My Lords, I wish to introduce Amendment 14. It touches on the kinds of concerns that the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, has just raised and it is, in my estimation, a kind of partner clause that I want to explore with your Lordships to the one introduced by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope of Craighead, at the very beginning.
One of the arguments I have tried to advocate to the Grand Committee is that, if this is to work at all, it must be felt to be under the ownership of the university and higher education world. For people to address a cultural problem, they need to get to grips with it. It is not about just processes and techniques—it is to do with very fundamental feelings. However many times references to academic freedom are made, if they are
not made in a way which aligns with how the academic world and the academic community understand the meaning of those words, it is unlikely to take root and will not have that cultural impact.
That is why I have raised the question, which was also raised earlier by my noble friend Lord Collins, of the UNESCO normative instrument. This was a worldwide UNESCO conference, which adopted a worldwide definition of academic freedom which had been promoted by the academic world, the very people we are trying to address, as a definition to which they could all assent and which they would all defend. I make that point because, if we are to achieve success in this, we certainly want them to adhere to it and defend it.
The work was invited by UNESCO of a body that at that time I had the great honour to chair, which was the Association of Commonwealth Universities, an association of universities literally throughout the Commonwealth. It was drafted—some bits have been cited by my noble friend Lord Collins already—in the United Kingdom and Canada, and went through a very long process to try to make sure that this was the definition of academic freedom which the world of academics would feel was theirs.
If we had gone to UNESCO slightly earlier, the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, would have been the Minister. If it had been slightly later, it would have been the noble Lord, Lord Henley. As it happens, it was just after the general election of 1997 and, as a consequence, it was a Labour Minister who spoke to it. I make that point because there was never a cigarette paper—I know nothing about cigarettes, but the Committee will bear with me—of ideological difference between us about this. There were some differences around the world about it, and one or two nations—only one or two—declined to sign it, much to the annoyance of the rest of us. Saudi Arabia declined on the grounds that it covered women academics as well, and it did not accept that anything should be a right or privilege for women academics—no rights to academic freedom whatever. If we had included a clause restricting it to male academics, Saudi Arabia would probably have signed it as well. I just make the point that this was as close to universal as you could get in academic life where, believe me, getting universal agreement is very close to impossible.
The merit of that is that it provides us with a definition of academic freedom. It may be said that there are other definitions, but this provides us with one that the academic world itself formulated, adopted, approved and, with the exception of people who did not want women to be covered by it, was accepted by everybody. I should probably add that Qatar did not like it either for the same reason, but none the less, all the rest of us did. I commend it to the Government because, if the Bill is to become law—we have expressed our anxieties about whether it is the best way forward, but it may very well do; it is government-backed legislation, after all—I appeal to them to try to ensure it brings along everyone, because short of that, its prospects in practice are very poor.
That is why I provided a small history. As it turns out, it was engendered in the Commonwealth, in institutions with which we are probably all very familiar, against the background of a set of values with which we are all familiar and opposed only by people who, if I may say so without being unnecessarily unkind, do not share some of those values at all. Aside from having the assent of the academic world and being still referred to and related to by it, it establishes in a way we would all want that if people want to get up within the law to make controversial, difficult, unpopular or any other kinds of propositions and speeches in the academic world, it is a global right to do so, signed off by the first signatory to it, the United Kingdom.