Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill (Eighth sitting)

David Simmonds Excerpts

Thursday 16th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

My wife works at a higher education firm.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

I am an honorary fellow at Birkbeck.

[The Chair]

Thank you.

Clause 1

Duties of registered higher education providers

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[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

The reason the new clause is important is that it would include all bodies that students might interact with in their role as students, to ensure that the promotion of freedom of speech happens. I will come on to rebut some points that I think the Minister incorrectly made about JCRs, but I first want to talk about the chilling effect. We have heard a lot about it, but if we are to believe what we hear about the chilling effect, it is because a culture has set in—particularly in the student body—in which it is allowed to run rife.

As we know, large parts of student activity are not necessarily in the classroom or lecture theatre; in fact, many students complain that they do not have enough lecture and seminar time. That is a regular complaint of students nowadays because fees are so high. We could have an interesting argument around what the purpose of university is—whether it is instruction, or to enable students to have a wider experience of intellectual endeavour—but I will put that to one side.

However, if the effect is to exclude a swathe of student life and to allow that chilling effect to continue to circulate, the whole point of the student part of the Bill is defeated. The education part or university part? Okay, that is fine. But with the student part, what will still happen, of course, is that students will still be afraid to speak up in lecture theatres, because in the non-regulated part of their student experience they will still not have the culture of free speech and they will be shunned if they do speak up. They will not speak up and feel like they can have their own views, because in one part of their life the chilling effect is not because of formal institutions, but partly because of informal cultures. And if we are not tackling those cultures in all aspects, then we will not deal with this issue. That is why, for example, this measure should extend to JCRs and MCRs.

Earlier, the Minister said that JCRs do not run their own booking systems. That is not correct for all JCRs. St Mary’s College at Durham University runs its own booking system for its JCR. When a student wants to make a booking, they go on to the JCR website and fill in a JCR form, and the JCR allocates a booking. With some of the Oxford colleges, students have to go into the Oxford system, for the whole university, and I have just found that out after 10 minutes of Google research into how the booking systems work. I am sure that a fuller analysis would show that the picture is more complicated, which is why we need to include JCRs and similar facilities explicitly in this measure, so that it is clear.

[David Simmonds]

It may be that there is a degree of misunderstanding. When I was a student at a college that had a structure with a JCR, MCR and senior common room, the president of the JCR was someone who would become a future Labour Member for Corby.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

A good man.

[David Simmonds]

He was a very good man, and is a good friend of mine. However, a key point about that organisation is that it is not autonomous. So although the JCR has its own bar, the JCR, the MCR and the SCR—the three academic components of the college—are all supervised by, and under the control of, the college’s governing body. So they are not autonomous.

Therefore, although it is the case that a student could book a room, rent a tennis court or something like that, if it is in the ownership of that JCR, the college—as a constituent part of a university—supervises and controls the JCR’s activities. So the JCR is directly accountable, as a part of the college and a part of the university, and it is not autonomous in its own right.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Neither are student unions. The Education Act 1994, which I am probably the only Member of Parliament to bang on about, because most MPs will talk about previous Education Acts, requires universities to supervise all student unions, just as they would JCRs. It requires universities to ensure that the finances of student unions are conducted fairly and to oversee the policy of the student unions, so that the universities fulfil their duties under other Education Acts, such as ensuring freedom of speech. So what the hon. Gentleman just said is the case with all student unions.

However, this Bill sees fit to mention student unions specifically, even though they are regulated—in terms of their policies, their funding, their use and their terms regarding discrimination—by the university and by the Charity Commission.

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This new clause is saying that the same status should be given to JCRs. Yes, JCRs have some regulatory oversight of the institution, and so do student unions, but this Bill only takes account of student unions. Not only that, but it means that, just as we heard from the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner, the danger is that the institution in the first place will bat it off and say, “It is not our responsibility; it is the junior common room’s responsibility. Go through their complaints procedure.” If the JCR does not have a complaints procedure that is in line with the existing legislation, there is a danger that it will give people the runaround. It would just be clearer if everyone had complaints procedures in line with the legislation.

[David Simmonds]

Without wishing to labour the point, I think the Minister is absolutely correct in the position she has taken. The junior common room is a component part of the college, so all its complaints processes and its supervision are inherent in its nature as a component part of the college. There is not a requirement to bring it within the purview of the legislation in the same way as there is for a student union, which is a separate institution with its own governance. It is already covered by its very nature.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

That may be, but the Minister said that JCRs do not have control of their own bookings, their own policies or their own finances, and that is not quite true, if we compare them with student unions. I do take the hon. Gentleman’s point that junior common rooms are not automatically registered with the Charities Commission, for example, but I am not sure that, legally, there is anything preventing them from registering. That would be an interesting legal point.

Each junior common room, again, is slightly separate. We had a quasi-junior common room system set up at Lancaster University when that was created, to model the Oxford system, but it was significantly different, because the system of Lancaster University was different and was based in halls and housing, much of which is now run by private institutions based at the university campus because of the private finance initiative systems and so on that we have in many universities. Again, for those junior common rooms that are now often in private student halls because they had a residential-based junior common room system, how is it regulated? They are on campus, but they are private blocks now, run by private service providers. It would be clearer if we included everyone.