Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Emma Hardy Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 13th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Matt Western]

The hon. Member is right. A pattern is clearly emerging, which I will describe and examine in due course.

Having an Orwellian director for freedom of speech sounds like a contradiction in terms, but the appointee will certainly have sweeping powers. They alone will be responsible for making sure that universities and student unions are upholding their freedom of speech duties. They will act as judge, jury and executioner in free speech complaints and will potentially monitor overseas funding of universities and student unions. As job descriptions go, it is unprecedented. Incredibly, the job description is already out there, for anyone who is interested, with a £100,000 salary and a four-year term—I am not sure, Madam Deputy Speaker, but it could be on your horizon.

New clause 4 should not be necessary, but in the context of this Government’s record on appointees, it most definitely is. Let us start at the very top of the tree. In February last year, Lord Wharton, a Conservative peer, was appointed as chair of the Office for Students. His appointment was something of a surprise to many; he himself admitted that he had no experience in the higher education sector. It seems that the only criterion for his appointment by this Government was that he had run the Prime Minister’s leadership campaign.

[Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

The standardisation provided by allowing a body such as a Select Committee to interview a person before appointing them to a role such as chair of Ofsted is common. The Minister knows that, because she was on the Education Committee with me when we did pre-appointment hearings, so it seems a little unusual that scrutiny is not seen as being as important in this aspect of education as in other areas.

[Matt Western]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We need more process, more transparency and an honest approach if we are to clean up our politics. I absolutely believe that that is what I would want any organisation to have. We must move away from what appears to be an increasingly transactional approach to these appointments.

In return for his being appointed, Lord Wharton’s company GBMW Ltd made what is now referred to as a golden thank you for being handed the job by the Prime Minister: a donation to the Conservative party of £8,000. That is small change for him, given that he gets paid £60,000 for just two days’ work per week.

Last month, we discovered that Lord Wharton had chosen to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Hungary. It was a sell-out. In his speech, he endorsed Viktor Orbán’s far-right, autocratic regime—the regime that had forced George Soros’s Central European University to leave Budapest in 2019. So much for our champions of academic freedom! He also shared a platform with Zsolt Bayer, a television talk show host in Hungary who has been widely denounced for his aggressive racism; his grotesque comments do not bear repeating in this place.

Despite widespread condemnation from student groups here such as the Union for Jewish Students, and cross-party calls for the Government to take action against the chair, it is telling that Ministers have so far refused to do so. That is important, because independence, propriety and accountability in public life absolutely matter. That is the point of new clause 4.

It seems that the politicisation of the Office for Students has not stopped there. Three months ago, the Secretary of State appointed Rachel Houchen, the wife of the Tory Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen, as a non-executive director on the board of the Office for Students, despite her having no direct experience in the higher education sector.

In that context, the comments made in Committee by one of the Government’s own witnesses, Professor Nigel Biggar, especially alarmed the Opposition. He agreed that

“the Government…given the legislation…wants a director who has a certain partiality of that kind.”—[Official Report, Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Public Bill Committee, 7 September 2021; c. 22, Q40.]

Even the Government’s own witnesses fear that the appointment will not be impartial: Dr Arif Ahmed and others made the point that the person “has to be impartial”.

In Committee, the Minister responded to a series of Opposition amendments by stating:

“There is no need to set up the bureaucracy of a non-statutory advisory body, as suggested by the amendment. The OfS is independent of the Government, so to do so would simply duplicate its role as set out in the statute.”––[Official Report, Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Public Bill Committee, 22 September 2021; c. 343.]

Well, clearly not. If the appointments to the OfS are meant to reassure us that the director will be impartial, they have lost all credibility. I dare say that the Minister will repeat the same line today, as she has done—blind to any suggestion of improvement, not least because this morning her Department advertised for the position even though the Bill has not even had its Third Reading.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Western]

I do not want to suggest that all people come from a position of partiality, but some are more partial—and overtly partial—than others. That was the whole point of what I tried to illustrate in the case of the chair of the Office for Students, who was clearly appointed according to the preference of the Government at the very highest level and the Prime Minister. I think that that surprise appointment, along with the appointment of the board member with no previous experience, is a further illustration of just how rabid this has become in our politics.

[Emma Hardy]

The issue of impartiality in the appointment process was debated in detail in Committee. We had a long debate about the job specification, the requirements, the importance of previous experience and the need to appoint someone with previous understanding of legislation and law, and the fact that the process needs to be impartial. When we appoint the new chair of Ofsted, we do so not on the basis of whom the Prime Minister of the day particularly likes, but on the basis of whether that person has the competencies that the job requires, and that is the point of our amendment. If such a person is to be appointed, we need the best person for the job, not the person who is most popular with the current Prime Minister.

[Matt Western]

My hon. Friend made some telling and constructive contributions in Committee, and I entirely agree with her. If we want the best from any system of higher education and its regulation, competencies must be at the heart of that.

Have a look through the job description for the director for freedom of speech, Madam Deputy Speaker. Four or five specified qualities are sought. It is worth a read, and indeed I am thinking of possibly putting in for the job. What is most surprising of all—this arose both in the Bill Committee and during our witness sessions, as my hon. Friend and others will doubtless recall—is that despite the overriding impression that, given the sensitivity and importance involved and given how delicate some of these cases will become, legal experience would be a necessity, there is no requirement for that legal expertise. We must make the process involved in any public appointment much more robust, but that applies particularly to the appointment to a position as sensitive and delicate as overseeing freedom of speech on our campuses.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Hayes]

Benjamin Disraeli said:

“Upon the education of the people…the fate of this country depends.”

That greatest of Conservative Prime Ministers went on to say:

“A university should be a place of life, of liberty and of learning.”

However, if the flame of liberty is to burn brightly, and if the university sector is to be a beacon of learning, we must face up to the fact that, in many of our universities, freedom of speech is in jeopardy, censorship is happening as we speak tonight, and academics and students feel intimidated by that censorship.

We know that from the evidence that the Bill Committee heard from academics on the frontline of that struggle. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western), quoted Professor Arif Ahmed, who was clear that there is a series of means by which universities restrict and limit freedom of speech. He said:

“what I mean is universities placing formal obstacles in the way of people saying things that are perfectly legal.”––[Official Report, Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Public Bill Committee, 7 September 2021; c. 13, Q22.]

He went on to say, quoting the Universities and Colleges Union survey of 2017, that

“35% of academics self-censor”––[Official Report, Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Public Bill Committee, 7 September 2021; c. 16, Q27.]

because they are nervous about saying what they truly believe; the number of students doing so is probably even greater. The truth is that there is a tyrannical minority in universities, among the academic staff and in the student body, who do not believe that universities are places of light, liberty and learning; instead, they think that universities should limit free speech.

I find it hard to understand why Opposition Members such as the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), whom I respect greatly, and the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington, with whom I have—I was going to say “collaborated”, but that makes me sound rather like a fifth columnist—co-operated in this place on many subjects, oppose a Bill designed to reinforce precisely the freedoms that are essential to an open society. I thought about that and cogitated on how it could be that such decent and honourable people—I include the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) as well—could do this.

In doing so, I should draw the attention of the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests in respect of higher education, as I did perpetually and—some people felt—relentlessly during the previous stages of our consideration of the Bill. By the way, I stimulated a number of others to do the same, and I have no doubt that they will want to chip in on a similar basis this evening.

The conclusion I drew, having thought about it, was that those decent people on the Labour Benches who certainly believe in free speech and the exchange of honestly held opinion find that hard to reconcile with a zeitgeist that is preoccupied with a fear of causing offence. We are perpetually told now that because we must not make people feel uncomfortable, we must not offend them. We in this House know, do we not, that the ability to alarm is closely associated with the ability to inspire, that the ability to disturb is intrinsically linked with the ability to enthral, and that even the capacity to shock is necessary in the development and exposure of new ideas and fresh thinking?

[Emma Hardy]

rose—

[Sir John Hayes]

Having said such nice things about the hon. Lady, it would be extremely impolite of me not to give way.

[Emma Hardy]

I say to the right hon. Member that, as Bill Committees go, it was a very enjoyable one. I thank him for being one of the few Conservative Members who listens to the contributions. On the point he is making, it is not about disagreeing with this idea of shocking people or of having different opinions; the fundamental problem, as I have said repeatedly, is how this piece of legislation interacts with existing legislation already in place. How does this interact with equality legislation? How does this interact with other existing pieces of legislation? My concern is further developed when I see the person who is making the decision on how these different pieces of legislation interact with each other. It is, as has been mentioned—and this is the reason for new clause 4—somebody appointed by the Prime Minister of the day, which then leads to all those issues around impartiality of process. We have a situation here where we have a piece of legislation that almost buts up against existing equality legislation, but it is not quite clear how their processes will rub together, yet there is no specification that the person making the decisions has to have legal experience or knowledge; they are instead a political appointment. That is where we have the difficulty—it is not with freedom of speech, but with the legislation itself.

[Sir John Hayes]

At the risk of putting our professional association in jeopardy, I say to the hon. Lady that I agree with her. I agree that the Government need to look at the equality legislation. I note the Attorney General’s recent comments that, as well as unpicking the Human Rights Act 1998, which we certainly should do without delay, we need to revisit the Equality Act 2010 and the rest of the long tail of Blairism. The hon. Lady is right that some of that unfortunate legislation on the statute book is inhibiting much of the very good work that the Government are trying to do. In particular, she is right—this was raised in Committee by me and others—that the Government need to be very clear that this legislation can be squared with other statute and, so the means by which it might be challenged.

--- Later in debate ---

[Emma Hardy]

I think it might also be worth the Government having a look at the recent legislation that they have already passed on the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the issues around protest and free speech. We could end up with a situation where free speech is the preserve of students who attend university, but those outside university will have their free speech limited unless they are very, very quiet and do not protest too loudly. We could end up with more conflict, with one part of the Government saying one thing in terms of restricting protest, and another part of the Government saying something else about supporting free speech. It is fair to say that having this Bill along with existing and proposed legislation will create a muddle.

[Sir John Hayes]

We are dealing with a complex subject. Free speech by its very nature means people saying all kinds of things in all kinds of ways about all kinds of subjects. The hon. Lady is right that there will be tensions to be settled, which is precisely why the Government have put in place mechanisms to do that. They are going to appoint, as was said earlier, an office with responsibility for ensuring that this Bill’s intentions and provisions are applied consistently. The Government acknowledge the difficulties that she has highlighted, which is precisely why they are putting in place a person and team to do exactly that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir John Hayes]

Burke said, as you well know, Mr Deputy Speaker:

“He that struggles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.”

Part of developing intellectually and personally, particularly for young people at university—we should not assume that only young people go to university—is exactly that. It is being stimulated, sometimes being excited, sometimes being challenged and, yes, sometimes being offended. I am often offended in this Chamber by all kinds of things, and not always things that I hear from those on the Opposition Benches.

[Emma Hardy]

Even if the right hon. Gentleman is offended, he is never offensive, so I always enjoy debating with him. On the issue of the need to challenge and to shock, there is always a line to be drawn somewhere. In Committee we talked about the offensiveness of holocaust denial. Okay, there is not a physical threat from holocaust denial, but I think that we would all agree that it is very offensive and it is therefore very hurtful. A line will always have to be drawn when it comes to free speech, but we have the difficulty, which I keep going back to, of who makes the decision on where that line is drawn—what experience do they have, what criteria is set, what is their knowledge, and what is their understanding of the subject. Having the right person at the top is important. I am sure that the right hon. Member will accept that, yes, someone might want to offend, to shock or to stimulate discussion, but there is always a point at which we say, “No, that is not intellectual stimulation. That is just offensive and rude and not part of an intellectual debate at university.”

[Sir John Hayes]

Yes, but the problem is that that line moves with the times, with fad and fashion, with what I described earlier as the zeitgeist. Perhaps the most chilling example of that is the case of Kathleen Stock. The hon. Lady will remember that Kathleen Stock gave evidence to the Bill Committee of which she was part. Within a few weeks, Kathleen Stock was driven out of her job as a distinguished professor at the University of Sussex by the mob, a group of students who pursued her and intimidated her and her family.

Kathleen Stock received scant support from many of her academic colleagues, although latterly the university authorities claimed they were supportive, and she was so affected and so damaged by all that that she ended up leaving the job she loved. I thought how chilling and ironic that she should have been one of the people who came to us, as Members of this House, to a Bill Committee debating this Bill, and yet just weeks later found herself a victim of the very problem she highlighted and emphasised in her evidence.

I will move fairly rapidly on to the amendments that stand in my name, Mr Deputy Speaker, because otherwise you will claim that I am making a Second Reading speech—and with some just cause.