, I do not want the Minister to become complacent. This is a really big, serious contemporary issue that must be taken on board by the Government—indeed, whoever is in government.

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Debate between Baroness Fox of Buckley and Earl Howe

Committee stage
Wednesday 2nd November 2022 Grand Committee

[Earl Howe (Con)]

I am not sure the noble Baroness was in the Committee when I covered that very point quite near the beginning of our debate today. I tried to cover it on Monday but I expanded on it today as well.

[Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I am very much in favour of Amendment 31. To put a different emphasis on it from what there has been so far, the amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, is helpful in making a positive attempt at promoting free speech. The amendment says

“foster a culture of free thought and open-mindedness, in all decision-making concerning the provision of higher education and in conducting and managing research activities”.

It is that bit about promotion that is helpful in terms of shifting the emphasis of the discussion a little bit about how we should view the Bill.

I found that I was reading this small HEPI—if that is how you say it—pamphlet in preparation for the student union group of debates later on. I found it a really interesting little book. The foreword is by Professor James Tooley, the vice-chancellor of the University of Buckingham, which has also co-published the book. I should declare my interest that I am a visiting professor at the University of Buckingham. Professor Tooley says:

“For many academics, the focus”


is

“only on the negative, on the ‘sticks’ of the law”.

He advocates that we focus on

“the positive, the ‘carrots’ of the intellectual and social attraction of academic freedom”.

Many people have said that the problem with the Bill is that does not tackle the cultural issues—that it avoids the question of what has happened to the positive association of universities with academic freedom. One of the contributions earlier asked why the 1986 duties have not worked and what the point is of bringing them under the Bill. Quite a lot has changed since those duties were brought in in the sphere of academic freedom, which is why I believe we need to pass a version of the Bill, no doubt amended, but not to use it as a silver bullet that avoids tackling the cultural issues. Anything that the Bill does to foster the promotion of free speech is very important. The main thing that I would urge is that the status quo position of “leave it as it is” is not acceptable. That is the kind of complacency that I hear. Universities will not survive and the academic standards that have just been referred to will deteriorate.

There is a tendency to blame students when we look at what has changed recently; they are either disparagingly written off as “Generation Snowflake” or, more positively, posed as uniquely sensitive to the issues of oppressed identity groups—unlike previous generations, who have never understood suffering—and having a unique insight into them. A combination of both is true. I do not want to blame students, but it is true that, whenever I talk at universities on free speech, many of them talk about it as if it were a value from “ye olden days”. They sometimes say: “We respect your right to think that free speech is important, but we have other priorities.”

I often find that commitment to free speech, on and off campus, is under strain not among the young but among the grown-ups, as it were. At best, there can be a shallow, instrumental lip service paid to the value of free speech, with so many “ifs”, “buts” and caveats that it is barely there. There is hardly a compelling case for the positive virtues of free speech, but rather a grudging acceptance that it is important, always accompanied by an emphasis on how it can play a corrosive and dangerous role in society and lead to a toxic political culture, hate crimes and, as we have heard in this debate, all these charlatan quack scientists dragging down educational standards.

Even the emphasis that the Bill and everyone else want to place on free speech within the law as a qualifier feels a bit tepid, especially when Governments of all stripes have regularly infringed free speech through legislation. As we speak, we have a Government proposing a pro-free speech Bill at the same time as the Online Safety Bill and the Public Order Bill, which are hardly wildly pro-free speech pieces of legislation. On campus, we have seen lots of academics, rather than students, introducing things that have undermined the culture of academic freedom. Whether it is mandated courses in microaggressions or unconscious bias, people feel as though they are walking on eggshells.

It is very important that we use this legislation—this is why I like Amendment 31—to make a positive case for the inviolable moral good of free speech. There was a lot of coverage of the seminar in Cambridge where, as the newspapers described it, students were trained in free speech. One of my colleagues ran it, Alastair Donald from Living Freedom; Andrew Doyle, the author of The New Puritans, spoke on Milton and Dr Piers Benn on Locke. What was really fascinating was that the reports of the students who attended last night said things such as, “I thought that coming to Cambridge would be like this, but it hasn’t been until tonight”. They also said that they often feel constrained in what they can say at university by their own tutors tut-tutting if they say the wrong thing.

When I brought out my book ‘I Find That Offensive!’ in 2016, I was warned that it was exaggerated—of course, it ended up completely underestimating the problem—and that young people would hate it and shun me because it addressed “Generation Snowflake” and the culture of “safetyism”. The truth is that, when it was published, the people who hated it were the educational establishment; it got terrible reviews in all the educational press. The people who really liked it were students. I spent two years doing a tour of all universities speaking about it. The students said, “Phew, it’s a relief to have somebody talking about this. I had never heard arguments like this before. I never really understood the history or philosophy of free speech.” It was not that they all loved me or agreed with me; they were just glad that someone was prepared to have the open discussion and debate.

We have to use this piece of legislation to promote free speech and academic freedom as much as we can. I support Amendment 31.