My—admirable and brilliant—noble friend Lady Williams is a co-signatory to that amendment and is going to speak to Amendment 14D. My noble friend Lord Norton of Louth, who unfortunately cannot be here, and the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, who is indeed here, also have their names to these amendments.
First, I thank the Minister again for the way in which he has tried to deal with the very many comments and complaints about the Bill. Major advances have been made. The most important, on which this amendment touches but does not major, is the agreement that there must be an affirmative resolution by both Houses before the guidance can take effect. That is a very important concession.
Amendment 14B deals with the preparatory work for the debate which will ensue when the resolution is put to this House and to the other House to bring the guidance into effect. What we say and what Amendment 14B provides is that there cannot be the debate on the affirmative resolution to bring the guidance into effect until at least 28 days after the Government have laid a report before both Houses containing what we would say is essential information in order for both Houses to be fully prepared to debate to best effect the guidance and whether to bring it into effect . We call this a common-sense measure.
The first thing to say is that it is abundantly clear that Part 5 has had very little coverage beyond this place. We heard earlier from the noble Lord, Lord Wilson, that the Cambridge colleges have only just woken up to Part 5 and the potential impact on them, and how they are all now riding very high horses, but very late in the day. Indeed, I have discovered exactly the same position in other parts of the university fraternity. There has been extraordinarily little media coverage of this extraordinarily important set of provisions. As a result, there is not, as one would have expected, the head of steam behind the reforms proposed from all round the House and intended to impact on the effect of Part 5 of the Bill.
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We heard earlier from the Minister about the consultation. However, that has been extraordinarily inadequate. It was launched before Christmas and, as a result, had no publicity and very few seemed to have been even aware of its existence. The fact that there were only 160 responses, as I think the Minister said, tells the tale. That is a derisory figure when one considers the breadth of this set of provisions. One should also not forget that this is not just about universities but that this guidance covers a whole range of institutions and organisations in different parts of our civic life, not to mention thousands of schools and so on. I repeat: 160 respondents.
The other thing is that the facts elicited in the course of these debates have been sparse, to be generous.
At Second Reading, my noble friend the Minister gave no facts or indeed argument on the representations made across the House with regard to Part 5 beyond saying that there was going to be a meeting the following Thursday. We heard about the 2011 review of Chapter 2 of Part 5 but have had nothing since, even though the world has changed dramatically since then. We heard about the 2014 consultation, which I have already referred to. We heard from the Minister about the 2013 report of the terrorism task force, but that was not specific to universities. It covered the entire range of our national life and did not get near the issues covered in Part 5—in particular, the enforceable guidance.
We have heard, including this evening, about student terrorists. I think the statistic was that 31% of those convicted here of terrorist offences had been students. That seems to me to be an utterly useless statistic. Were they terrorists before they went to university, were they terrorists as a result of going to university or were they terrorists as a result of what happened to them after university? We have not the very slightest idea. Nevertheless, I would be so bold as to suggest that going to university in this country, far from making terrorists, unmakes them. Universities are engines of moderation, truth, objective inquiry, tolerance and so on. The odds are—if one could ever measure this, and I am quite sure one cannot—that the statistics would show a radical effect on people going to university against their becoming terrorists. However, this statistic is trotted out as if it had any significance at all or gave any justification whatever to the extraordinary imposition in Part 5, with this guidance which has the force of law.
I am glad to see that I was mistaken in thinking that the good noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, had departed to his university—he is here among us, happily. Those of us who tabled this amendment are all convinced about this, and it is fair to say that more and more people are becoming convinced of it. Indeed, almost everybody who learns about Part 5, and the impact on universities in particular, says, “What? Are you serious?”. We are being rather modest in putting forward Amendment 14B because it simply requires the Secretary of State to produce a report to both Houses, 28 days or more in advance of the debates on the affirmative resolution to bring the guidance into effect, in order that all of us here and in the other place can at least understand better the background and information which are relevant to this very contentious and difficult set of issues. We say in the amendment, as your Lordships will have seen, that the report must include an estimate of,
“the potential direct and indirect impact of implementation of such guidance with regard to … the culture of such authorities”—
meaning universities—
“particularly as regards academic freedom and mutual trust … and … the cost and bureaucracy arising within the same pursuant to this Part”.
We had very eloquent statements from noble Lords in this debate and in the debate initiated by the noble Lord, Lord King, on the cultural impact of Part 5 and, in particular, the guidance: the effect on the relationships within a university; the impact on the trust that is the essential underpinning of a creative university, and so on. While it is not possible to gauge
with scientific precision what the direct cultural impact is likely to be, one can make a sensible and intelligent attempt at estimating the impact by methods well known to social science. Similarly, and more easily, the cost of the bureaucracy that will be spawned by Part 5 can be much more easily ascertained. The impact report referred to by the Minister does not deal with that at all: it is the cost to government that it deals with. Many universities are beginning to realise that the cost to them of complying with the guidance could be very considerable indeed. Some are talking about employing in a university two full-time people to police all this. Then there is the bureaucracy and all the effects of that.
We view this as a basic provision to help ensure that the debates, when they come, are able to be well informed and of the calibre that we know we can expect from this House and the other place. The information that would be brought forth by the report that is required by this amendment would be the oxygen of an enlightened and wise debate, and of the decision arising from it. I beg to move.