Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Matt Western Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 12th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

I thank everyone who has participated in today’s debate. The Bill uses a sledgehammer to crack a nut—so said my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Rosie Duffield) and the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper). As my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) succinctly put it, the Bill will result in legal protection for hate speech.

With this Bill, the Government are seeking headlines. The Bill is mostly about headlines, but of course Labour supports free speech. Labour is the party that has done more than any other when it comes to free speech—just look at our record. In fact, Labour introduced two significant pieces of legislation in this regard: the European convention on human rights, and the Equality Act 2010. Without exception, every one of my colleagues has risen to extol their support for free speech.

The Government are fooling no one with their claims for the Bill, as was laid bare by the contributions from my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) and my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), who chairs the APPG for students and who talked about the numerous attempts by successive Conservative Governments to use the free-speech dead cat. Many will have listened intently to my hon. Friends the Members for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) and for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols), who made it absolutely clear that this legislation would facilitate the likes of David Irving, Nick Griffin and others to spew out their antisemitic, racist hate speech on our campuses. My hon. Friends asked what hate speech will be allowed. Both called the legislation dog-whistle politics, over which the Government will lose control. What we have before us would be more aptly titled the hate speech protection Bill—a piece of legislation that would protect antisemites, holocaust deniers and people whose only aim is to cause deep hurt and offence.

The Government claim to be advancing the people’s priorities, but this issue is certainly not one of them. One would have thought that the Government would prioritise an inquiry into the covid pandemic; the greater number of challenges that the higher education sector faces; the impact of the pandemic on education, as we have heard; the mental health crisis; or the fact that violence against women is endemic. On the last point, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) asked the Secretary of State about his failure to address violence against women. She pointedly asked where that Bill is, but the Secretary of State remains silent.

My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) asked why the Government have not prioritised support for students throughout the pandemic, which has exposed enormous inequality. My hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen) spoke of the ongoing crisis in mental health on our campuses and asked why it is not a priority. Instead, the Government have manufactured a Bill to once again distract from their own failings. They claim that they have evidence and data, but as my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) said, the Government are in an evidence-free zone.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) said, the Bill is motivated by the cancellation on university campuses of just six scheduled events out of 10,000 last year. Four of those were cancelled due to incorrect paperwork, one was moved off campus, and the other was a pyramid scheme. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) asked, why is the Secretary of State so attentive to a virtually non-existent problem? Why was the Secretary of State not fighting his corner for the £15 billion of catch-up funding that was proposed by Sir Kevan Collins, rather than meekly accepting the £1.4 billion pittance? He would rather focus on six, or truly two, cases where people were not heard on campus.

The Bill is a charter for hate speech. Many people, including my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana), reminded us that the Minister for Universities, the hon. Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan), was unable to deny that the Bill would create a legislative safeguard for holocaust denial. Why are we devoting our attention to a Bill that provides legislative backing to help holocaust deniers, racial supremacists and other preachers of hate gain special access to university campuses? The simple truth is that the existing legislation—section 43(1) of the Education Act 1986, the Human Rights Act 1998, the Equality Act 2010, the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, which includes Prevent duties, and the Higher Education and Research Act 2017—already covers the issues that the Bill seeks to address. The 2017 Act established the Office for Students and states that the governing body must take

“such steps as are reasonably practicable to ensure that freedom of speech within the law is secured within the provider.”

My hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter) questioned why, despite those existing powers, this Bill seeks to create a range of new obligations on higher education providers and to give the OfS new powers to fine an institution.

My hon. Friends have questioned throughout the new tort enabling individuals to seek compensation through the courts, which will result in universities and student unions having to spend more significant time and money fighting legal battles against vexatious and frivolous claims. What is the unintended consequence? Institutions and student unions will naturally become risk averse and avoid inviting speakers for fear of financial repercussions if they are subsequently cancelled. Remember that many HE institutions and colleges are actually quite small—maybe 2,000 or 3,000 students—and will certainly not be able to cope administratively or financially with the additional burdens placed on them. The result will be fewer speakers, fewer debates and an overall reduction in free speech.

Then there is the threat to academic freedom with the inclusion of a new qualifying concept of

“within their field of expertise”.

Perhaps the Minister would elaborate on how academic freedom will be limited in practice and on who would decide. Increasingly, and I have to agree with the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), this begins to sound like the McCarthyism that started in the US in 1950s, but it is McCarthyism against our university sector. As we have heard repeatedly from Labour Members, this is a Bill that claims to safeguard, yet perversely will have the reverse effect in numerous unintended consequences. The idea that this Bill could actually facilitate holocaust deniers to speak on campus should itself send a chill through the public consciousness. Likewise, it would enable other anti-science brigades to hold court on campus. Perhaps I could paraphrase the late Donald Rumsfeld, and suggest that there may be intended unintended consequences. That is to say that the Government may not have fully thought through the forms and scale of damage to the higher education sector, but it seems they would not be dissatisfied with the turmoil of litigation and the financial impact they have unleashed, because this is the precursor to their attack on the sector.

Finally, let me turn to the Office for Students and its central role. If we needed to understand what was going on here, we could do no better than start with the appointment of the new chair to the supposedly independent OfS. I know the Prime Minister is a recent convert to the love of dogs, but appointing his poodle? Of course, one of Lord Wharton’s first acts was to make an £8,000 donation to the Conservative party, which is two months’ pay from his two-day-a-week job. Now we have what many are describing as an “Office for Stooges” overseeing higher education, and that is how free and independent speech will be in future. It is a body whose purpose now is to do the Government’s bidding, particularly when central to this legislation is the appointment of a tsar for free speech and academic freedom. That is chilling—one person with all those powers.

I will be voting for our reasoned amendment. Given that there is no serious evidence to suggest there is a problem with freedom of speech on our campuses, instead of addressing the urgent problems faced by students and higher education institutions, the Bill is yet another case of the wrong priorities from a Government who seek to divide rather than unite. I invite the Minister to explain why the public should trust this Government when it comes to free speech. After all, this is a Government who shut down Parliament illegally—this place, illegally—as well as a Government who interfere with the independent selection of members of parliamentary bodies and the selection of museum trustees. They are even a Government who tell the National Trust not to explain the history of certain of its properties that were funded on the proceeds of slavery. That is sinister.

The Government should drop this Bill and get on with addressing the urgent needs of the country, where people are more concerned about how they are going to pay their bills this week and this month, and where inflation is ripping through people’s hard-earned income, with an economy that has become so distorted and so riven by inequality in the past 11 years that we the people were more vulnerable to the pandemic even before the Government managed to mismanage the crisis. The public simply want good government and a Government who understand that politics is all about priorities, and that is why I urge all Members to vote for our reasoned amendment.