My Lords, I have put my name to Amendments 104, 105 and 115, which seek to protect universities and other further and higher education institutions from being bound by this part of the Bill in the context of an academic function and protection of freedom of speech, and to Amendments 107 and 109, which seek to exclude from Schedule 3 to the Bill certain universities and other colleges in England, Wales and Scotland. I do not think that this provision applies to Northern Ireland. I hope that the Minister will correct me if that is not the case.
The Bill seeks to put the Prevent programme on a statutory footing and I suspect has a greater impact than the Minister is willing to recognise. I have read carefully the letter which the Minister wrote to Members on making universities subject to the duty, which included a lot of statistics in relation to the number of people convicted of al-Qaeda-associated terrorist offences. I make one observation in relation to those figures. They do not necessarily indicate that the students were radicalised at university. There is evidence of terrorist organisations using universities to develop young people to be significant terrorist leaders because terrorism requires not just snipers and bombers but leaders, managers, logistics, procurement and all sorts of things, and that is the kind of skill you can pick up at university, so I think the issue is much more complex than is suggested.
Looking at Prevent on its own, the definition of terrorism includes non-violent terrorism, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, said. I am a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the problem as I see it is that these amendments are designed to address a threat to freedom of speech and all the consequences that would follow from that. I will speak of those consequences, in part from my experiences as a chair at a university, albeit an Irish university, and as a former university academic. I taught for 20 years in a university. During that period, we had several terrorist bombs. We lived daily with the terrorist armed threat, particularly in relation to our students who were members of the security forces and the police. It is profoundly important, as we contemplate the unintended consequences that might result from this clause, that we do not politicise our universities in a way which would make them the target of attacks such as that on Lee Rigby and other attacks, such as bombings and suicide attacks. I do not say that to be scaremongering, but because it is profoundly important that we recognise
that the war that is being fought against democracy is a war which is changing its tactics. There is a lot of evidence that it will move much further on to our territory.
The function of a university in educating its students includes the provision of safe space in which students can debate and discuss very sensitive issues. My experience has been that, very often where issues are particularly sensitive, students can almost be afraid to engage with them. They need that space and the recognition that it is right to engage with these issues. I think of my experience in trying to teach constitutional law to students in Northern Ireland. One half of the class sat on one side of the room and the other half sat on the other side of the room and there was to be no meeting of minds about what I was trying to teach them. There was a terror of articulating any views lest that be taken back to somebody and consequences might follow. It is vital that students develop the confidence to address and to challenge issues, to test propositions, so that they can take a greater part in the debate within and without the university and, when they leave university, in constitutional governance.
That is where we are now in England, Wales and Scotland. We need people who have been exposed to challenging argument and have the capacity and the confidence to think and to articulate views which are the product of reasoned judgment rather than bias and prejudice. Although we may think we know what we are talking about when we speak of terrorism, some of yesterday’s terrorists are today’s world leaders. What does that mean for our understanding and what does it mean for those in universities who contemplate non-violent political action against democracies or systems of law in other countries which they are articulating in their own university? Are they to be regulated by the universities because they may be perceived as possibly supporting terrorism? How will the universities know the answer to that?
We have to ensure space in our universities for debates. The JCHR says in its report that,
“universities are precisely the places where there should be open and inclusive discussion of ideas. Broad terms such as ‘extremist’ or ‘radical’ are not capable of being defined with sufficient precision to enable universities to know … whether they … risk … being found to be in breach of the new duty”.
The JCHR talks of the inhibiting effect of the Bill as,
“lecturers and students worry about whether critical discussion of fundamentalist arguments, or of the circumstances in which resort to political violence might be justified, could fall foul of the new duty”.
The noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, spoke very articulately on the definition of extremism. It is not an exclusive definition. It refers to opposition to British values, including democracy and the rule of law, but it is not exclusive. Universities will have to work out what other values are included in this definition. Even the chief constable of the Greater Manchester Police, Sir Peter Fahy, has expressed concern that this will leave too much discretion to the police when they are trying to deal with very difficult situations. In effect, the Bill will force them to make decisions when they are conducting policing operations which are more political policy decisions than operational policing decisions. That analogy also applies to universities.
The National Union of Students, echoing calls by Universities UK and others, notes that any statutory guidance applying to universities needs to appreciate the particular freedoms of speech appropriate to an academic context, including allowing students and staff to speak freely on controversial issues. That needs to be retained in order to prevent the chilling effect on university campuses whereby people become wary of discussing difficult issues. Ignorance, prejudice, discrimination and unfounded fears can be the unintended products of restricting freedom of speech. Paradoxically, they can play their part in encouraging individuals to the cause of fundamentalism and even violence. We have seen that across the world.
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As the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, said, universities are required under Section 43 of the Education (No. 2) Act 1986 to,
“take such steps as are reasonably practicable to ensure that freedom of speech within the law is secured for members, students and employees of the establishment and for visiting speakers”.
The JCHR report states that that duty includes the duty,
“to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, that the use of any premises of the establishment is not denied to any individual or body of persons on any ground connected with the beliefs or views of that individual or any member of that body, or the policy or objectives of the body”.
Some 18 university vice-chancellors and others have today written to the Times, articulating the fact that universities are already supporting the Government’s Prevent strategy. They say:
“Universities are at their most effective in preventing radicalisation by ensuring that academics and students are free to question and test received wisdom within the law”.
They rightly ask, as does the JCHR, how the Bill will relate to their existing duties and codes of practice concerning freedom of speech and academic freedom. How will the two provisions be interpreted together? It seems to me that this measure has not been thought through properly. The Minister, Mr James Brokenshire, was unable to reassure the committee that this new duty was not about restricting freedom of speech.
I know that the Minister here has written to noble Lords giving an assurance of change to the draft guidance that was issued. I want to say a brief word about that draft guidance. I speak regularly in universities, colleges and other places. Such is the pressure on my time and such is the pressure on the time of most of those who go into universities to do these kinds of things that one does not have time to prepare in advance and very often the context is one in which things are moving rapidly. I do a lot of work on conflict resolution and things can change rapidly in certain areas. Asking people to produce papers in advance to be scrutinised in order to determine whether those people can come is not consistent with the principle of freedom of speech. Anyway, an outline provided at whatever stage by a university might not reflect the lecture that is actually delivered and it might be conducive to terrorism. That would leave universities in a very difficult position because if they became aware of it, and they are required to monitor, they would then have to ask themselves, “Do we stop
this?”. Alternatively, you get the creation of blacklists of people who are not allowed to speak in universities. The situation becomes profoundly difficult, particularly regarding people from countries where there has been serious terrorism, who have worked through different stages of their lives. You ask them to come to our country where freedom of speech is upheld and yet you impose these kinds of conditions.
What about those who are asked to speak? I think particularly of victims of terrorism who come not to produce speeches but to tell their story. Very often there is a risk that those meetings will be hijacked by those who seek to promote terrorism. Nothing is simple. Are groups going to be driven off campus if the university becomes risk averse because of the new law, leaving those students who participate in a much less safe place because the existing university practices and protections will no longer apply? It is not as if universities are not under a duty at present. They are, they recognise it and they give effect to it.
I want to finish with a few words from the National Union of Students. It says that freedom of speech needs to be retained in order to avoid the chilling effect that would prevent difficult or controversial issues from being discussed because of perceptions about the requirements on staff. Staff are supposed in law to have protections that will not put them at risk of losing their job or at risk of disciplinary action if their lecture material takes them into areas that could be perceived as possibly being conducive to the promotion of terrorism. They need to put things before students which students need to discuss. There is an art and a science in how you present material to students in those situations. Lecturers, and young lecturers in particular, must be able to develop their techniques.
This new statutory duty should not be made applicable to universities. The Bill should be amended to remove universities from the list of specified authorities and to exempt the exercise of academic functions from the application of the duty.