Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 31st October 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord. In this very short but interesting debate we have already seen the problem that the Government are essentially seeking to address—a failure of leadership in many of our universities—through legislation that, given the amendments we have seen today, I suggest will be very hard to implement.

I remain unconvinced that this is the right way to tackle what is undoubtedly a problem in our universities. I first came across this when meeting Professor Kathleen Stock, who was subjected to horrific abuse in her own university for simply saying that your biological sex cannot be changed by feelings of identity, which I think are quite unexceptional and certainly legal remarks. Many other women academics in universities have felt threatened and censored for the simple act of trying to engage in these kinds of debates, particularly in relation to women’s sex-based rights. Unfortunately, many universities have allowed abusive behaviour to go unchallenged.

It seems to me that, at the heart of it, there is a question as to whether, even at this late stage, we can look to universities to put their house in order. I think that that would be a much more appropriate way forward than seeking to implement what I am convinced will be wildly impractical legislation. Already, our very civilised debate over what we mean by free speech suggests that this will be a huge problem when it comes to implementation.

The recent survey by the Higher Education Policy Institute showed a distinct shift in attitude by students, who it says

“have a very different conception of academic freedom and free speech norms than earlier generations”.

It suggests that these may have

“swung too far in one direction, with relatively few students recognising the unavoidable trade-offs involved with ever-greater restrictions on legal free speech.”

HEPI has come up with a list of things that it thinks universities might take forward, which seem very sensible to me. They include:

“reassessing formal procedures, such as existing codes of practice … ensuring consistent good practice, such as balancing controversial speakers with others … giving students improved information on academic norms, including in freshers’ weeks”.

I still think it might be better if the OfS, HEPI and the universities were allowed to work this through together. I suggest to the Minister that, if I were him, I would delay the date on which the Bill came into force to give universities time to try to change the culture and atmosphere within universities. This would be a much more practical and effective way of going forward.

However, if the Government are determined to press ahead, they clearly need to answer a lot of questions about the practical implementation of what they are proposing and the guidance to be given to universities. This is the reason for my Amendment 25. The question is how far intimidatory tactics against people speaking in universities are to be allowed under this legislation. We have seen intimidatory tactics. They can take a range of forms, including open letters demanding that an academic should be sacked for what they have said, vexatious complaints, petitions to publishers demanding that work be withdrawn, campaigns of defamation and smears, demands to prevent an academic being platformed, attempts to prevent events going ahead by threatening trouble if they do, and disrupting events that do go ahead. The targets of these tactics are typically women who believe that sex matters and have the courage to say so.

One possible response to these kinds of attacks is to frame the attempt to silence as itself a form of free speech, but this confuses the right to protest with a right to silence others. Speech that is merely intended to silence the speech of others, far from contributing to knowledge and learning, narrows the scope of the educational sphere. I argue that to frame attempts to silence as equally valid speech ignores the educational purpose of the university.

The amendment would explicitly exclude attempts to silence the speech of others from the scope of the core “secure” duty in the Bill and would require universities to take positive steps to mitigate the effects of those exercising what has been described as the “heckler’s veto” without disproportionately affecting the right to lawful protest. It would also clarify that the use of what I have described as the heckler’s veto to silence legitimate debate and dampen academic freedom on campus is not in itself protected speech.

This is a probing amendment because I want to hear what the Government have to say about our concept of free speech, how far it goes and what is to be done with intimidatory tactics. However, I am still left with the sense that the Bill as it stands is unworkable and will be an absolute nightmare for universities to implement. If only universities had shown leadership in the last few years this would not have been necessary.