Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Kate Green

2nd reading
Monday 12th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green]

No, I would not like the Secretary of State to intervene again while I am still answering the question he asked me a moment ago. The problem with the Bill and clause 3, which creates a new route for individuals, is that it is more harmful in its effect. It opens up the possibility for vexatious litigants and their lawyers repeatedly to bypass internal complaints procedures, repeatedly to bypass the Office of the Independent Adjudicator route or the Office for Students route and go straight to the courts, undermining confidence in those procedures, undermining the funding of universities and student unions and causing confusion about the routes for redress that speakers should be able to take advantage of.

I am going to make a little bit of progress, because I know that many others want to come into the debate. The Bill before us tonight is wasting legislative time by repeating provisions already found in law to address a problem that has not been evidenced by the debate so far today. I recognise that the Joint Committee on Human Rights raised concerns that the current legislative framework was complex, but the Government’s plans seem only to complicate things further by duplicating legal duties and creating new legally actionable wrongs that would operate in parallel to university and student union processes. It seems impossible that the Bill will leave the position clearer than it is currently.

Let me be generous and assume for a moment that, despite the provisions that already exist in our laws, this Bill is needed, that in the face of the evidence we have heard so far there is a crisis of free speech on campuses and that the Bill will remedy the situation. Let us see if it succeeds on its own terms. It does not. It is a mess of duplication, poor definition and ill-thought-through provisions that will set back free speech. Let me start with an easy problem: the extent of the Bill. It applies to registered higher education providers and to student unions, and immediately we appear to hit a gap in coverage. Oxford and Cambridge colleges are not included in the register kept by the Office for Students. Does that mean that if a violation of free speech takes place in a building owned by, say, Balliol college, Oxford, instead of by the University of Oxford, it is not within the scope of the Bill? Or if it takes place in a pub in the city of Cambridge owned by the university, and someone is removed from the pub for offensive but legal speech, could they take legal action against the university?

Who are members of the university for the purposes of the Bill? MillionPlus, for example, has asked whether it would cover emeritus professors. Is it desirable to risk the Office for Students, a body whose board is appointed directly by politicians, effectively becoming a state censor of controversial topics? Why does the Secretary of State believe that clause 3 is needed? Why does he think that we need a route straight to court, bypassing university complaints procedures? If he does believe that a route to court is necessary, can he say whether there will be any limit on the damages that could be awarded? Does he not understand that, as Universities UK has warned, this risks giving a free pass to vexatious litigants and their lawyers?

Even if we thought the Bill were needed, it is poorly drafted and counterproductive. Today, we are debating a Bill that has been put forward in response to a problem that exists largely in the mind of the Secretary of State. Even if the problem did exist, the Bill would not be needed because its core provisions already exist in our laws, and even if new legislation were needed, the Bill creates more problems than it solves and is poorly drafted. In short, in every way that a Bill can fail, this Bill fails.

However, the real menace is what the Bill will achieve if the Conservative party is able to get it on to the statute book. It will enshrine legal protections for harmful and divisive speech. The kind of speech that we would not tolerate in this House would be protected in universities across the country. The Bill creates a new legal framework that allows for those responsible for such harmful speech to take legal action against universities, eating into the resources that ought to be educating our young people and supporting our world-class research programmes. The Bill is unnecessary and it is poorly drafted, but above all, it is deeply wrong and those of us on the Labour Benches will not support it. I commend our reasoned amendment to the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

As the Chairman of the Education Committee, the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), is now unable to take part in the debate this evening, we will go directly by video link to Carol Monaghan. Just before the hon. Lady begins, I should tell the House that after her speech there will be an immediate time limit of eight minutes, and that that could soon be reduced to a much shorter time limit, depending on how many Members decide at the last minute not to speak, which is a phenomenon that we face quite often at present. That is why we will start with a generous time limit; it is up to Members how we progress after that.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Kate Green

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 29th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. All Members must be as accurate as possible when they speak in the House, and none more so than Cabinet Ministers. Today, in response to my questions following his statement, the Education Secretary twice made statements that were incorrect. First, he said that

“we have made £100 million available for universities…to ensure that youngsters have digital access”.

That was not accurate. The £100 million funding is for devices for schools and some further education providers, not for universities. The Secretary of State was wrong in what he said. He also said that individual students could seek additional maintenance support from the Student Loans Company, and as far as I can tell that is not right either.

When I asked the Secretary of State about digital access this afternoon, he said that he was sorry I had missed the announcement. Well, I am sorry that he is apparently wrong about the detail of his portfolio. Have you had any indication, Madam Deputy Speaker, that he will return to the House to correct the record on these matters?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I appreciate the point that the hon. Lady is making, but it is not a point of order for the Chair; it is rather a continuation of the debate that took place this afternoon. But she has taken the opportunity to make the point that she wishes to draw to the attention of the House, and no doubt to Ministers, and she has succeeding in so doing.

Digital Economy Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Kate Green

3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons & Programme motion No. 3: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Monday 28th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. We have 22 minutes left in this debate and 10 Members who wish to speak—that is two minutes each.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I want to address briefly the Minister’s comments on new clause 6. I welcomed his saying that he hoped progress would be made when the Bill proceeds to the House of Lords. Will he encourage his colleagues in the other place to take a positive and inclusive approach to ensuring accessibility of on-demand services? The new clause drafted by my hon. Friends suggests in subsection (4) a number of considerations which might be taken into account. I hope these will be interpreted in the most generous and ambitious way if they inform the Government’s thinking.

UN Women

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Kate Green

Thursday 10th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green]

I certainly do and, together with the hon. Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys), I am very proud to be a parliamentary ambassador for carers week this year. I hope that we will have the opportunity to highlight exactly the sort of contribution that carers make and to which the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) refers.

I wish to take a moment to talk specifically about the position of lone parents, which was the subject of hot political debate 10 or 15 years ago. It has rather dropped off the political radar but, regrettably, that is not because their battle is entirely won. It is still the case that more than 90% of lone parents are women—lone mothers—but it is very important to recognise that very few women have set out to bring up their children alone. None the less, one in four children in this country will spend some time in a lone parent family, and those children and families face an exceptionally high risk of poverty. Of course it is right that we should do all we can to sustain sustainable relationships, but it is not the mark of a civilised society that we allow those who are growing up in households where relationships have ended to find that they do so in poverty.

[Mrs Laing]

May I thank the hon. Lady for her support in obtaining this debate with the Backbench Business Committee and say that she was most eloquent? Would she like to emphasise the need to break the myth that women who are bringing up children alone have been teenage mothers—the vast majority of these women are not? As she said, they do not choose to be in that position and, of course, all women and men in that position deserve our support.

[Kate Green]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right, because the average age of lone mothers is now 35 and just 3% of them are teenagers. There is a very wide gap between myth and reality, as she rightly said.

In conclusion, we need and must have a debate now on the way in which we secure and sustain the economic independence of women throughout their life course, whatever their family circumstances. That is why I am particularly pleased to support the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart). Women’s lives have changed dramatically, even in my lifetime. However, despite the progress that women such as me—well-educated, professional women in well-paid employment—have enjoyed over the past five decades, it is still women who bear the brunt of poverty in this country. Inequality on pay and, importantly, on pension protection reflects the fact that there is still too much segregated employment, and that we still have a social security system that fails to provide adequate support and an education system that still too often squeezes down girls’ aspirations. This is still the fifth largest economy in the world, and we cannot tolerate a situation in which women continue to live in poverty. It is unnecessary, wasteful and unjust. It is a scandal and we need to ensure that every one of our economic and social policies thinks women and thinks how it can address that injustice. So in this UK Parliament, which is aptly, if sometimes incorrectly, characterised as the “mother of Parliaments”, I say that we must establish the scrutiny body that the amendment proposes. In the week that marks the centenary of international women’s day, I hope that parliamentarians in this House will commit themselves to doing just that.