Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Lord Strathcarron Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 28th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathcarron (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a publisher, often of higher education academic titles, which increasingly are digital-only and therefore easier to take down or cancel than physical books. I will come on to the relevance of that in a moment. Luckily for us all, as I am the last seven-minute speaker, a lot of the points I wanted to make have been expressed very eloquently by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, so this is a very shortened version of my speech.

Although any encouragement of free speech is welcome, there is an element here of the Government giving free speech with one hand and taking it away with the other. For example, an academic may now be able to lecture on a controversial subject—say, genetic or, heaven help us, gender politics or identity, all of which would come under legal free speech. But if that professor, one of his or her students or the institution posted that online and somebody out there who read it suffered hurt feelings, as they are bound to, and quickly organised a Twitter mob, which is not difficult to do, the Online Safety Bill would classify the content as “legal but harmful”—what a minefield those three words are—and outsource censorship of it to Silicon Valley AI bots, in exactly the same way as the CCP outsources its censorship of WeChat and Weibo, the Chinese equivalents.

In Committee, I hope we will be able to future-proof the good parts of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill from the bad parts of the Online Safety Bill.

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Lord Strathcarron Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 31st October 2022 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Leicester (Con)]

First, I apologise for not attending Second Reading; I could not be here. I shall speak very briefly against Amendment 16 because I think it is very dangerous to leave out “controversial or unpopular opinions”. Newton had a particularly controversial opinion, Einstein too, and Galileo’s opinion on Copernican heliocentrism, which for you and I is the earth rotating daily and revolving around the sun, was met with opposition by the Catholic Church; he was tried under the Roman Inquisition in 1615 and spent the rest of his life in house arrest. To suggest that we remove the words “controversial or unpopular opinions” is, I think, very dangerous.

[Lord Strathcarron (Con)]

My Lords, I speak to my Amendments 17, 18, 19 and 21. We have already debated Amendment 17 at some length. I hope that Amendments 18, 19 and 21 are uncontroversial; I merely hope to tighten up and future-proof for anything that comes in the future. I believe that they address some concerns raised in an earlier group by the noble Lords, Lord Collins of Highbury and Lord Triesman, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, and I hope they prove agreeable.

[Baroness Thornton (Lab)]

I briefly say that I think the noble Earl has three things he needs to address in this group of amendments. The first is academic freedom, which has been referred to before. My noble friend Lord Triesman has brought to the Committee an amendment that deserves consideration, because I think it helps us. The second issue has created quite a discussion—what is the interface between the terms and conditions, the values and employment of an academic and their speech? I am not going to comment on that, frankly; the noble Earl is going to have to tell us what the Government think about that. The third issue, of course, is whether the other issues raised in this group affect the practicality and appropriateness of universities’ appointment procedures. I am not sure at all that that is the case. Those are the three issues I think the noble Earl will have to address, probably the next time the Committee meets.