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

Emma Hardy Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Public Bill Committees

[Michelle Donelan]

Q Do you think it would be useful at this moment in time to clarify that the Bill does not prevent protest of free speech? I would be happy to have conversations offline or further written evidence on that.

Professor Whittle: It does not appear to, but combined with other legislation that has come in and the whole idea of what universities can do? What can a university do to stop people saying, “We don’t want this speaker.”? Can they stop it on Twitter? No. Can they stop it on Facebook? No. But they can stop it on the ground within the space of the university. I actually think that that is a much more valid place to hear student protests than on Twitter.

[Emma Hardy]

Q Professor Whittle, I want to turn again to the evidence submitted by the University of Cambridge, which highlights the tension that the Bill presents in balancing free speech with the existing legislation in the Equality Act 2010 against harassment, abuse and threats of violence. As I mentioned to Trevor Phillips in the last evidence session, the Secretary of State verbally promised that the right to lawful free speech will remained balanced by important safeguards, but the University of Cambridge is suggesting that that should be in the Bill, and the Bill should present greater clarity on where the line is drawn between existing legislation around harassment and what the Bill proposes. I wondered, with your experience in equalities, what your thoughts were on that.

Professor Whittle: The Equality Act provides little protection for anybody who feels that their rights are being disturbed by somebody else’s freedom of speech. For example, if somebody is speaking and they are antisemitic, unless it directly relates to that person, unless they have some sort of standing, the Equality Act cannot protect them as such. The Bill is interesting in that you do not have to have any standing to use the potential new provisions within it. I think that that is equally problematic, because it means that literally the butcher down the road could decide that they do not want the speaker, or could make a complaint that a speaker had had their freedom of speech challenged.

I think that that is very problematic, but I accept that it should be absolutely clear in the Bill that this is not about stopping legitimate student protest. There is a difference between legitimate and illegitimate protest, and illegitimate protest is always illegitimate in my view and should never be perpetrated, except in the direst circumstances. Legitimate protest, which includes shouting, making a noise and being an irritating bloody nuisance is just part and parcel of academic life. As I say, I have faced it in my own lecture theatre and I have not felt comfortable, but I did not feel so challenged.

[Emma Hardy]

Q That is really interesting. So you would want to see amendments to the Bill that gave students the right to continue to protest, and not therefore fall under the guidance of the Bill.

Professor Whittle: Absolutely. Legitimate protest within universities is an absolute must. If we make it different from the rights externally, does that somehow create a different space for universities? Universities are, on the whole, still part and parcel of the public sphere—not all of them, but most of them. They do not have the same rights, for example, as a pub landlord to say, “You can’t come in here,” but they have certain levels of control on their sites. To just bar student protest, or to make it impossible, would drive protest into those online spheres, and I think it would be much worse there.

[Emma Hardy]

Q Finally and quickly, I think I have almost achieved the impossible in that so far every academic has agreed. Do you share the concern around the change in wording from the original wording to insist that academics speak only about what the Government define as their field of expertise, in terms of academic freedom?

Professor Whittle: Absolutely. What do we count as our field of expertise? As a lawyer, as an activist, as an individual, as a parent, my expertise is widespread, and I bring all of those things into my academic life. If you told me that I could only speak on equalities law, I would say I have just done a big presentation in relation to the European Union and rights across the European Union. Does that not include me? Can I not speak on that? When the economists have a panel on free trade, can I not come and talk about how it impacts on different people’s rights across the world? Of course I can—that is part of our conversation, and I think that most academics would say that we do not sit in little boxes. We read widely; we bring all these ideas together. If we are very lucky, one day we will become Noam Chomsky and produce a great book, but most of us will just retire.

[Mr Richard Holden (North West Durham) (Con)]

Q Thanks, Professor. It has been really interesting to hear what you have to say. I was particularly struck that you said you had never felt that you had been unable to speak on a topic. Do you understand that 35% of academics in the UK, roughly twice the average of that in the European Union, according to a recent study, feel that they have had to self-censor their remarks? I understand you personally might feel that you can push ahead, but do you understand that other academics might feel that they cannot?

Professor Whittle: Yes, I accept that. If we go back 15 years to people complaining about the noise in the library, I stood up and said, “Why don’t you just ask them to stop? That is what I do.” They said, “It is all very well for you. You feel brave enough to do that.” I do not feel any braver than anybody else, but I am going in the library to work and I can ask the students to be considerate and quiet and, on the whole, I get a certain amount of listening to and respect out of that. If academics do not feel that they are able to speak out, I am very sorry they feel like that, but part of me wants to say, “Pull your socks up and get on and do it, because nothing is that frightening.”

I have spoken across the world, in different places, from Moscow to China and India, in circumstances where many people would go, “Oh my God—what are you doing?” but I have always received, on the whole, respect. There has been some heckling, but I handled it and never felt that my life was in danger in any way, shape or form. I sometimes have felt that my career has ridden a little bit close to the edge, but, as I say, I accepted a long time ago that other universities were not going to interview me, so I might as well make my mark here and I think I have been able to.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Western]

It does.

[Emma Hardy]

Q On that direct point—thank you for letting me come in—the Secretary of State said on Second Reading that this “legal route”, the “new statutory tort”, is “an important backstop”—

“we do not want all cases going to court where they could otherwise be resolved by other means.”—[Official Report, 12 July 2021; Vol. 699, c. 50.]

However, as you have just outlined, there is no requirement in the Bill to go through the internal processes before going to the freedom of speech tsar—or whatever title they are given. Is that of concern to you?

Smita Jamdar: I think there is a restriction on going to the freedom of speech tsar; I think they are proposing that you have to go through the internal complaints procedure before you go through the OfS’s complaint process. However, I do not think there is any such restriction on going to court.

[Emma Hardy]

Yes—sorry.

Smita Jamdar: I may have misunderstood; I do apologise. Yes, that is a concern. Built into certain types of court proceedings—judicial review, for example—is the expectation that you will first exhaust all alternative remedies, and that would include any internal remedies available under the complaints process. However, that is not the case in statutory torts; you could bring a claim outside the processes and the only thing that would then stand in your way is this—sometimes very vigorously encouraged—preference not to proceed with the court process but to go through the internal complaints process. However, you would still have issued and there would still need to be some reaction to that claim.

[Emma Hardy]

Q Would you therefore recommend an amendment to the Bill to make it explicit that local complaints processes should first be exhausted?

Smita Jamdar: Absolutely.

[Michelle Donelan]

Q I would be interested to know whether you think there are currently clear routes for individuals to seek redress where they do have their freedom of speech infringed on and restricted.

Smita Jamdar: The main route that you would see a student, for example, going through would be by way of judicial review. Judicial review has the advantage of allowing the court to make a declaration or requirement that the university should reconsider the case and, if necessary, readmit the student—they are entitled to go as far as that, but very often they will keep it to requiring that the case be reconsidered. They can also concurrently award damages, if you can prove that there is a loss associated with whatever has happened to you.

Our view, as a firm, is that if you had a situation where a student was excluded on the basis of exercising their right to freedom of speech, and it was a rightful exercise of the freedom and a wrongful interference with the freedom, then the clause permitting you to do that might also be regarded as a unfair term under the consumer contracts legislation, because you are losing a right that you have as a matter of general law. So routes are available. It is fair to say that the vast majority of these cases are probably dealt with at the internal appeals stage; I am not aware of a huge amount of case law that relates to students pursuing their claim. I think for academics it would be via employment tribunals.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q On a slightly different topic—I would really appreciate your input here—you touched on employment law earlier. In the current employment law protections for academics, are there weaknesses that could be strengthened but are not being strengthened in the Bill?

Smita Jamdar: Again, people have highlighted the fact that in some ways, what the Bill is doing is narrowing what limited existing protection there is for academic freedoms—that is being narrowed. Currently, academic freedom is protected largely through the constitutional documents of universities. Chartered universities—those with royal charters—have to have a provision in their charters, and the post-92s have a provision in their instruments and articles of government. Those do not currently restrict academic freedom to matters within the expertise of the academic, and I know from speaking to employment law colleagues—one of the other things I am not an expert in is employment law—that there are often cases where there is a very vigorous disagreement about whether something was an exercise of academic freedom or not when it relates to criticism of the institution.

I think that the Bill makes it clearer, but probably, from the point of view of those who feel that academic freedom is inadequately protected, it is clearer by narrowing it rather than by addressing any of those wider concerns.

[Emma Hardy]

Q I am interested in hearing your opinions on a couple of things. Earlier, when you were answering questions from John, you were talking about tort and how the process works. I wonder whether you are supportive of the idea of the right to appeal decisions made by the freedom of speech director, as submitted from Universities UK.

Smita Jamdar: Absolutely. As I alluded to earlier, my concern about having a stop at the OfS is that that individual may be required to interpret law, so they may well be required to decide if something is defamatory, harassment, contrary to the Equality Act or potentially a public order offence. I find the idea that those legal judgments cannot then be appealed to the people who are actually able to make legal judgments really quite worrying.

Certainly, if that were to be the case, the process for appointing that individual, and the statutory requirements that must be observed for that individual in their role, need to be much tighter, because you could end up with somebody who is effectively an appointment of whatever Government is in place at the time, and who does not necessarily have any skills or expertise to make those judgments but is the last word on them. Again, in terms of freedom, that does not feel terribly free.

[Emma Hardy]

Q Absolutely. You could have someone who has lost an election and is put in a position of power by the Government of the day making the final decision on what is or is not freedom of speech, with no redress to court to change it. That is a little less free than the Government had perhaps intended.

On the OfS director, earlier we heard evidence that they would be giving guidance to universities and that their role would be in providing that guidance. Can you foresee a situation where a university follows the guidance by the OfS director of the day, the OfS director is changed, and the university is then told that the guidance it followed under the previous administration is no longer correct and it is liable for breaking the law under the Freedom of Speech Act? Do you see that there could be a difficulty with the OfS director being both the judge and the person giving the guidance?

Smita Jamdar: That is always a situation with potential for conflict, because how can you then judge impartially the complaint that comes in, even if it is another part of the organisation that is submitting it? Under the Bill, it would be within the oversight of the director, so there is definitely a problem there. Until quite recently I would have been confident that, as a matter of rule of law, you could not retrospectively apply conditions in that way. However, I am less confident about that than I have been in the past.

I think there are regulatory trends that say that people do sometimes try and retrospectively shift the goalposts. Normally, you would then potentially be able to go for judicial review, and say that this is a decision that is in breach of public law principles, either because it is irrational or in some way procedurally flawed. However, under the Bill you would not have that right because you cannot challenge the decisions of the free speech champions. Bearing in mind that we have to look at the worst-case scenarios, it is possible that, through change of policy, a piece of guidance that was given and followed is now no longer considered to be adequate.

[Emma Hardy]

Q I wonder what you would suggest as a solution to the OfS director—as is stated at the moment—giving both the guidance and being the judge. Do you think there should be a recommended separation?

Smita Jamdar: I would have thought that one of the most useful things the OfS could do is give the guidance, and look at this through its regulatory lens. Having seen how regulation has started to change behaviour at universities in other cases, that might be where we see most of the cultural change we all feel is at the root of this.

The two obvious things that would change the position would be to build in additional safeguards, so that the freedom of speech complaints process is dealt with separately to the guidance. However, that then calls into question the role of the director—it is quite a fundamental shift. Another thing you could think about is saying that if the challenge is about the lawfulness of the speech, rather than some other breach of process, then that has to first go to court before the OfS can adjudicate on it. Then, at least, legal issues are dealt with by someone else—they are not dealt with by the OfS. The final thing would be to introduce a level of judicial oversight into what is happening, so that any particularly difficult and egregious cases could go to court and say that the OfS has not done its job in the way that Parliament intended.

[Emma Hardy]

Q I promise that this is the final question—although I did say that last time. Would you therefore recommend that the OfS director should be someone with a legal background, if not an in-depth knowledge of higher education?

Smita Jamdar: I would definitely say that the OfS director should have a legal background because there is so much law in here to get your head around. My preference would be to say that that person is not allowed to make legal decisions—even if they have a legal background. It just strikes me as conceptually a very difficult idea; somebody who is not a court and not a tribunal making legal decisions. That should not happen. I would go one step further and say take that out of the role.

In terms of understanding the higher education sector, I know that there is always a concern that if you bring in people who are too familiar with the sector then they will not be impartial about these issues. However, everybody in the sector recognises the importance of free speech. The problem is that there are a small number of areas that are highly contested, where different people have different views about what free speech should be. I do not think knowledge of the sector would prevent someone from being able to judge those things impartially. In fact, it might help, because it would speed up understanding the context where this is all taking place.

[The Chair]

If there are no further questions from Members, I thank Ms Jamdar for her evidence, and we will move on to the next panel.

Examination of Witness

Thomas Simpson gave evidence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michelle Donelan]

Q What importance do you place on the role of the director, which this legislation will create?

Thomas Simpson: As I read the Bill, and certainly I suppose in my vision, the director plays a co-ordinating role for the OfS’s functions, but the director’s decisions should not be decisions that the director makes individually; they are decisions that the board would sign off on. As I have discussed earlier, I think there is a legal recourse for testing what the director’s decision should be. But the director should be someone who is active, who is energetic and who wants to drive this.

One of the other questions here at stake—it is one of the missing pieces from prior evidence—is that we have a very valuable document from 2019, the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s guidance on free expression. That really carefully walks through very practical details of how the section 43 freedom of speech duty should be implemented in particular situations. Ten key public bodies were brought in to agree to that guidance. There is both a process and an end point that is similar to that for the wider question of academic freedom that the Bill sets out provision for.

There is an outstanding question, which people are right to ask: what is the relationship between this and the Equality Act? In practice, the EHRC guidance threads the needle on most of those issues, and there will be a comparable process for academic freedom more widely.

[Emma Hardy]

Q Welcome. I have a few different questions. Picking up on your point about the Equality Act and how they interplay, would you recommend greater clarification of that in the Bill? I know that we have been promised guidance to follow, but it is very interesting, looking at the evidence that has come out. There seems to be a bit of a coalition between the Free Speech Union and various universities that that clarification is needed. I wondered what your thoughts were.

Thomas Simpson: In the ideal world, that would be great. I do not know what the appetite is within the House of Commons for pressing on that, but I think it would be valuable, were it possible. The EHRC guidance generated considerable consent on how that relationship should be managed in practice. As an advocate of academic freedom and free speech, I think it does so in a way that is respectful of both the demands of the Equality Act, right and proper, and those of academic freedom.

[Emma Hardy]

Q The concern that I have read in the evidence is that it could be left to individual universities to try to manage what is freedom of speech versus somebody’s rights under the Equality Act.

Thomas Simpson: In my view, the greatest challenge is awareness within the sector of what the Equality Act requires and, particularly, what it does not require. That is something that the EHRC guidance does a really good job on. I would leave it to the legal people to say whether that should be in the Bill, but it seems to me that the question of how to adjudicate that has already been quite carefully thought through.

One of the areas of extension that has not had the same consideration, and one of the shortfalls of the guidance—this is not a criticism of it, because it fulfils its purpose—is its scope. It focuses only on the section 43 duty as was. There is a wider set of questions about academic freedom, and freedom of teaching in particular, that it does not address.

[Emma Hardy]

Q To press further on that, at the moment the universities have this question of fulfilling freedom of speech “within the law”, but they of course have to adhere to non-statutory guidance as well. Do you think that needs greater clarification? What guidance exactly are universities meant to follow on protecting free speech “within the law”?

Thomas Simpson: That is not an issue that I have considered previously.

[Emma Hardy]

Q Okay. Finally, I dare not provoke the wrath of Sir John by using the words “unconscious bias training”, but you seem to suggest in your role that people unconsciously choose people who are like them and have similar thoughts to them for roles. Do you think that legislation can address the unconscious bias that people have?

Thomas Simpson: Pass—that is a very wide question. I certainly envisage that part of what will be involved in fulfilling the duty to promote academic freedom would be something like holding and convening events for freshers to think about how a university functions, and what it looks like to promote a place of free debate. My understanding is that it has proven very difficult through direct unconscious bias training to unpick that, but someone who is better versed in the evidence could speak to that.

[Emma Hardy]

Q Do you think the Bill as it stands addresses the unconscious bias that people have? We will not mention training, Sir John.

Thomas Simpson: Whereas 30 years ago you might have had a situation where in a small business people said, “We don’t want to employ X because maybe she’ll be pregnant in six months’ time”, people now would rightly be very cautious about saying that, and ought to be, and they ought not to believe it. The fact that we have come to that position is in part due to anti-discrimination legislation, which has helped bring to people’s minds the dangers of thinking in that way.

One of the challenges that we need to think through in the sector is avoiding the risk of partisan thinking, because such thinking, whatever partisan tribe you are sucked into, generates the possibility of seeing people as indicative of a particular tribe that you might not like. Over time, that norm should embed itself. That is the view and the vision.

[Emma Hardy]

Q So there is nothing explicitly within the Bill other than your hoping that in 10 years we might see an impact.

Thomas Simpson: No, it provides for the means by which that would happen. The functions of the director of free speech are to identify good practice and give advice on how that will take place. I think the vision is that the advice on what that good practice is would be what is required to fulfil the A3 statutory duty to promote academic freedom. Universities that are taking that advice would then start to implement that form of training, whatever it is.

[Emma Hardy]

Q So you see the bonus as being the advice that is given. Is it not possible for the OfS to give advice on something without having to legislate?

Thomas Simpson: I think the crucial thing is that the legislation puts it within the OfS’s remit. It mandates that this should be within its remit. I think it was already within its remit beforehand; it just was not being carried out.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fiona Bruce]

Q In your evidence, you say that you

“believe Parliament should decide, in this Bill, how this conflict is to be resolved”—

the conflict being that between whether provocative speech is free within the law or conduct having the effect of harassment. Can you clarify that, because this is a really complex but very important issue in our deliberations on the Bill?

Dr Harris: I will be as succinct as I can. Opponents and supporters of the Bill can hopefully find agreement that it potentially puts VCs and universities in a very difficult position. It will create borderline cases where it is difficult for the university to know whether in allowing an event to go ahead they may open themselves up to liability for harassment. It may be harassment of employees, for instance. Alternatively, if they decide that it is not quite harassment, could they then be sued because they failed to secure freedom of speech?

This is the result of the duty being essentially parasitic. It says that you must secure free speech as the law defines it. The Bill does not amplify or further define the right to free speech. I think that there is a conflict there. I do not think that it is fair to just lumber it on universities. I think there is a danger of universities responding by being completely risk averse—becoming simply anodyne—and I think it is for MPs to show some thought leadership. We have these two incommensurate values: the prevention of offence related to protected characteristics and protection of free speech, and I think it is for MPs to decide how we reconcile those two values. I do not think we should outsource the decision to universities.

[Emma Hardy]

Q Interestingly enough, those were the points that I was going to cover. That is interesting indeed, with your comments about the competing obligations under the Bill and the Equality Act. I know you have suggested that MPs resolve this, but, looking at some of the other evidence that we have had, would one step towards that be to make it explicit on the face of the Bill that universities, in doing this, must also take equality legislation into account, along with some of the non-statutory guidance—Prevent, and all of those other things? My concern is that none of that is in this at all.

Dr Harris: I think that there are a number of options. In the Bill at the moment, the OfS has the power to issue advice. However, as you say, there is nothing equivalent to the Counter-terrorism and Security Act 2015, whereby the university will be under a statutory duty to give due regard to that advice.

There are a number of options. One would be that there be new guidance, perhaps from the OfS and the Equality and Human Rights Commission, setting out clearly the scope of the Equality Act, when it is not a justifiable grounds for infringing free speech, and the true extent of a university’s liability—for instance, like the fact that universities are not liable under the Equality Act for what their students do. That is quite important. That is a good, soft way of doing it, but the potential drawback of that is that the Equality Act is already fairly clear in its definition of harassment in section 26, in that it has this safeguard of

“whether it is reasonable for the conduct to have that effect.”.

What we are seeing in relation to reporting websites where students can report harassment—it was seen at the University of Essex, regarding Rosa Freedman and Jo Phoenix—

[Emma Hardy]

Q I am interested in the Bill, rather than having a Second Reading debate on whether we should or should not have this. As the Bill stands, it does not contain anything about universities having to take account of existing legislation. It just says “within the law”, which feels a little vague to me.

With your comments acknowledging these competing obligations, my question to you is more, as a lawyer, how can that be remedied in the Bill? Could there be a concern over primacy with new case law existing outside universities, and what an OfS decision is, in terms of interpretation of the Equality Act and interpretation of this?

Dr Harris: The Equality Act is already is there by virtue of “within the law”, so it does not need to be explicitly stated. A university will have no duty to secure the right to harass someone, and it will not be in breach of the Bill if it censures an academic for discrimination or harassment. That is already there, in the Act. I am saying that one way to resolve the potential conflict that we were talking about, between the Equality Act and this Bill, would be to have guidance to help universities navigate this very fine line.

That is one way of doing it. The other is for Parliament to re-clarify the definition of harassment with relation to universities. I accept that getting into the Equality Act is very controversial and tricky terrain, but the explanatory notes of the 2010 Act, as enacted, quite clearly say that in making findings of harassment, courts should take into account academic freedom. I think there is a lot that can be done that would not substantially change the Equality Act, but that would clarify how it applies in the academic context.

[Emma Hardy]

Q It is interesting, because in some of the evidence that we have had from the universities, they have asked for that clarity. They said that,

“absent further clarity in the Bill, this would be an untested assumption, and an HEI/SU relying upon this assumption may carry a greater risk of being exposed to a free speech challenge”.

They were requesting that clarity in the law, so your comment is interesting.

Dr Harris: Universities often go beyond what the Equality Act—

[Emma Hardy]

Because they have the Prevent legislation and much other non-statutory legislation that they are expected to follow.

Dr Harris: That is correct. I have not yet seen evidence of over-application of the Prevent duty—at least I have not seen it, and certainly one sees more of that in schools—but, first, universities need to agree on what the Equality Act actually requires of them. They need to—

[Emma Hardy]

Sorry, it is not just the Equality Act. Universities are expected to follow a number of statutory measures and non-statutory guidance. My concern with that—one shared by a number of people—is that it could have a chilling effect, with universities being risk averse.

Dr Harris: There will be a balance of competing obligations. That will always happen. One thing that I would certainly say is that, realistically, the risk in most cases will be quite low. Universities are not really dangerous places. It is not like serving in the infantry. There will be some instances where it is borderline, where it is very difficult to sort out a conflict between two competing obligations. One way to minimise the problem that you are talking about is for universities to start taking a more pragmatic approach to those liabilities. For example, if you look at a number of external speaker policies—they are essentially codes of practice under section 43—you would think that putting on an academic talk was a terribly dangerous event.

[Emma Hardy]

Q I am going to tie you down to talking about the Bill, because we are running out of time. Your recommendation, therefore, would be for guidance to clarify that possible tension between what the Bill is trying to do and existing legislation.

Dr Harris: That is one proposal. I think that universities would probably ignore it, just as they have ignored the Equality Act—

[Emma Hardy]

I was referring to guidance from the Bill, but okay.

Dr Harris: It is one option. You can create a duty to have due regard for guidance. That is one option. For universities, it would not be enough to get them—

[Emma Hardy]

Q You would want it in the Bill.

Dr Harris: One thing you could do is to amend the Equality Act in the Bill to state that, in the academic context, universities must have due regard—

[Emma Hardy]

Q As we said, it is not just the Equality Act but all the other pieces of legislation. Would you wish to amend them all through the Bill?

Dr Harris: No. Because I do not think that they pose the same difficulty and there is not as much systemic overreach.

[Emma Hardy]

Q Finally, the online safety Bill will be going through Parliament. What thought have you given to that Bill, how it will potentially limit freedom of expression and how it interacts with this Bill going through Parliament at the same time?

Dr Harris: I have not really thought about how it interacts with this Bill. Certainly I have considered it otherwise. There needs to be a joined-up approach between the various instances of reform. The danger is that we end up with an anomaly. For example, Twitter’s house rules under the online safety Bill will have to be consistent with Ofcom codes of practice. There is a danger that something might be perfectly allowable under Twitter’s house rules, but unlawful in some other way.

[Sir John Hayes]

Q Notwithstanding Kevan’s point about university charters, is the real issue not about policy making? While it is true that a university in its charter is committed to openness and free expression, in policy making the story is far from that. Is it not really the case that universities persistently misinterpret the legal definition of harassment and underestimate freedom of expression and openness in their policy documents? You talked earlier about balance. Isn’t the question about this Bill not the effect it will have on law, in the sense of legal cases, but more the effect it will have on universities looking again at their policies and policy-making process?

Dr Harris: Yes, I very much agree. I think that what the Bill needs to do—this fits with the previous question—is elevate freedom of speech to the policy decision-making process, or the matrix, so that it is one of those considerations that is always baked into decision making.

To give you an example, the University of Cambridge launched a really quite restrictive reporting website where it asked staff and students to report micro-aggressions, which could include raising your eyebrows and that sort of thing. Now, the FOI request that we did on that showed that there were something like 400 pages of planning, correspondence and decision making about this report and support website. How was there so much consideration of this policy, and at no point did anyone step in to say, “Is this compliant with our legal free speech duties?” It is this absence from decision making. I think all this Bill needs to do to be successful is to cause a momentary pause. It needs to cause a degree of reflection.