My Lords, I am pleased to support the amendment and to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, who, as she noted in Committee, joined the Joint Committee on Human Rights just as I left it. In Committee, I reminded noble Lords of the concerns raised across the House during the Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill about the application of the Prevent duty to higher education institutions. As we have heard, the present amendment does no more than call for an independent, authoritative review of how the duty now operates in those HE institutions. This would respond to concerns raised more recently by a range of organisations, including, as my noble friend Lord Dubs said, the Home Affairs Select Committee. These concerns include: possibly discriminatory impact; the question of the adequacy or otherwise of the training given to academics; and the human rights implications, echoing earlier concerns of the JCHR.
In Committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, said that,
“we welcome discussion about how to implement Prevent effectively and proportionately, but … we consider blanket opposition to the duty unhelpful”.—[Official Report, 25/1/17; col.762.]
As we have heard, the amendment no longer proposes blanket opposition. Surely, in order to have a well-informed discussion, as called for by the noble Baroness, it makes sense to have an independent review of how the policy is operating, as called for in the amendment, to inform that very discussion. I can understand why the Minister opposed the original amendment, even though I disagreed with her, but I can see no justification for opposing this much more modest, and I hope helpful, amendment as a basis for the discussion that she said the Government would like to see.