Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Debate between Lord Patten of Barnes and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Report stage
Wednesday 7th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patten of Barnes (Con)]

I will add to the comments of the noble Baroness, and declare an interest as the chancellor of a moderately well-known university.

A university does not need legal advice in this case to defend freedom of research or expression; all it has to do is stop its subscription to the QAA—the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education—which only recently produced advice on the curriculum which was like a parody of an article in the Daily Mail. Among other things, it included the decolonisation of not just music—I entirely endorse what the noble Baroness has just said—but the maths curriculum. Clearly, the people who wrote it had never heard of Arabs, Indians or the Mayan civilisation, which was doing advanced mathematics before Christopher Columbus arrived. All that any university has to do is what Oxford has done—withdraw its subscription to the QAA, which is now pretty well on its last legs anyway. I regard the QAA’s advice to universities as in many respects the most dangerous assault in the last few years on freedom of expression and research at universities. It is crazy time—it is critical race theory canonised. Universities should denounce it with great enthusiasm.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord raises a very important point, but is it not the case that many public institutions—including, I am afraid, this House in the past—have signed up to various highly controversial charters and indexes which require a standard of behaviour from the people covered by those institutions? At a national level, many of these bodies are cowed by aggressive minority interests into establishing and setting out these programmes.

For an individual employee working in those situations, it can be very intimidating to say, “I don’t agree with the Stonewall equality index and don’t see why my institution has signed up to it”. I am glad to say that this House, after a lot of pressure and with weasel words, eventually decided not to continue its membership, but many other organisations vie to have a high rating from it. That leads to behaviour and conditions in which it can be very intimidating for individuals who do not agree with the view taken. This is what this issue is really about and why it is so important. I hope the Minister will be very forthright in response.