Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I rise as the last member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights—a long cast of players—to make representations in relation to this amendment. As noble Lords will be aware, the Joint Committee’s report recommended removing universities from the ambit of the Bill. However, I take on board the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, about those in institutions for 15, 16 and 17 year-olds. I am grateful to the Minister for continuing to engage with the Joint Committee on Human Rights since we published our report. I have no doubt that what was presented to us was that there was a problem going on on campus, with certain groups holding extremist ideologies being given a platform and not being challenged on their views.

I wish to build briefly on the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, in relation to the ambit of the criminal law here. Our response to some of these problems has obviously been to take terrorism offences and expand the ambit of the criminal law further and further down to preparatory-type offences, which we never would have envisaged 20 years ago. For instance, Section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2006 concerns the encouragement of terrorism. Section 1(1) states:

“This section applies to a statement that is likely to be understood by some or all of the members of the public to whom it is published as a direct or indirect encouragement or other inducement to them to the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism or Convention offences”.

Offences such as that are designed to go further down the chain and to catch preparatory-type offences. That offence might just apply to printed published statements. I have not had the time to double-check that.

If one remembers that one adds on to all these preparatory offences the group of offences called “inchoate offences,” which are attempting to do that offence, conspiring to do that offence or inciting to do that offence. That takes the ambit of the criminal law a long way down in terms of the statements that we are talking about in this House. It has not been made clear to us what views this is aimed to prevent being expressed on our university campuses that are not within the realm of free speech, as offensive and as contrary to British values as some of us might think those views to be, but are outside the ambit of the extensive criminal law.

Finally, in relation to the point raised by the right reverend Prelate, I had assumed that religious institutions were somehow caught by the definitions of educational institutions. It is noteworthy that General Synod has an exemption under the Bill. In relation to the trust that has not been built up, perhaps because this is fast-track legislation and there has not been extensive consultation, somehow there is now concern among some in the church community that Clause 21 would require the vetting of speakers at carol services that take place on university campuses. I am not sure how one gets from Clause 21 to thinking that that might be a risk, but it indicates to me that more trust needs to be built through consultation if we are to have a clause of this nature.

[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve (CB)]

I declare two interests, one as chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which is thinking a lot these days about the right to freedom of expression and the challenges to it, and as a university teacher of some 40 years who has quite often not had her lectures drafted very much ahead of having to deliver them. That is a reality of academic life. I heard what other noble Lords have said about the ways these clauses could be counterproductive, but what is missing is positive thought about the ways in which universities have, not always with success but often, opened the minds of their students and countered radicalisation by the only long-term, effective method which is to discuss juvenile claims, hopes and aspirations that reveal hidden horrors within them. It is only speech that can defeat evil speech, and I hope that we will give far more thought to the positive measures that universities can take before we try in such an abstract way to construct forms of regulation that are likely to provoke what they seek to prevent.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I am also an academic who tends not to write speeches in advance. I had not planned to speak this afternoon and I did not speak at Second Reading, but I feel it is important to mention something I did last summer which fits very much with one of the anecdotes we heard earlier from the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe.

I was doing a training session for parliamentarians from another country, a private event, and I was trying to explain to them the merits of the legislative process in the United Kingdom. After a while, one of them said, “I know what we need to do; we need a revolution”. I said, “Could you explain what you mean?”, thinking it was a term of speech. No, they really meant that they wanted to overturn their Government. Clearly, I was not in any way trying to incite terrorist or any other activities to overthrow the state, and I was slightly afraid that if anyone had been listening in, they would have thought that I was leading the wrong sort of class.

If we are engaged in free speech in universities, things can happen. There can be discussions and the idea that somehow the Government should be trying to impose duties on academics to say in advance what they are going to say, and to censor in advance what outside speakers are going to say, is very malign. I am very supportive of the amendments, and like the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, I am not opposed to Part 5 and Schedule 3 in total. For local authorities and other organisations that are clearly state organisations, imposing a duty may be appropriate, but for higher education institutions, it is fundamentally wrong.