Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Debate between Baroness Smith of Newnham and Lord Adonis

Committee stage
Monday 14th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, a sunset clause seems to be eminently sensible in a Bill that seems to have so little support. I also note that in proposed new subsection (4) in the amendment, there is actually an opportunity for the Government to offset the sunset aspect of the clause, should they feel that the legislation is going well,

“subject to approval by resolution of both Houses of Parliament”.

This would mean that the legislature can keep its rightful place, even while we allow the Government to go ahead with this legislation, about which we are not entirely convinced.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, if I followed the earlier debate correctly, we have now had six months without a free speech director. I believe that that is correct, based on my noble friend’s earlier amendment probing when the appointment was going to be made. If it were so vitally important that this legislation was on the statute book because there was an imminent danger to freedom of speech, presumably the free speech director would have been appointed by now.

In my experience, it is a golden rule of public appointments that those who are most important are filled immediately—for example, we would not be without a Prime Minister for six months because the country would not be run. However, it does not appear that freedom of speech in universities has been imminently threatened and undermined by the fact that there has not been this rather Orwellian-sounding and very un-Tory-sounding person—a free speech director; somebody from the centre who will decree that free speech shall prevail—in post.

If the sunset clause does come in, as my noble friend is suggesting, it may be that, by the end of it, we will still not have a free speech director, and so we will not have seen whether these vital provisions will underpin freedom of speech in our campuses up and down the land. Since this appears to be largely a Bill in search of a problem, removing it from the statute book at the earliest possible opportunity—maybe even before the Orwellian free speech director has been appointed—would seem to be a thoroughly worthwhile development. Since, by then, there could be a Labour Government in office—I imagine that the Tories would be very wary of a free speech director appointed by a Government opposed to them, who could have all kinds of secret agendas—this could be in their interests too.

The Minister may have a wonderful opportunity here to avoid implementing legislation which the Government themselves do not appear to be very keen to implement at the moment—given that they still have not appointed a key officeholder under it—and to prevent it being misused by their political opponents.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Baroness Smith of Newnham and Lord Adonis

Committee: 11th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 28th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, my understanding is that Greenland became independent of Denmark, so the situation was very different from the one we are talking about here.

It is very important that we do not offer people false hope. It is important over the next year that people understand the full gravity and consequences of the decision the Government are proposing to impose on the country. There are no halfway houses. What does this thing called associate citizenship amount to? It amounts to a row of beans. There is no point offering people the prospect that we can somehow have the benefits —it is a classic case of having our cake and eating it. It is important that those who are in favour of staying in the European Union do not somehow think there are all kinds of halfway houses, which might give us all the benefits without staying in the European Union. It seems to me a very simple proposition: if people want to enjoy the benefits and rights of citizenship of the European Union, there is only one way to do it and that is to remain a member of the European Union.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Wigley. Like the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, I thought that the founding idea of European Union citizenship in the Maastricht treaty, which goes back to 1993—so I was not sure how it was applicable to the case of Greenland, which left in 1986—was that you had to be a citizen of an EU member state in order to have EU citizenship. However, my new understanding is that, as Article 20 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union reads that,

“citizenship of the Union shall be additional to and not replace national citizenship”,

this might give a little more wriggle room. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, that policies of having cake and eating it are not necessarily desirable. However, we are in a debate about the withdrawal Bill. This morning I thought that perhaps we were so keen on having another Second Reading debate and thinking about the referendum all over again that we had lost sight of the Bill.

[Lord Adonis]

My noble friend Lord Murphy has just made an ingenious suggestion. Under the Good Friday agreement all residents of Northern Ireland are able to apply for Irish citizenship, which of course also gives them citizenship of the European Union. Perhaps if we allowed all citizens of Britain to apply for Irish citizenship by extending the Good Friday agreement, we could get the benefits that the noble Baroness is seeking to achieve.

[Baroness Smith of Newnham]

My Lords, I was intervened on and had not finished—in fact, I had barely started. The point is that many people feel that we have talked a lot, absolutely rightly, about the rights of EU citizens who are resident in the United Kingdom, and we have talked a bit about the rights of UK nationals who are resident in other European countries, but there has been very little discussion about those people who are not overtly exercising their rights, as the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, said. When we have considered UK nationals resident elsewhere, we have tended to think about people living—retired, working or studying—in other countries. Here I declare an interest: my day job is as a lecturer in European politics. On an almost daily basis I consider that I am exercising my rights as an EU citizen by being able to get on the Eurostar and go to Brussels without having to think about visas or visa waivers. There are all sorts of ways in which we are able to exercise our rights as citizens on a daily basis.

I suspect that the Minister will say, “This is absolutely not possible”, but will he at least say that the Government are thinking about the rights that British citizens might retain? So far, much of the debate on withdrawal has been about regulations and whether we retain laws, but do we also retain rights, and do the Government wish us to retain rights?