Draft Companies, Limited Liability Partnerships and Partnerships (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019
Fiona Bruce Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
May I draw attention to an interest recorded in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests? My law firm, of which I remain a partner, is a limited liability partnership.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Kelly Tolhurst)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Companies, Limited Liability Partnerships and Partnerships (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Buck. The draft regulations, which were laid before the House on 10 January, will address deficiencies in retained EU law in relation to the Companies Act 2006 and supporting secondary legislation. They will ensure that UK law in the area continues to function after exit day. Hon. Members will notice that their provisions cover many different areas; I shall briefly summarise them.
The changes to the 2006 Act and the supporting secondary legislation will ensure that the system of regulation underpinning how companies report to and register with the UK companies registrar, Companies House, makes sense after we have left the EU and the European economic area. They will also remove the UK from ongoing participation in two EU-based processes in the field of company law: the cross-border mergers regime and the business registers interconnection system.
The draft regulations also cover other matters. They include a small number of amendments to address how businesses with membership, access and listing on EEA-regulated markets are dealt with; they will remove preferential treatment in such instances and in relation to EEA entities where there is a potential breach of the World Trade Organisation’s most favoured nation rule. Where there is no such breach, and where it is appropriate to do so, we have maintained the status quo to offer certainty and consistency for business, including EEA businesses.
The main practical changes for business that stem from the draft regulations will be filing changes with an impact on some UK and EEA businesses after exit day, including a requirement for UK companies with an EEA-based corporate secretary or director to file two additional details with Companies House. Additionally, after exit day, EEA companies on the overseas companies register will be treated in exactly the same way as non-EEA companies, meaning that EEA companies that register with Companies House will be required to provide some additional details, while EEA companies that are already registered will have three months to provide the additional information required by the draft regulations. Linked to these filing changes is a requirement for EEA-based companies on the overseas companies register to provide additional minor details in their public-facing material, such as their website and letterhead; again, the draft regulations provide three months from exit day for the affected companies to do so.
In line with those changes, the draft regulations will also revoke legislation on two EU-based processes or systems currently administered by Companies House. The first is the cross-border mergers regime. Hon. Friends and noble Lords in Committees of both Houses have drawn attention to the removal of the current process for UK companies. I understand their concern, because I know that certain companies welcome the fact that it allows companies to merge across EEA jurisdictions. However, that is possible only under the EU cross-border mergers regime, which requires legal entities based in two EEA states. As the UK will no longer be an EEA member after exit, it will not be possible to continue to allow cross-border mergers, but companies will be able to transfer assets and liabilities using contractual arrangements.
The other system of which the UK will no longer be part after exit is the business registers interconnection system—a very new system, introduced only in 2017, that is used mainly to identify companies undertaking a cross-border merger or foreign branches of companies. All the information currently provided publicly on the Companies House register will still be available; the only thing that will cease is Companies House’s access to the register to register connections across the EU.
I will now explain the changes made as a consequence of the insertion of a new definition of “regulated markets” into another statutory instrument, in line with regulations that Her Majesty’s Treasury has laid before the House, and its effect in certain sections of the Companies Act 2006. In most places where it occurs, the change will have no material effect. There are only two occurrences where we have made the decision to apply the same requirements to EEA companies as we do to third-country companies. We judged that without such a change, there would be a risk of breaching the World Trade Organisation’s most favoured nation rule.
The practical effect of each change is that certain intermediaries who deal in securities will no longer be able to hold shares in their parent company where they are a UK-based holding company. This benefit will, after exit, be extended only to intermediaries with access to UK-regulated markets. We are providing a one-year transition for that change. Certain investment companies will no longer be able to benefit from some relaxations on controls on their distribution of profits unless they have access to a UK-regulated market. In addition, we will treat EEA-based credit reference agencies in the same way as third-country credit reference agencies after exit. Companies House will no longer be able to send the protected information that it holds on directors to EEA credit reference agencies and processors.
My officials have worked extensively with Companies House throughout the development of these regulations, and I thank them for their expertise. It is also relevant to point out to hon. Members that this has been done alongside ensuring that the UK’s company registry fully reflects the UK’s departure from the EU on exit day. That includes updating all relevant forms that companies use to file information, as well as updating guidance. That should be emphasised, because it means that companies will have certainty and clarity on what they need to do when the UK leaves the EU. We completed a de minimis impact assessment of the regulations, which shows that the overall costs to business are expected to be small.
As the Committee has heard, the regulations provide numerous technical changes to the operation of UK company law, and they respond to the reality of the UK’s leaving the EU. They are not overly burdensome for business and they will ensure that the UK has coherence in its approach to overseas companies. I therefore commend the regulations to the Committee.
Oral Answers to Questions
Fiona Bruce Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
I am very saddened that the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) is departing our midst. I know he has many pressing commitments and a very full diary, but if he stayed, he might get called. It would be very sad to lose the right hon. Gentleman’s pearls of wisdom.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Richard Harrington)
You are racing ahead, Mr Speaker; we had got so far behind.
My hon. Friend should know that we are strongly supporting the aerospace industry through our aerospace growth partnership, which includes supporting business with nearly £2 billion of public research and development funding from 2013 to 2026. The sector deal for aerospace includes £125 million of funding to support the electrification of flight, developing new aircraft technologies and transport concepts. I am sure that will be excellent for your future holidays, Mr Speaker.
Fiona Bruce
What plans do Ministers have to extend the Sharing in Growth scheme in the aerospace industry? It has helped Congleton business Senior Aerospace Bird Bellows to improve productivity and secure new orders. The company is very much looking forward to receiving the Minister on his planned visit to Congleton in March.
Richard Harrington
I am very much looking forward to seeing my hon. Friend on that visit. We are in dialogue with senior management at Sharing in Growth about the scope to extend the programme further, and that will continue ahead of the comprehensive spending review.
Draft Business Contract Terms (Assignment of Receivables) Regulations 2018
Fiona Bruce Excerpts(6 years, 2 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Kelly Tolhurst)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Business Contract Terms (Assignment of Receivables) Regulations 2018.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. This is the first time I have served on a Committee as a Minister, and I am extremely pleased to bring forward these positive draft regulations. I am also pleased that the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Sefton Central, is on the Committee, because he is a Medway person, too—we grew up in the same area. It is great that there are two people on the Committee who know Medway well.
Britain’s 5.7 million small and medium-sized enterprises are the backbone of the economy, accounting for more than half of turnover and 60% of employment in the private sector. Finance is the lifeblood of those businesses, yet many of them are denied by their customers the ability to access one particular finance option. That is the anomaly that the draft regulations will put right. In future, SMEs will, if they choose, be able to raise finance on their invoices more easily.
The most recent figures for asset-based finance show that total advances stand at £22 billion, of which more than £20 billion is invoice finance. Around half that is to large businesses, so invoice finance advances to SMEs amount to approximately £10 billion. In comparison, bank loans and overdrafts to SMEs were £165 billion at the end of 2017.
Invoice finance has real advantages—it is flexible, immediate and supports businesses to grow—so why is take-up so low? The answer is that many customers prohibit their suppliers from assigning invoices—or, more accurately, receivables: the right to receive the proceeds from an invoice. That assignment is essential for invoice finance to operate. Such restrictive terms are found in many purchase contracts. An SME supplier is typically unable to negotiate changes. If it wants a contract, it had better just accept the standard terms, otherwise the work will be offered to a competitor.
Why do those contract terms persist? Some such clauses are written as a general catch-all to prevent suppliers from subcontracting services. However, those standard terms are so wide that suppliers are equally prevented from assigning their invoices to finance providers. In other cases, customers may not want to deal with an invoice finance company. They know that the imbalance of power means their small suppliers are unlikely to act against them if they impose long payment terms or simply pay late. A finance company is a different proposition. Whether such onerous terms exist through inertia or deliberate intent, their effect is the same: they prevent suppliers from accessing the finance they need to thrive and grow.
The draft regulations will put an end to that situation for SME suppliers making routine supplies of goods and services. They will allow providers to offer invoice finance even where restrictive contract terms are in place, knowing that those terms will have no effect. The draft regulations do not require any contract to be redrafted, nor are they in any way retrospective. Existing agreements will continue to be enforceable, and the same standard drafting, including clauses prohibiting assignment, may still be used for contracts entered into on or after 31 December this year. Those clauses will simply have no effect. Therefore, the impact of the draft regulations will be felt gradually, as new supplier relationships are created. This is a simple mechanism with no compliance or reporting burden.
To offer invoice finance, providers will simply need to assure themselves that the supply contract was entered into on or after 31 December this year and that none of the exemptions apply—for example, that the supplier is not a large enterprise. The change will also unlock additional finance for existing clients where advances are currently restricted due to prohibitions on assignment imposed by some of the SME’s customers. The position for both supplier and finance provider will be simpler and more certain, which will help to create the significant benefits that are expected to flow from the regulations.
Two direct benefits are described in the impact assessment, which reflect the two elements of a typical invoice finance arrangement. The first benefit is a reduction in the discount fees charged to suppliers, which reflects the reduced risk that the finance provider will be unable to collect payment because the assignment was not valid. The annual savings to business from lower discount fees are assessed at £13.7 million. The second benefit is a reduction in the service charge based on turnover. That benefit is assessed at £46.1 million. Both benefits result from the reduced costs incurred by finance providers being passed on to SMEs in a competitive market.
Finally, there will be significant indirect benefits from additional finance becoming available and allowing suppliers to take advantage of new business opportunities. Those benefits are assessed at £84.6 million. All those benefits are calculated from survey evidence and follow-up research, as set out in the impact assessment. The overall outcome is a net present benefit to business of £966 million, which I am sure all hon. Members will welcome.
As with any intervention, it is important to ensure that the benefits do not give rise to unintended consequences. Acting to make contract terms ineffective is a powerful measure, which is typically used where there is an imbalance of power between the parties that cannot be corrected in any other way. After the consultation, and even after an earlier version of the regulations was laid, the legal profession raised concerns about the potential impact of the regulations on the use of English law. As hon. Members will know, English law is one of this country’s most valuable exports and forms the basis for contracts in areas as diverse as aircraft leasing, project finance and infrastructure.
We listened carefully to those concerns and my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Margot James), withdrew the instrument so that they could be properly considered. Following extensive discussions, I am glad to say that these regulations incorporate changes that meet those concerns. I thank all those involved from the City of London Law Society and the trade body UK Finance who have ensured that the original aim was met without putting at risk the position of English law as the leading choice of governing law for international agreements.
The regulations will set suppliers free to access invoice finance when they wish, without being prevented from doing so by their customers. They will do this while preserving the attractiveness of English law overseas and they will bring significant benefits, with a net present value to business of £966 million.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Sharma. Having heard the introduction to the debate, I draw hon. Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I am a member of an SME LLP firm, but it has had no involvement with invoice finance in relation to its own contracts during the whole of its existence.
John Stevenson (Carlisle) (Con)
Further to that point of order, Mr Sharma. I am also a partner in an LLP, but we are not involved in the discussions that the Committee is considering. I refer hon. Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
Freedom of Speech: Universities
Fiona Bruce Excerpts(6 years, 6 months ago)
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Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
This inquiry is one of the most important that we have undertaken in my three years on the Joint Committee on Human Rights. As we have heard, we received some very disturbing evidence. Free speech is indeed a foundation for democracy in society, and universities are places where many of tomorrow’s leaders learn how to explore ideas in a way that prepares them to engage in and influence wider society, so it is critical that free speech is secured in universities. A key part of all students’ education is the ability to engage in dialogue and contentious debate. Universities have a legal duty under the Education Act to secure freedom of speech within the law, both for students and for visiting speakers.
If we do not prepare students to engage in dialogue in an environment that promotes free speech, there is a serious danger that we will risk promoting extremism and factionalism within wider society. Only by understanding different views and beliefs and by, as one of our witnesses said, countering bad ideas with good ones, will we build community cohesion and break down prejudice and discrimination in wider society, which, at worst, as we know, can lead to violent disturbances within our local communities. That is something that none of us wants. Indeed, it is one of the purposes of the Prevent strategy. It is ironic that the strategy is in many ways defeating one of its key objectives in the way that it is applied at universities. I will come on to that in more detail shortly.
For the record, I will set the legal scene, which the Committee is now well versed in. Article 9 of the European convention on human rights states that,
“Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion.”
Article 10 sets out the right to freedom of speech and a right to,
“hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority”,
and this
“can extend to the right to say things which may...disturb the listener”,
and which the listener might find offensive or even shocking. Free speech is not an absolute right. There are limitations on it to ensure that it is not exercised in a way that causes harm to others by, for example, inciting murder, violence or terrorism or stirring up racial hatred or hatred for other groups, or if it is defamatory or malicious or constitutes harassment. We found that within university settings the inhibitions and restrictions on free speech went much further than that. A number of factors were limiting free speech at universities. I will summarise them briefly, and go into detail about some of them.
As we have heard, there were incidents of unacceptable intimidatory behaviour by protesters intent on preventing free speech and debate. Unnecessary bureaucracy was imposed on those organising events. There was some confusion about what the Prevent duty entailed; for example, some students were frightened about the possibility of being reported for organising or attending events, and of being investigated, as a result, as potentially involved in extremism, which might draw people into terrorism. There was considerable confusion about that.
Other factors were regulatory complexity and confusion, confusion over the Charity Commission guidelines, and unduly complicated and cautious guidance from the Charity Commission itself about what student unions could or could not do in organising events and permitting speakers to attend. Safe space policies were often incorrectly used. Indeed, we did not find the concept of safe space policies helpful at all. It was applied too broadly and vaguely. We found that student unions were inconsistent in the way they applied the regulations on allowing them to hold events at the student union. The different types of group might include faith groups, groups with non-religious views, or groups with views on the Israel-Palestine conflict, right-wing or left-wing views, pro-life or anti-abortion views, and views on transgender issues or Islamophobia. There were many minority views and beliefs—a huge swathe. University authorities’ oversight of the issue, under the legal duty to secure free speech that I mentioned, was inadequate. Another matter of concern was the chilling effect—an undercurrent of restraint among students, both as to their speech as individuals and as to the large number of events either not held at all or inhibited, and of which there was no report, although students wanted them to be held.
Members of the Committee are not aware of one reason why I was concerned to hold the inquiry, which is a personal experience I had at one university. I shall try, in giving examples, not to name the particular university, as I think that might be unhelpful. I had been asked to speak about work I had done in Parliament —so, ironically, it was all in Hansard—on sex discrimination in relation to abortion. I was speaking in a room slightly smaller than this Chamber. The back wall was entirely glass windows and on the other side of it was a large courtyard or quad. To my right was one pop-up banner describing the organisation that had invited me to speak—the university Life organisation, on which two small feet were depicted. After I began to speak about what I had done in Parliament, which is on the public record, a university official in uniform came into the room and said, “Your event is causing offence.” There was a startled silence in the room, particularly from me. The official said, “It is causing offence to the students who are sitting in the bar on the other side of the quad.” They could not possibly have heard a word I was saying. It could only have been the sight of the banner. I was certainly saying nothing unlawful at all. We came to a compromise in the end. The official suggested that if we drew the giant curtains across the back of the room, so that the students in the bar could not see what was going on, we could carry on with the event and I could finish my speech. I know that that is not the only time when there has been an endeavour to put restrictions on parliamentarians at universities.
I was concerned about the issue and pleased about the inquiry, because I think the chilling effect and unreported inhibition of speech is far wider than we recognise. Often the chilling effect inhibits students with minority views, and that emboldens students who want to silence or censor views they consider wrong or offensive. I was more convinced about the resultant chilling effect by evidence from Professor Adam Tickell, the vice-chancellor of the University of Sussex. He said he had been unaware of the scale of the problem:
“It was only in preparation for this session that I became aware of the cases”.
Those cases included students being interviewed by Prevent officers, students subsequently telling the student union president that they were afraid to speak their minds, and Muslim students saying they were afraid to go to their campus prayer room. That is evidence from one of our witnesses that there is more to the issue than the public have been aware of for some time.
I join the Committee Chairman, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), in thanking the Minister for the interest he has taken in the issue. He told the Committee that just as important as the evidence of restrictions is
“what is hard to measure: the large number of events that do not happen at all, either because organisers are worried about obstruction or because the overzealous enforcement of rules makes them seem more trouble than they are worth.”
He added that,
“some of this is quite difficult to gather evidence for.”
I thank the Universities Minister for the lead that he is giving, and for the fact that he told the Committee that he would hold a
“summit to thrash out not only where the responsibilities lie but to make sure that they do not cut across each other and in so doing achieve the opposite of what all these guidelines are meant to achieve, which is to promote free speech.”
I should be interested if the Minister would today update the House on what he is doing to take forward what he said, and how he expects to tackle the issue in the coming months. It has become clear to me as we have examined the issue that it will not be resolved purely by the publication of our report, however important the Committee may think it. We have highlighted an issue that will take considerable tackling by a number of organisations and bodies.
I want to talk in a little more detail about the Charity Commission.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
My hon. Friend makes a powerful case, and I am most grateful to the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), the Chair of the Committee, for the way she led the inquiry.
Does my hon. Friend agree that perhaps universities and, indeed, student unions could take a more proactive role and encourage debate, rather than waiting for debates to come up, and seeing whether they are lawful and whether they should go ahead? They could perhaps take a more overt stance. The range of issues debated in universities is often pretty narrow. I look at the range of debate here and the global concerns about the problems of youth unemployment or, for example, the situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo over the last 10 to 20 years, where 6 million people have been killed or died as a result of civil unrest and other disturbances. I rarely see debates in universities on these incredibly important matters. They tend to be confined, albeit on important issues, to a fairly narrow range.
Fiona Bruce
The hon. Gentleman makes a pertinent point, as always. I will refer back to it in a moment in relation to the Charity Commission’s guidelines. The actual wording of clause 43 of the Education (No. 2) Act 1986 imposes an obligation on university governing bodies to take
“such steps as are reasonably practicable to ensure that freedom of speech within the law is secured”
on both university and students union premises. I have written underneath, “proactive”. This is a proactive clause. It requires them to take steps to secure free speech, so I entirely agree. It does not help, for example, when, as charities, students unions have been told that they can devote resources to or campaign only on issues that further their charitable purposes. The Charity Commission has interpreted this—I think, and our Committee agrees —in a far too narrow way. The Charity Commission guidance for students unions indicated that it would consider it acceptable for charitable students unions to comment on
“street lighting near the campus”
because the issue affects students as students, and therefore fulfils their charitable purposes. The Charity Commission would consider it unacceptable for students unions to comment publicly on issues that do not directly affect the welfare of students as students, such as,
“the treatment of political prisoners in a foreign country.”
That is the Charity Commission’s own example, illustrating the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford.
The Minister told our Committee that the Charity Commission guidance should
“go further and facilitate the promotion of free speech. It should be giving students’ unions the permission to host debates about controversial issues and expose students to a wide range of viewpoints. That should be the core purpose.”
That is quite right. It is not just preferable that free speech is promoted and protected in universities. It should be a prerequisite for any university that is going to achieve its educational purposes. I am pleased that the Charity Commission has acknowledged as much this week and has announced in response to our report that it will create new guidance in this area. Helen Stephenson, chief executive of the Charity Commission said yesterday:
“charitable students’ unions, universities and other higher education providers can challenge traditional boundaries, encourage the free exchange of views and host speakers with a range of opinions, including those who might be controversial or divide opinion.
These activities are entirely in line with their aims to promote education.”
That is a pleasing response to our report.
Jeremy Lefroy
I believe this year is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx. He was born in Trier in Germany. He was effectively expelled from Germany because he was the editor of a newspaper that exercised the right of free speech. For those students perhaps slightly to the left of some of us here today, I point to the example of Karl Marx, who was the victim of university or town authorities in Trier, because he wanted to exercise free speech. From whatever political point we look at it, free speech is absolutely vital to secure the rights of individual citizens, as he was trying to do in that case.
Fiona Bruce
That is an excellent example. I hope it will also encourage students to the right of Karl Marx, because I have spoken to a number of students who have recently said, “I wouldn’t admit to being a conservative on campus.”
Our Committee concluded that the concept of safe spaces, having been extended to entire university campuses, is unhelpful. It is not only unhelpful. If minority views are supressed across the whole campus, but they are not views that are promoting terrorism or inciting the kind of activity I referred to earlier, the concept is actually against the law, impinging on the right to free speech under article 10 of the European convention on human rights. A number of students unions tried to argue in evidence to us that it was necessary to limit speakers who cause harm through speech—harm caused because people might find speech disturbing or upsetting. As our report says, however, this is counter or detrimental to free speech. Regarding safe spaces, we say:
“Whilst there must be opportunities for genuinely sensitive and confidential discussions in university settings, and whilst the original intention behind safe space policies may have been to ensure that minority or vulnerable groups can feel secure, in practice the concept of safe spaces has proved problematic, often marginalising the views of minority groups. They need to co-exist with and respect free speech. They cannot cover the whole of the university or university life without impinging on rights to free speech…When that happens, people are moving from the need to have a “safe space” to seeking to prevent the free speech of those whose views they disagree with. Minority groups or individuals holding unpopular opinions which are within the law should not be shut down nor be subject to undue additional scrutiny by students’ unions or universities.”
I hope that university authorities will take careful note of that.
On the Prevent strategy, we had quite some evidence. I want to reiterate what the guidance says. As our report states, under the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, the guidance states that higher education bodies,
“when deciding whether or not to host a particular speaker…should consider carefully whether the views being expressed…constitute extremist views that risk drawing people into terrorism or are shared by terrorist groups.”
Those are important words—“risk drawing people into terrorism or are shared by terrorist groups”—if a little wide, but the issue of terrorism is critical. The guidance goes on:
“In these circumstances the event should not be allowed to proceed except where”
the educational bodies
“are entirely convinced that such risk can be fully mitigated”.
That is the legal position, but I will also cite some of the evidence we received about that and about hate speech.
An organisation called CARE, Christian Action Research and Education, stated:
“One common occurrence is that certain speakers who are perceived as ‘extremist’ are being denied the chance to speak at universities, to discuss their ideas, and have their ideas challenged by others in an open debate. First, this drives any such ideas underground. Second, the definition of extremism, as identified in the Counter Extremism Strategy…is very broad, incorporates non-violent as well as violent forms of extremism, and does not necessarily relate back to the concept of terrorism. In his recent judgment in the case of Mr Salman Butt, Ouseley J confirmed that the Prevent duty is a duty to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism and does not refer to all forms of extremism…Nonetheless, no steps have been taken by the Government to confirm the correct interpretation and scope of the definition of what constitutes ‘extremism’ and its impact on the Prevent duty.”
Some student groups, for example, have been prevented from holding events because the Church from which the speaker comes is considered fundamentalist or, in other words, extreme. Such an individual has not the slightest intention of drawing people into terrorism. I ask the Minister and his colleagues to look again at the counter-extremism strategy to ensure that its broad definition of extremism, which has been used by some universities, is not used to prevent free speech at universities.
Hate speech results from the use of threatening, abusive or insulting words, or the displaying of written material that is threatening, abusive or insulting and therefore intended to cause the person harassment, alarm or distress, or to stir up racial hatred. Although that is the definition of hate speech, and, as we were told in evidence,
“it is meant to be used narrowly in relation to any speech that fulfils the particulars under the Public Order Act 1986…over time, the phrase has become embedded into everyday language to describe any statement that some may find ‘offensive’.”
At universities, there is an increasing tendency to conflate offensive speech with hate speech, which
“has resulted in a far greater willingness to countenance censorship.”
Several pieces of evidence to our inquiry showed that that was the case. As a result of those common misunderstandings, freedom of speech at universities has suffered. I would be grateful if the Minister looked at CARE’s evidence to the inquiry in particular, so that an appropriate application can be made in universities.
I will give a few examples of the kinds of issues that were mentioned to us in evidence. We were told of a university that introduced “emotional risk assessments” in December 2016 that were used in an “invasive and heavy-handed way”. They have resulted in the students’ association telling student groups
“what they can and can’t do and say”.
In some cases, all of a student group’s activities, including weekly meetings, events and emails, that were to be sent to outside students or speakers had to be approved in advance by the students association. That meant that one or two people in the students’association office could basically make the operations of that student group impossible. For example, they rejected events because they were “too provocative” and they would not allow discussions that made specific reference to the Manchester terrorist attack or Hurricane Gregory, in case those specific incidents of suffering caused upset.
Another group was not allowed to have a stand at a freshers’ fair unless it was unmanned. A group at another university was told that it had to provide the name of any invited speaker, the topic and an outline of their talk 21 days in advance of the event.
We were told that at other universities there was a culture not only of safe spaces and hurtful speech but of trigger warnings:
“Students are encouraged to catastrophise when they hear something controversial or challenging rather than to engage with new ideas robustly.”
That is hardly a preparation for the world of work.
An ethics society was told that it could not hold an event because it would be asking for volunteers during it, and that contravened university policy guidelines. On further inspection, it was found that no such guidelines existed within the union or the university. Another group was told that it would be refused affiliation with the students union on the grounds that it was
“violating union policies regarding discrimination and equal opportunity”,
but on reading the union policy, no such violation was found. Several groups, particularly pro-life groups, were prevented from holding events or exhibiting material at freshers’ fairs that, on further investigation, was found to be used in primary schools and in further education material.
There are real problems for many groups in arranging external speakers and organising events. The Alliance of Pro-Life Students said that,
“pro-life societies are often given undue burden to host events”
and are
“subject to mediations to which other societies are not”.
Humanist groups said that student unions and universities,
“repeatedly shut down expressive conduct deemed by them to be wrong, offensive, or harmful, particularly with regards to criticism of religious beliefs”.
Such groups told us that,
“student unions were making arbitrary decisions about the views to which students should be exposed.”
They say that “many student unions” do not have clear or coherent democratic policies in place, which means that voting in a certain way, or no-platforming, or getting
“safe space policies into official union policy is surprisingly easy. If unions had better guidelines for democratic policies, and their union officials faced actual sanctions for disregarding freedom of speech, the union, and therefore the university environments, would become both more democratic and more open to diverse viewpoints.”
As I have said before, the issue will not be resolved overnight. I am encouraged that the Minister is determined to address it. It is clear that since our report more instances have come to light. For example, a colleague on the Committee received an email from UK Lawyers for Israel this week that expressed a number of concerns about specific policies on university campuses, including ticketing requirements and restrictions on advertising. It says that, although our report mentions that some pro-Israel events were disrupted, that happens on many occasions. The impact of such disruptions can be not only burdensome regulations and requirements for future events; the cost, time and administrative burden, and the need to protect people from hostile protests leaves students who run such societies exhausted and put off from hosting events. In an echo of another of our comments, UK Lawyers for Israel said that universities must impose penalties on students who incite, encourage or participate in the disruption of meetings.
It is a very full report; there is much more to it. I thank the Minister for his interest and look forward to his response and future action.
Sir Henry Bellingham (in the Chair)
Hon. Members may be interested to know that I plan to start the wind-ups at 4 pm.
Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)
It is a great privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Henry, and it is a great privilege and honour to follow the introduction of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), who so eloquently presented the conclusions of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. I also pay tribute to the Committee members present—the hon. Members for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) and for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), who spoke so thoughtfully.
I am here because I am the Opposition spokesperson and therefore have to respond to the debate, but I hope that I also bring other things to it. Having long been a member of Select Committees in the past—particularly education Committees—I appreciate the importance of the evidence-driven process, rather than obiter dicta being floated out sometimes, to be massaged and expanded by the mainstream media. All politicians want to get our message across, and some of us succumb rather too rapidly to that temptation.
I also come to the debate bearing many of the tenets that I was taught, including the process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. Historians are told to look at those things, but students of many other humanities disciplines depend on them, too. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) for reminding us of the importance of the Enlightenment; the Scottish Enlightenment, in particular, played a part in that process. The classic statement of Enlightenment libertarianism—I will not quote it completely accurately—was by Voltaire and went something like, “I might hugely disagree with your opinions, but I will defend to the death your right to express them.”
Those are important principles. It is very good that the Joint Committee’s report, although it did not give us a great historical exegesis, went right back to some of those first principles and, importantly, to the Education (No. 2) Act 1986, which forms a useful context for its proposals.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham was absolutely right, and not in any way immodest, to say that the members of her Committee have a hugely broad area of experience. Inevitably, not all Select Committees can have that. From that point of view, it is incumbent on us all, whether in government or in opposition, to carefully examine what has been said. For my part, I think the members of the Committee have delivered an admirable synthesis, in fairly crisp and straightforward terms. With all those lawyers, it would have been very easy to get bogged down in lots of legal terms. The test is whether someone outside the legal world could pick up that document and find it useful, helpful and understandable. I think they could.
My right hon. and learned Friend talked about context. Context is important. We are all tempted, from time to time, to go off into flights of philosophical fancy and great principles, but we need to come back to context from time to time. She drew briefly on her time at university. I was at university slightly later than she was. I was at Oxford, which is always a little behind everybody else on some of its revolutionary activities. In fact, when I arrived in 1973, I found that we were in the process of occupying university buildings to get a student union—something that had been discussed and argued about some five years earlier in other universities—but I will let that pass.
Context is important. This year, we mark the 50th anniversary of two sets of activities—one involving students, the other involving free speech—that importantly changed our world. One of them, of course, was the wide-scale student protests in the 1960s. Baroness Bakewell, a Member of the upper House, only the other week presented a marvellous programme on television about the context of the French évènements in that respect, and how they changed French society. In that same year, 1968, Enoch Powell gave his infamous “rivers of blood” speech. Both those events still have resonance for us today when discussing what the bounds to student protests and to free speech should be. Those are important layers of context.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham was absolutely right to say that context changes the things that students, or the general public, want to talk about. Without disrespect to the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy), who is no longer in his place, I am suspicious of the idea that we can tell universities, “You should be talking about this, that and the other.” Students will talk about what students want to talk about. There may be more bread and butter discussed today at some points than there would have been when my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham and I were at university, but the crucial thing is that there should be spaces in which a broad number have that ability to talk. I am suspicious of the idea that we—particularly those of us who are perhaps rather more removed from their student days than others—should pontificate about what student unions should do, or choose to do. I think that way sometimes madness lies.
The report rightly talked about the potential dead hand of bureaucracy and inhibition. Sometimes, with the best will in the world, institutions and stakeholders get excited by the project and go ahead to develop things that sound thoughtful, but end up in an horrendous organigram, such as the one that my right hon. and learned Friend showed us. None of us is immune from that, but we need from time to time to cut away at it and, indeed, to make fun of it. When we were talking about bureaucracy I was reminded, as an historian, of the famous phrase in Philip II’s empire, “If death came from Madrid, I would be immortal.” That sense of bureaucracies or powers bringing those things to themselves and thinking that they have all the answers can produce that sort of position. It is reasonably clear where the boundary lies of breaching the right to free speech, and the example that my right hon. and learned Friend gave in that respect is a very important one.
I will touch briefly on the comments by the hon. Members for Congleton and for Brentwood and Ongar. The hon. Member for Congleton laid out well some of the ridiculousness of the hokey cokey of regulations. The particular account she gave of the curtains reminded me of the famous phrase in “Measure for Measure”,
“man, proud man,
Drest in a little brief authority”.
It happened to be a man in that case, and presumably it was on the occasion that the hon. Lady mentioned. Sometimes people get off on that sort of thing. While I welcome the Charity Commission’s response to the report, I do not think it is immune to that either. The examples that the hon. Lady gave reminded me—to take a medieval parallel—of scholastics trying to decide how many angels could dance on a pin.
The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar talked about rights and about the law. I am sympathetic to that, but we must all remember that the law itself is not an immutable concept. The laws, from time to time, disadvantage citizens in our society and need to be challenged. Some 50 years ago, gay people in this country were mildly celebrating the passage of the Sexual Offences Act 1967. Principles are not always the same. If we look up at the screen today, what is being debated in the other Chamber? Homophobia, transphobia and biphobia. We might have different views on the importance of those relevant to other things, but context changes things.
It is important that we have those things in mind. We have heard today that there is not a pervasive problem of freedom of speech at our universities, and that some of the press accounts of widespread suppression of free speech have been out of kilter with reality. The Committee members did not find the wholesale censorship of debate that media coverage had suggested. That is not to say that the report does not draw attention to a number of important factors limiting free speech, and there is inevitably real confusion about how regulations apply to student unions. That is why it was important that the Committee undertook its student union survey, which showed that 25 out of 33 student union officers said that restriction of free speech was not a problem at their university.
Gordon Marsden
I will not, I am afraid. I have little enough time to speak, so I will continue.
The chief executive of Universities UK recently said:
“Tens of thousands of speaking events are put on every year across the country, the majority pass without incident.”
It was a little curious that the Minister’s predecessor, the hon. Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson), repeatedly expressed concerns about some of the impacts of student-led activities, such as no-platforming and safe spaces, in—in my view—a slightly lurid fashion. There is a clear line between frank speech and what whips up and can specifically promote hate, or be abusive. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham touched on that.
It is also important that we consider the role of Government and other organisations in this process. The National Union of Students has a no-platform policy for a handful of racist, anti-Semitic and extremist organisations, some of which the Government themselves have banned. Is the Minister opposed to that policy? How clear does he need to be about which of those groups he wants to see on campus?
Earlier this month, as we have heard, the Minister set out some proposals and thoughts. I think he felt a little constrained about what he could say because of the views of his predecessor. Bringing together that group, as he did, is potentially a productive mechanism. Can he spell out some of the conclusions of the summit and, as importantly, who is to be held accountable for taking them forward? The Government must not try to micromanage free speech on our university campuses; some of the problems raised by this report need addressing, but they will not necessarily be addressed by micromanagement from Government.
Finally, I come to the implications. Academics of both right and left persuasions have always and often been arresting and controversial figures, so it is important that the broader questions about academic autonomy and freedom are recognised by the Government. Throughout the passage of the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, the Opposition were clear that the new Office for Students should not be a micromanagement process for this. In terms of this activity, what does the Minister believe his responsibilities are, as opposed to those of the Office for Students, in terms of drawing up guidelines? If they are too widely drawn, they will produce some of the problems we have heard about today.
This is an excellent report, and I commend it. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Camberwell and Peckham talked about the fact that the Committee had saved the Government a lot of time; I would also say money and possibly civil service time. Although I know very well that civil servants are loth to take anything simply as is, I suggest that the report could be a very important blueprint for solving some of the inevitable tensions and dilemmas in this area.
Industrial Strategy
Fiona Bruce Excerpts(6 years, 12 months ago)
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Greg Clark
I would be delighted to do that. It is a mark of the strategy that it points to the success of decisions made locally and having clear local leadership. There have been, and continue to be, discussions in Yorkshire on the best arrangement, but I am very happy to meet the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
I welcome the strategy. Siemens, which has a pioneering digital factory in Congleton, is one of the companies that has led on the recent “Made Smarter” review. Does the Secretary of State agree with the principles behind the review, and that priority should be given to upskilling 1 million industrial workers to enable digital technologies to be successfully exploited, and so put the UK at the forefront of the fourth industrial revolution?
Greg Clark
I do indeed, and I would like to put on the record my thanks to Professor Jürgen Maier, the head of Siemens in this country, and his team for producing that very important report. It is a good example of how digital technology affects almost every sector in the country. He has recommended a series of steps that we will implement in the months ahead and that will be of great benefit to the whole economy.
Oral Answers to Questions
Fiona Bruce Excerpts(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Greg Clark
The hon. Lady does not have it right. She should know—the science sector has welcomed this fact—that we protected funding for science during all the difficult years in which we were recovering from the financial situation that Labour left us. There was a huge welcome for the £2 billion increase, which is the biggest since 1979. In other words, that is bigger than what any Labour Government ever offered.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
Kelly Tolhurst (Rochester and Strood) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Jesse Norman)
The UK has the second largest aerospace industry worldwide, with strengths in some of the most technologically advanced parts of aircraft—wings, engines and advanced systems. The sector has annual turnover of around £30 billion and exports of some £25 billion a year.
Fiona Bruce
Leading aerospace part designer and manufacturer Senior Aerospace Bird Bellows in my constituency speaks positively of the support from the Government’s Sharing in Growth scheme, which it says will be key in helping the company to realise its ambitious growth strategy. Will the Minister join me in congratulating the company on its plans and consider visiting its factory in Congleton to learn more?
Jesse Norman
I absolutely join my hon. Friend in congratulating the company. I have visited companies benefiting from the Sharing in Growth programme and I would be delighted to go to see the one in her constituency.
Oral Answers to Questions
Fiona Bruce Excerpts(8 years ago)
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Jesse Norman
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that our digital infrastructure is critical to this country and its long-term economic and industrial strategy. I draw his attention to the report of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, which I used to chair, on BT’s under-investment in Openreach. If he thinks that there are specific questions to address, we should revisit them after he has seen the industrial strategy.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
Jesse Norman
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that this is a vital part of the economy. It is very important that more young people are brought into farming and given the chance to do this extraordinarily interesting and valuable pursuit. This country is highly food secure. The Government support new and young farmers through the increased basic payment scheme payments and are committed to increasing the number of apprenticeships in food and farming. I cannot resist adding that I hope that people will have a chance, in due course, to study agri-tech at the New Model in Technology and Engineering institute in Herefordshire.