My Lords, this is probably the only appropriate place to raise this point. There was a debate earlier in which my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Smith of Finsbury—he may be on the Cross Benches but he is steadfastly a friend—and the noble Baronesses, Lady Fox and Lady Smith of Newnham, took part, about what the core functions of a university are and what its DNA is. I do not resile from what I said about the role of a university in the development of knowledge and the challenge to knowledge, but I would not for a moment suggest that that is the only function.
I come to the other thing that I think universities are fundamentally there for, because the students and student unions are so central to it. Universities are also the place where we see the transmission of knowledge between generations. They are the place in which we try to instil in students the methods best suited to elaborate knowledge and to challenge all spheres of knowledge, and to do so in a way that reflects the fact that it is a community. Those are also fundamental obligations of a university, and it would be very foolish if we were to neglect them.
The strength of the very word “collegiality” is that it means we believe that, in a collegial environment, people should not suppress the views of others, silence others or interfere with their individual rights. Apart from overcoming those negatives, it also cements together a community that has, if I may put it this way, a mutual obligation to proceed with respect. In my view, that is quite central to the DNA of a university.
I make these points because those frequently relatively young people—although it is a much more diverse age group now—are central to what we think about when we think about what universities do and how they should do it. Indeed, we have embodied in other legislation measures to deal with the quality of teaching to ensure that this part of what universities do is at the best standard that can be achieved, and we punish them by not letting them have gold stars or whatever if they fail to do it. Student unions are a part of that education provision, part of that community, and what we try to impose on them becomes extremely significant.
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I was looking at this having listened carefully to the noble Earl, Lord Howe, when I last raised the question of how things get policed. I hope he will not mind if I remind him of one of the things that he said. I was saying that if events taking place get out of hand, the police may decide to intervene. The noble Earl said, to paraphrase a little, that he did not really accept my argument. He continued:
“If an event is properly planned—which it should be, particularly if it is sensitive or controversial—its security implications should surely be considered in advance. If it involves a police presence, that consideration should surely encompass the cost of that police presence.”—[Official Report, 31/10/22; col. GC 43.]
I will come on to how that might impact events organised by or in student unions.
The notion that each institution has one student union is flawed. Of course they have student unions, but they also have a wide number of other clubs and societies which are part of that student union. In some universities, when you join the student union you are automatically enrolled in all the others as well, to give you freedom to get around and do all sorts of interesting things. I began to ponder who these people are who would engage in expert planning, particularly if it is sensitive and controversial. I want to share the extent of the issue that this provision would need to grapple with. I will start with a few universities—I will come to all of them in a moment.
At University College London, there are 300-plus such additional societies and clubs. At Manchester University, there are way over 400; at Leeds, way over 300; at Birmingham, way over 500. Newcastle is very poorly served in having only 70. Cambridge has way over 400, as I know the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, will be delighted to hear. Queen Mary University of London has over 500. Oxford says that its number is countless; I have done it a favour and counted them—I got to 540. King’s College London, to which several noble Lords have mentioned their affiliation, has way over 300. Its website enthusiastically mentions that many of them are campaigning groups and that it is quite right that students should organise themselves into groups that go out and campaign. That may mean they get into the sensitive areas that the noble Earl, Lord Howe, referred to in the speech I quoted.
If you extrapolate back correctly, take account of the number of students in all those universities and try to create a sum of how many of these student union groups and societies exist and would therefore be in scope of this legislation, the number appears to be 67,500. I may be wrong on some of the maths, although I like to think I am not bad at it. Let us assume that it is wrong by several per cent; it will still be way over 50,000 on any count. It is probably closer to my higher figure. The idea that all of them will be able to deal with the pressures to be put on them by this legislation is straightforwardly fanciful.
I appreciate that a lot of them will not be controversial at all. We always seem to come back to Cambridge in the course of this. I assume that the University of Cambridge Allotment Society will not pose enormous
problems most of the time, although it probably depends on what they grow and whether that is an issue. However, I have no idea what A Society of Ice and Fire (Iron Throne) does. I do not want to speculate, but I bet I will not like it if I ever find out. The Joy Luck Club appears to engage in activities which bring great joy to those who are its members, but not necessarily to anybody else.
I do not make these points to be completely frivolous, although I appreciate that they will be taken as being relatively frivolous. I am just saying that, if what we are saying here is that the whole student union apparatus is to respond to this, we have decided to climb Mount Everest. A lot of people do that—I know that they queue on it—but I have no great ambition to do it. With great respect, the Government will need to think very hard about what they believe students, student unions and all these kinds of bodies, which all exist and may well be doing all kinds of things, can do. They will also need to think about whether it is prudent on the part of a legislature to feel that the bodies that I have described can fulfil the role that the noble Earl, Lord Howe, described to us on Monday—namely, to have thought it all through, taken prudent decisions and come to a conclusion about how to proceed.
My final point is this: of course, it may be that all 67,000 of them will not conclude that they are going to do awful things, but it is still a very small percentage that will create a very large number. That, I am afraid, is something that we have not worked out at all thoroughly and that cannot be made to work through this Bill in the way that is described.