My Lords, I shall say a few short words in support of this group of amendments. I pay tribute to the Minister for the courtesy and care that he has brought to the conversations and for the correspondence that he has shared with several of your Lordships.
I declare as interests my professorship at Queen Mary University of London and my membership of the Royal United Services Institute Independent Surveillance Review. On the university front, I have not been reassured about the practicalities of what the Government are proposing with regard to the universities on which I spoke at Second Reading, and I share the anxiety of many other noble Lords about freedom of speech within a university’s walls. I listened carefully to the Government’s case, but I am not persuaded that we need to shift from a voluntary approach to compulsion. By all means, strive to bring those universities which are laggardly up to the standards of the best; but we need to keep sharp what we already have—the scalpel of quiet, bespoke relationships between the authorities and the universities, rather than the mallet of legislation, however laudable the Government’s motivations in furthering the Prevent strategy.
I have to admit that the prospect of certain vice-chancellors in the dock for contempt has a certain delicious attraction to it—although, I hasten to say,
not my great friend and boss, the principal of Queen Mary University of London, Simon Gaskell. Universities must be very wary of overpleading that they are a special case—they genuinely must. None the less, the statutory road is not the path to take, as mapped out in Part 5 of the Bill. The defence of the realm is the first duty of the state—the first call upon the state—but here I think the state is in danger of overreaching, of taking a step too far, even given the magnitude of the very real terrorist threats that we are facing.