My Lords, I have a little to go.
Perhaps I may end in this way. The motivations of the Government are probably very decent, proper and understandable, but the way in which they are going about them is extremely naive and in many respects barbaric. Let us imagine that, before a person can speak at a university, notice for 14 days has to be given. A sketch of the content of that speech has to be produced. Just imagine how three people, all of them now dead, would react to that were they alive. One would be Bertrand Russell; another would be Bernard Shaw; a third would be a 30 year-old Winston Churchill. Do you think that they would have accepted the invitation? Do you think that they would have felt themselves bound by that stricture? It is a situation which, at best, is ridiculous and, at worst, can be extremely dangerous and counterproductive.
Most Members of the Committee will have heard at some time or another quoted the immortal words of John Philpot Curran, who in 1795 said, if I remember rightly:
“The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt”.
We can, by overemphasising vigilance, destroy the very thing that we seek to protect.