Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Sarah Owen Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 12th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab) [V]]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) and her heartfelt sentiments on behalf of students in her constituency. During the pandemic, students from Luton North have got in touch with me about so many of the worries that the Government have put in front of them. There was exam chaos last year, and students worry that they will see the same repeated again this year. They were sent back to covid-filled universities last September and have had to pay for accommodation that they have not been in because of the pandemic. Some universities have moved to permanent remote learning, for the same costs as an in-person degree. There have been missed graduations and freshers weeks, a growing sense of crisis in young people’s mental health, and all the rest of it.

This has been a hard time to be a student. But can the House guess how many students from Luton North have got in touch with me about no-platforming or the need to balance out the debate on anti-racism and anti-fascism? Zero. With everything that is going on at the moment—everything that is facing young people—how can this Bill be a Government priority?

One thing that people in Luton North do talk to me about is the impact of the Prevent duty on campuses and in our schools. Of those who reported being affected by Prevent, 43% felt unable to express their views or be themselves on campus. Only a quarter of Muslim students say they feel entirely free to express their views on Islam in university contexts. This means that Muslim students are less involved in student democracy, more likely to feel there is no space for them and less comfortable engaging in political debate on campus. That is simply not right.

Prevent is the real block on freedom of speech on campuses, but it is mentioned only briefly in the Bill’s 21 pages. Given how students, and Muslim students especially, feel that their freedom of speech is being restricted on campus by Prevent, I hope that the Government will change the Bill to help all students to feel more welcome on campus. Seriously: how can a Government talk about free speech when they actively seek to criminalise young people who talk and share opinions on issues that we should all be talking about, from Palestine to plastics in our oceans?

The Government simply cannot have it both ways or take people for fools. This Bill is not really about freedom of speech though, is it? It is about stoking a culture war. It is about enabling those who profit from hate, silencing young Muslim students and students who care about climate change. The Bill is nonsensical and hypocritical, like the Home Secretary’s attempt today to condemn the same sorts of racism that the Conservative Government have courted and continue to stoke with divisive Bills such as this and the upcoming Nationality and Borders Bill.

What it boils down to, ultimately, is that Conservative Members are worried—really worried—about the fact that even when they won a landslide victory in the election, only 22% of 18 to 29-year-olds voted for them. That is not because young people are a bunch of liberal, snowflake, red, left-wing, knee-taking, no-platforming work warriors who need to hear balanced debates and will then, all of a sudden, discover how to vote Tory. No: it is because since we last had a Labour Government, 11 years ago, they have seen their fees more than trebled and their education maintenance allowance axed, and most of them are stuck renting at extortionate cost with little prospect of owning their homes in parts of the country.

While we talk about values, young people see a Home Secretary obsessed with deportations and not their own safety. They see a diversity-bashing Prime Minister and a dog-whistle Tory party which spends its time insulting even our English national football team for having the audacity to speak out against racism and try to get food into the bellies of kids who are going hungry because of the Government’s shameful policies. No amount of so-called balanced debate will ever cancel out those facts, no matter how hard the Government try to punish young people in this country.

If the Conservative party really wants to fix its electoral prospects with the optimistic, dynamic, hopeful and yes, sometimes radical new generation of our country, perhaps it should stop stoking a culture war and just get on with helping those young people to live freely and securely and realise their ambitions, just as a Labour Government would do. Young people want and deserve hope, not hate.