Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Jess Phillips Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 13th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman is educating me. I have similar concerns in my constituency and across Birmingham. In recent weeks and months we have seen a huge resettlement of people from Hong Kong, and I want children to feel completely and utterly safe in their school environment.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

The hon. Lady is right that a lot of Hong Kong citizens have come to the UK, and I embrace them all. I set up the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which has co-chairs on the left and right from 25 countries and many other members from Parliaments around the world, all of whom agree that the Confucius institutes pose a genuine threat. The fear factor means that many students of Chinese origin will not take part in debates because they genuinely fear the repercussions for themselves and their families when they go home. We cannot overestimate the power of organisations that represent a Government as intolerant and dictatorial as the Chinese Government. The UK Government have been slow to act on what is now clear evidence.

My right hon. Friend the Minister said the Bill will deal with the situation, and that the Office for Students will be able to take action where necessary, but I would like the Government to reserve that power to themselves as they understand the security issues in this narrow but very particular area.

[Sir Iain Duncan Smith]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. He and I are both members of IPAC, and we have seen all this ourselves. Colleagues on both sides of the House are involved in IPAC, and there is compelling evidence of the Chinese Government’s growing influence on British academia through various organisations. Many do not recognise it. We have had meetings with Russell Group universities and individual colleges—I will address one in particular—in which we have explained this. Many had not really thought about it but, on reflection, realised there was a problem and that they had to start diversifying. One or two arrogantly refused point blank to admit or even accept the situation.

Jesus College, Cambridge has been incredibly deliberate and arrogant, which is why the Government need to go further. The Jesus College Global Issues Dialogue Centre received a grant of £200,000 from the Chinese state in 2018 through its National Development and Reform Commission. The Jesus College China Centre also has close financial and organisational links with the Cambridge China Development Trust, which is funded by the Chinese state. The CCDT donated £80,000 to the Jesus College China Centre over three years, and they share the same director. CCDT funding has been used to fund the Jesus College China Centre’s doctorships, scholarships, administrative support and seminars.

Jesus College received £155,000 of funding from Huawei in 2018. We have banned Huawei from our telecoms system because it is a security risk, yet it has set up a huge centre in and around Cambridge. For what purpose? To get in through the back door.

The GIDC’s white paper on global technology governance claimed an equivalence between the Chinese Government’s mass online censorship regime and the UK Government’s attempts to eradicate child abuse online—that is the key. The same paper falsely claimed that Huawei had freely shared all its intellectual property on 5G technology, leading the college to be accused of “reputation laundering.”

To those who say that money does not have an impact, I say, “Oh yes it does.” When money is repeatedly on offer, it tends to bend institutions towards the idea of having that extra money. I understand their concerns and their need for financial support, but the Government need to take this seriously.

The Chinese Government are committing genocide and using slave labour to produce goods in Xinjiang, and technology derived from UK universities is being used to spy on those slave labour camps. China is also using slave labour in Tibet, and it is imposing itself and locking up peaceful democracy campaigners in Hong Kong.

We rightly talk of free speech and the importance of our young people developing an instinct for argument, debate and balance, but these are lost to China and Chinese students, who are fearful when they come here. I accept that the Government think they have this covered, but I wish they would look again.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton enormously on tabling new clause 3. If the Bill is not tightened up to that degree, many of us on the left and the right of politics will ensure in the other place that these abuses cannot happen. The lives of Chinese students and Chinese people more widely remain our responsibility. If freedom of speech is the subject of our debate, we should cry for how damaged and destroyed it is elsewhere.

[Jess Phillips]

It is an honour to follow the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith). I fear that Cambridge University will not come out well from my speech either.

The debate is about freedom of speech on campus. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson) pointed to six cancellations—in my view, that is six too many—but I am going to talk about the silencing in non-disclosure agreements, which thousands of people are suffering from.

We know that the data on violence and abuse, and certainly on sexual violence, is a tiny fraction of the reality, but even that data shows that millions of pounds are being spent on this issue. The amendment tabled in my name and that of my hon. Friend and near neighbour the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western), would stop young men and women—including university staff—being prevented from speaking about their experiences on campus. That is what this is all about, isn’t it? It is about people being able to talk about their lives, experiences, beliefs and freedoms on campus. Currently, we are all sitting by while that section of the community, who may have been raped on campus, bullied, harassed or racially abused, can be silenced by that very institution and cannot speak about it at all. I am going to talk about those people.

Horrendous examples of silencing have been reported in the press. Brave women have spoken out even though they know the risks. According to one student, her university imposed a “blanket gagging order” on her after she alleged she was violently raped by another undergraduate. The victim claimed she was warned she would be expelled if she went to the press to report this violence or to talk about the college procedures. That gives you a clue as to where some of these people are from, because I said the word “college”; most other universities do not say that. The non-disclosure agreement was imposed. Apparently, the college had tried

“desperately to convince her not to complain”

and she had

“lost count of the members of staff who tried to silence, scare, threaten and undermine”

her.

According to an investigation by the magazine Elle, a student alleged she was sexually assaulted and then endured terrible treatment from the university relating to her claim of violence. Post-graduation, she complained to the university about how it had handled her situation. She was eventually offered £1,000 compensation, without any admission of wrongdoing, and with a non-disclosure agreement to prevent her from talking about it. The student, exhausted by her experiences, signed the NDA.

[Dr Lewis]

rose—

[Alicia Kearns]

rose—

[Jess Phillips]

It does not seem very feminist, but I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman.

[Dr Lewis]

I have not heard of this case before. Did the student not go to the police? If she did, what happened?

[Jess Phillips]

I almost wish for the right hon. Gentleman’s sake that I had taken the other intervention. Has he seen the figures on police rape recording and reporting? In the first instance that I was talking about, the individual absolutely went to the police. Of the 66,000 women—I am speaking only about women now; there will have been more—who came forward and said that they had been raped last year, a charge will have been faced in about 600 of those cases; and then look at the number of convictions. Are we expecting our institutions, our workplaces, our university institutions not to have a role to play in supporting people when that has happened? As I am sure the right hon. Gentleman know, the balance of probability has a different relation to civil law than criminal law, so the idea that if a woman did not go the police she should not be allowed to complain to her institution is not one that I recognise and it is not one that this House recognised when we set up an independent complaints system. However, what often gets said to women when they come forward to their employer, to their institution, is, “Why didn’t you tell the police?”

[Alicia Kearns]

I rise to urge the hon. Lady to name the institutions, because this Bill is about freedom of choice and of speech. I know that if I were a 17 or 18-year-old girl choosing university again, I would actively choose not to attend colleges or universities where I knew they might force an NDA on me if I was raped.

[Jess Phillips]

I will absolutely come on to naming some of those institutions. As I said, this was found by Elle magazine, which is collecting this data, unlike the Government at the moment. The article said the student claimed this arrangement felt

“worse than the assault—Dealing with this abuse of power was far more traumatic. It was emotionally exhausting and humiliating.”

Earlier this year, the Express took a day off from talking about Princess Diana and its investigation revealed that more than 3,500 cases of assault were reported in 78 institutions in the UK in the last five years. The figure consists of confirmed cases of sexual violence and disclosures made by both staff and students pending investigation. The 135 freedom of information requests sent to every university in the UK also revealed that many do not record figures of sexual assaults, so the overall number is likely to be much higher. So it is, “Just don’t record it and then it doesn’t happen.”

In 2020, a BBC investigation found that over 300 NDAs were used by universities in student complaints between 2016 and 2020, and that almost a third of all universities in England had used such deals in these circumstances. The probe discovered that universities had paid out £1.3 million on these deals, although the true scale is thought to be much larger. The campaign Can’t Buy My Silence was started by the brilliant and formidable Zelda Perkins, once an assistant to Harvey Weinstein and someone who had an NDA imposed on her related to his crimes, and Professor Julie Macfarlane. Their campaign has survivors’ testimony reporting that NDAs had gagged them from speaking of their experiences with family or loved ones, or even their therapists. I pay tribute to them and the work they are doing alongside the Minister, whom I know speaks to them. However, like me, they agree that legislation is necessary to tackle this.

So far, 66 universities have signed the Government’s pledge. I made this speech on Second Reading and since then the Government added “looking at non-disclosure agreements” into the violence against women and girls strategy, which was published late at the end of last year. I stand here in complete respect for the Minister. She has sought to do what she can to improve the situation. She has worked with the campaigns that I have talked about to get universities signing pledges. She is working with the Office for Students to look at regulation and at what needs to happen if these things are breached. Every Member of Parliament will have had to try to get a regulator to do something about their bad cases, and we are here with universities signing “pledges”. I do not know how we are going to know whether they are breaking their pledge if people have been gagged.

So far, 66 universities have signed the Government’s pledge. That is great, but why haven’t the others? I encourage every university to do this. There are over 130 universities in the UK. What about those students? What about their right to speak out? As the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) pointed out, she would want to hear about this. I am not going to list all the universities that have not signed it, but here are some: the University of Cambridge, King’s College London, the London School of Economics, the University of Wolverhampton and the University of Sunderland. That is just to name a few. Perhaps it is taking time and perhaps they are getting around to it. I very much encourage them to do it.

Just to show the House what I am talking about, I have an example here of one of these NDAs. This is the kind of thing that students are asked to do. It is not necessarily called a non-disclosure agreement, and that is a way out of this; the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) and I often challenge organisations when they say they do not have NDAs, because we have them in our inboxes and they call them something else. They will call them a “confidentiality agreement”. In lots of cases in universities we have seen the growth of “no contact arrangements”.

I will read this agreement out—this is from the university. It says, “We recognise the sensitive nature of the allegation involved. In consideration of our duty of care to both parties, we have therefore concluded that in the interest of both parties a non-contact arrangement is required.” This young woman who had been raped was told, exactly as the person accused of raping her was told, that she had to stay out of certain places; she could not go to certain things at certain times. She was told that she, “Is not to enter the building”, that her, “Fob access will be disabled” and that she is, “Not to enter the building unless for tutorials and classes notified in advance.” She is told, “Fob access will be disabled unless we have had advance notification”—this is a rape victim being told that she has to report to a guard so that she can go to her classes. She is also told, “You are asked not to make any information about these allegations, the police investigation or the safeguarding arrangements that we have made available on any form of public media”—so she should not talk about this document. Finally, she is told, “Evidence of repeated breaches of this arrangement and/or a serious breach of conditions—entering an embargoed building or publishing material in the press—will result in your expulsion.” That is from one of the finest universities in the world.

This is about people’s silence, but not just their silence; it is about their movement, their freedom and every element of their freedom of expression being stopped. Yet there is nothing in the Bill about freedom of speech, freedom of expression or freedom to study. There is nothing that the Government are proposing to do or to put in legislation. I simply do not understand why they would not have taken this opportunity to do something.

I met the Minister last week and, as I said, I do not doubt her total and utter commitment. Incidentally, she said earlier that “legislation of this nature can spur culture change.” Yet she told me last week that legislation is not always the answer—[Interruption.] I will take the intervention, by all means. No? Okay. She also explained to me that the Office for Students is looking at regulation to, for example, take away the status of a university if it is guilty of a breach. I responded—and I say again—that the idea that a rape victim who has signed a non-disclosure agreement will take down Cambridge University is the stuff of cinematic hopeful glory. I will believe that when I see it, which everybody in this building knows will be never. Why would we want to push universities and victims into that position? Why would we not legislate to stop the use of non-disclosure agreements?

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I do not want to spoil the flow of my hon. Friend’s incredibly eloquent speech, but non-disclosure agreements not only apply to students but are used extensively with staff. When we have discussed this issue before, the argument has been that there is sufficient employment law to deal with these matters. There clearly is not, because it does not reflect the balance of forces between employer and employee and the delays that take place. Surely we must legislate to scrap NDAs altogether, and the first step could be the inclusion of my hon. Friend’s amendment in the Bill.

[Jess Phillips]

I absolutely agree, and the amendment clearly covers staff being able to talk about their experiences. The Minister cited a member of staff who felt compelled to leave their employment because of what the Minister rightly pointed out was bullying. Had that member of staff signed a non-disclosure agreement, the Minister would never have been able to talk about them, and nor would that particular employee of that particular university. We would not even know what had happened. Had a non-disclosure agreement been signed in that case, which was, I believe, at the University of Sussex, the Minister would not have had her helpful example.

I took part in a debate on the television the other day about freedom of speech. A Government Member of Parliament, who I like and respect, turned to me and said, “The thing is, Jess, that no one can be forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement”—I just said my own name. Is that allowed? I don’t have to refer to myself as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley?

[Dr Lewis]

It was a quote.

[Jess Phillips]

Yes, that’s right.

That Government Member said, “You can’t be forced to sign”, but that is to totally misunderstand the power imbalance. Someone might have worked hard and be the first in their family to go to university. They might have studied and done everything they could, because they wanted to go and make something of themselves. They might get into an institution that they are proud to say they are from. The fact that they could be raped on that campus by another student and complain, but then be threatened that they will be expelled if they speak out points to an enormous power imbalance. It is something that this House should legislate on for the sake of freedom of speech.

I welcome the Minister saying that she will take the proposals away, listen and perhaps do something in the House of Lords later in the process, but under this Bill, without our amendments, if a woman or a man, whether staff or student, is raped on campus, that person’s freedom of speech will be completely and utterly denied on campus and outside, and we would do nothing about it. Freedom of speech surely has to mean freedom of speech for all.

[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?

--- Later in debate ---

[Miriam Cates]

My right hon. Friend is right: this Bill is an important marker for universities, which will be forced to recognise that these are not specific isolated issues, but that there is a culture change that needs to be addressed across our whole country. We are also seeing it in other countries in the world, particularly America.

I support the amendments to remove the restriction on field of expertise, and I also support Government amendments 3, 4 and 6 to 10, which will ensure that higher education providers cannot require visiting speakers or hosting bodies to bear some or all of the costs of security. This will prevent no-platforming by the back door. As my right hon. Friend the Minister has already said, if universities have a physical safety and security issue on campus, they should urgently address the root of that.

On safety, amendment 18, in the name of the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western), would compel the Office for Students, when considering a free speech complaint, to be mindful of the right of students to feel safe on university campuses. I have no doubt that the amendment is well meant, and I listened carefully to his arguments, but I fear that it would further embed the culture and attitudes that have led to the chilling effect on free speech and that have made this Bill necessary.

In the amendment, as on campus, we see the conflation of physical safety with intellectual and emotional comfort. Students should of course be physically safe, and higher education institutions have a duty to follow health and safety law, like all other organisations, but I suspect that is not what the amendment is getting at. Universities should absolutely not be cultivating an atmosphere on campus where students believe they are or should be free from emotional and intellectual discomfort. Just as our bodies must go through training, challenge and discomfort to become physically fit, so our minds must experience challenge, discomfort and sometimes even offence to become stronger, more resilient and more wise.

In the recent book, “The Coddling of the American Mind”, the authors describe “anti-fragility”, the idea that young people’s brains must be exposed to challenges and stresses, or they will fail to mature into strong and capable adults able to engage productively with people and ideas that challenge their beliefs. Nowhere is it more important to understand the concept of anti-fragility than in our universities, where institutions are cultivating minds that will become the thought leaders of tomorrow. Since our universities act as an incubator for wider public culture, we will fail to uphold freedom of debate in this country if we fail to uphold it on campus.

Freedom of speech is the bedrock of democracy. As a recent New York Times editorial put it:

“Ideas that go unchallenged by opposing views risk becoming weak and brittle rather than being strengthened by tough scrutiny.”

We saw the impact of that cancel culture in political and social debate during covid, where damaging, un-evidenced, ineffective and wasteful policies went unchallenged. If we value the kind of rigorous debate that upholds democracy and ensures the best policies are produced, we must not allow this concept creep of the term “safety” on campus.

Despite levelling up, Brexit and enormous economic challenges, this is possibly one of the most important Bills making its way through Parliament, because our ability to unite and level up in this country is threatened by the culture on campus. The starkest division in British society—not only in voting behaviour, but in social values—is between graduates and non-graduates. The trend towards a homogenous worldview in our higher education institutions is exacerbating this division. Instead, we need our universities to be places where it is the norm for competing ideas to co-exist and to be openly interrogated and challenged by evidence.

[Jess Phillips]

I want to challenge the idea that university students will all be walking like lemmings into the light unless we do something about it. At my university, the right hon. Jack Straw, who was then a Labour MP, was banned from the student union—I forget why. He was the only person it banned, and I walked through that door past the plaque banning him, and I am a Labour MP now. I think the students are probably going to cope with some of this.

[Miriam Cates]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. She gave a passionate speech, and I fully support the many things she is doing to uphold women’s rights, but this is needlessly being made a left/right issue. Many of the incidents we have talked about today are about those on the right being cancelled, but it is much wider than that.

[Jess Phillips]

I have been cancelled many times.

[Miriam Cates]

I am very sorry to hear it. The hon. Lady absolutely should not be. What I am trying to say is that this is a much wider issue than the particular incidents that have made the headlines, and some deeper culture changes need to take place. That will take time, and we need to do a lot in schools as well.

I very much support the Bill. Hopefully it can narrow the divide that we see in society. I very much support the Government amendments, which will do a lot to protect freedom of speech.