Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Julian Lewis Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 13th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michelle Donelan]

Many countries have worked with their university sectors to enhance the choice on offer. For the first time, the Bill will give the OfS the power to act if free speech is in question, so it is radical in that sense.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I appreciate that the provision is mainly about free speech in UK universities, but does the Minister share my concern about the proposed £155 million gift from the billionaire chairwoman of a Vietnamese company to Linacre College, Oxford, a distinguished graduate college, on condition that the name of the college is changed to that of the chairwoman? Her company is extremely close to the Vietnamese Communist Government, where there is certainly very little freedom of speech. The Privy Council has to approve the change. Are the Government taking a view on the matter?

[Michelle Donelan]

I have recently been alerted to this issue and I am actively investigating it. I will update my right hon. Friend in coming days.

Government amendments 3 and 4 and 6 to 10 make provision on the payment of security costs for events. The amendments place a duty on higher education providers, colleges and student unions not to pass on security costs unless in exceptional circumstances to secure freedom of speech within the law. The Government want to put an end to the practice of no-platforming by the back door, raised by many Members in Committee, including my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings.

I said then that I was listening, and the amendments address the concerns. We have seen reports that a student society faced a £500 security bill from Bristol University student union to allow the Israeli ambassador to give a talk, while charging nothing to allow his Palestinian counterpart to do the same. The Union of Jewish Students has reported to me that some Jewish societies have even been billed for security costs for having stalls at freshers’ fairs. That is outrageous. If a university has a culture on campus in which security is required for inviting routine speakers, it has a culture in which intimidation, threats and violence are seen as acceptable. That does not constitute promoting free speech. The solution is to stamp that unacceptable culture out and stop student societies paying the price for those who break the law.

Government amendment 5 will change the coverage of college student unions, often called junior and middle common rooms. It makes it clear that the Bill does cover the activities of JCRs and MCRs, thereby clarifying the position.

Government amendment 11 will make it clear that the OfS is not required to make a decision as to the extent to which a free speech complainant is justified if that complaint is then withdrawn. Government amendments 12 and 15 set out how publication under the scheme will work in relation to the more general publication provisions recently inserted into the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 by the Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022. In particular, the Bill provides for absolute privilege against defamation claims arising from publication of OfS’s decisions under the complaints scheme, whereas the general provisions give qualified privilege to other publications. The absolute privilege matches the approach taken by Parliament to the complaints scheme run by the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education.

Government amendments 1, 2 and 16 will remove the express limitation on the definition of academic freedom that it covers only matters within an academic’s field of expertise. Once again, the Government have listened carefully to Members who raised issues in Committee, including my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton and my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings.

The Bill marks the Government delivering on our manifesto pledge, while listening and strengthening the Bill throughout.

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[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?”

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[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.

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[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.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

rose—

[Sir John Hayes]

I can see that my right hon. Friend is about to make an erudite intervention.

[Dr Lewis]

You can always hope, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Does my right hon. Friend not feel as I do that the interventions that he has just taken show that perhaps the diminutions on free speech have already spread into other areas of legislation rather further than he and I would like them to have done?

[Sir John Hayes]

I agree entirely, which is precisely why this Bill is so welcome, but it needs to be part of a bigger programme of work by the Government to do what I described earlier, which is to unpick some of the legacy of the dark days of Blairism and the impact that that has had on all kinds of aspects of our wellbeing. My hon. Friend is right. This Bill is significant, but modest, so let it be the beginning of a crusade to establish freedom as the default position across all our legislative considerations in exactly the way—with erudition and diligence, matched by experience—that my right hon. Friend illustrates.

Free speech is complex and, in the words of the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington, may be seen as an abstraction, but if it is an abstraction, it is one that is essential for the wellbeing of our free society, for it is at the very heart of what an open society is all about. The ability to say things which, as I said earlier, alarm, disturb, or even shock, and hear things with which we disagree is the very nature of what good universities are all about. I fear that that is jeopardised by some of the thinking that permeates universities, particularly university leaders and managers. For example, Professor Ahmed also spoke of

“issues to do with race, with transgender, and with Israel and Palestine on which they were simply unwilling to say what they thought”––[Official Report, Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Public Bill Committee, 7 September 2021; c. 13, Q22.]

people fear the consequences of doing so. It is not just those issues, although those are notable among the list of things that people now regard as beyond the scope of free and open debate.

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[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.

[Dr Lewis]

rose—

[Sir John Hayes]

But before I do so, I will happily give way to my right hon. Friend.

[Dr Lewis]

My right hon. Friend is so kind. He has just given a terrible example at the extreme end of the spectrum of intimidation and restriction on free speech, but does he share my concern about the paranoid issuing of so-called trigger warnings or alerts, which are meant to protect students from hearing anything that they might find in the least discomfiting or disturbing? How does that prepare them for going out into the real world, where they are, whether they like it or not, going to hear things that are not to their liking? They will be under-prepared for that terrible ordeal.

[Sir John Hayes]

Almost every part of the canon of our great literature now seems to come with a health warning. From “Moby-Dick” to “Jane Eyre”, we are told that books are desperately dangerous for young people to read. That this is happening in schools and, amazingly, in universities is almost beyond belief. Snow has turned to ice: they are no longer snowflakes, they are in deep freeze, those people who dare not even read Austen, the Brontës or George Eliot—of those three, I strongly recommend George Eliot, by the way, but let us move on before I get into any more literary considerations.