The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, sends his apologies for an unforeseen family emergency, so I will formally move Amendment 5 and speak to Amendments 7, 8 and 38 to 41.
Given that these originate with the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, noble Lords can be assured that they are pragmatic and constructive amendments that will not necessarily detain the Committee for terribly long. Their aim is simply to make clear that universities should be allowed to move events around the campus without cancelling them, on the grounds that it should be reasonable to move a controversial and possibly noisy event so that it does not occur, for example, next to an exam hall at exam time. It is reasonable to move an event so that it happens on a part of the campus that makes event management easier or so that it does not conflict with other events at the same time.
Some people may argue that these flexibilities might mean the surreptitious or indirect cancelling of events, but other parts of the Bill address this concern. Indeed, to pick up the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, made earlier, in fact they may make it easier to invite people and expand the number of speakers invited to campus, knowing that these flexibilities exist. Per the rest of the Bill, universities and student unions would remain liable to sanction if they had in fact cancelled an event, not merely moved it, and the Office for Students would be able to respond to a complaint.
In a nutshell, these practical amendments that we hope the Government might consider as the Bill progresses would simply provide sensible if narrow discretion to universities and student unions to decide where and when events happen.