Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Debate between Michelle Donelan and Miriam Cates

Report stage
Monday 13th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Michelle Donelan]

With the leave of the House, I will speak on the non-Government amendments. New clause 1 seeks to improve transparency, especially in relation to foreign donations, and new clause 3 would place a duty on higher education providers as part of the promote duty to report information about foreign language, culture and exchange programmes and courses to the Office for Students and the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State would then be empowered to direct them to terminate the partnership or offer an equivalent if there were concerns about freedom of speech.

My hon. Friends are absolutely right to promote the importance of transparency of overseas financial arrangements, and we agree, which is why Government new clause 2 addresses those concerns. New clause 2 also requires the reporting of funding from certain overseas educational partnerships, including Confucius institutes, which addresses new clause 1 and the first part of new clause 3.

New clause 3 would have unintended consequences and place an unnecessary burden on the sector. Under new clause 2, there would be a financial threshold and countries such as NATO allies would be exempt. New clause 3 has no exemptions, which would mean that every single kind of partnership would be covered from the Turing scheme and third-year language students studying abroad with partner universities to important international research exchange programmes. The burden on providers to deal with that information would be disproportionate and would stifle the ability of our world-class universities to work with global partners on important research programmes.

The Government take the concern regarding foreign interference extremely seriously, however, which is why we developed a cross-Government programme of work to counter those threats, and we are continuing to work with providers to help them to understand the threats and respond. Government new clause 2 will help us to do that, and the Office for Students could utilise a range of enforcement powers to issue fines, close programmes such as Confucius institutes, or mandate universities to offer alternatives to students if that was necessary to secure free speech. As I said, however, new clause 3 would have unintended consequences.

Amendments 19 and 20 would provide that a non-disclosure or confidentiality agreement with the governing body of a provider did not mean that members, staff or students and visiting speakers could not speak freely. I stress that I fully support the spirit of this amendment; it is almost unimaginable to think of anything worse than suffering sexual assault and then being pressurised into being silent. I have been very vocal about the fact that our universities should never use NDAs to silence victims of sexual harassment, which is why I launched a pledge in January to end the use of NDAs. Some 66 universities are now signed up, 62 of which are in England, and three Oxford colleges.

We have a long way to go, which is why I am constantly talking to universities and working with Can’t Buy My Silence to call out those who have as yet failed to sign the pledge, but I know that a number will sign imminently. When it comes to the use of NDAs and sexual assault, the higher education sector has an opportunity to lead the way and show others what can be done.

We have also asked the Office for Students to impose a binding condition of registration on universities to ensure that they properly tackle sexual misconduct, which we intend to deal with that sort of behaviour. This would have teeth and it would mean that universities could be fined up to half a million pounds; they could even lose their degree-awarding powers. The ramifications would be big, and it would mean that the lawyers who developed those NDAs would be breaching the registration condition by doing so. We are the first Government who are prepared to tackle this issue, and I shall continue discussing with colleagues on both sides of the House all the ways in which we can tackle sexual harassment in universities, because that issue is very important to me and we will be doing more.

Amendment 17, which would widen the definition of academic freedom, is not necessary, because all the proposed new paragraphs are already covered by Government amendment 1, which will remove the requirement for academic freedom to be within an academic’s field of expertise. New clause 6 would add a new definition of academic staff, which I outlined in my opening speech.

New clause 7 and amendment 21 would change the definition of harassment in the Equality Act 2010 and under the Bill. I fully agree that there are occasions when universities have misapplied the Equality Act and have relied on it to wrongly shut down lawful free speech. There is both a subjective and an objective element as to whether harassment has taken place, and that should not be based on the views of just the complainant. Indeed, we saw a case last week where the University of Essex had to amend its policies following welcome pressure from the Free Speech Union. I assure hon. Members that once the Bill has passed, the new director of the Office for Students will ensure that providers are complying with the Equality Act as it is written, rather than overreaching.