My Lords, Oxford is well represented today. I declare an interest as a fellow of All Souls College. I find this a genuinely difficult issue. I am supportive of the Government’s general objectives in Part 5; far more supportive, I think, than some of the speakers who have addressed noble Lords this afternoon, particularly in the earlier debate.
It seems to me that the starting point has to be that there is a disturbingly large number of people out there who are prepared to take violent action for ideological and religious reasons. There is an even more disturbingly large number of people who are prepared to encourage or to condone such violence. For me, the most shocking part of the appalling events in Paris were not the attacks on the journalists and the kosher supermarket by deranged Islamists, it was that a minute’s silence for the victims was unenforceable in many French schools, because of sympathy for the murderers and their supposed cause from students and, presumably, their families. This demonstrates, I think, that in France there is an alarming failure to understand the basic principles of a liberal democracy; a democracy which protects the freedom of religion—rightly so—of those who refuse to recognise the basic rights of others.
My starting point is that the Government are rightly determined to prevent such developments here; developments which breed religion-inspired violence. Having said that, I share the concerns which have been expressed this afternoon about the impact of these provisions on freedom of expression and academic freedom in universities. My concern is very similar to that of the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald of River Glaven, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy. It is that the duty which the Bill will impose is very difficult to reconcile with the very idea of a university whose primary role is to encourage academic debate and dissent. I think that a code which can be enforced by legally binding directions is far too blunt an instrument in the context of a lecture hall or a seminar room. If you try to wear a policeman’s hat and an academic gown at the same time, you are unlikely, I think, to perform either task adequately.
The Minister’s helpful letter to noble Lords on this issue makes the point that academic freedom is not absolute, even in a university. The Minister is absolutely
right: the law already restrains freedom of speech, in universities as elsewhere, through the law of defamation, restrictions on threatening or abusive words or behaviour, and prohibitions on support for proscribed organisations. Universities have no exemption in that context, but this Bill would impose duties that are far more extensive and far more destructive of basic academic freedom than anything which is contained in current law.
I would prefer universities to be excluded from Part 5, but would be much reassured on this difficult subject if the Government would support Amendment 105, in the name of the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister of Burtersett, Lady O’Loan, Lady Buscombe and Lady Sharp of Guildford, or something like it. Their amendment would write into the Bill the protection for freedom of speech currently contained, as your Lordships have heard, in Section 43(1) of the Education (No. 2) Act 1986. I note that, in the Minister’s letter to noble Lords, he says that the duty under the Bill,
“is in no way designed to cut across the importance of free and open debate”,
particularly in universities. Good, I am very pleased to hear that. But then let the Bill say so expressly, to provide reassurance to the many good people in universities and elsewhere who are very concerned, and rightly so, about this issue.