My Lords, I should probably have declared an interest when I spoke earlier, not just as the master of Pembroke College, Cambridge, but as the chair of the trustees of the Cambridge Union Society. It is not a student union. It has been a place of free speech since 1815 and continues to be so. The student officers of the Cambridge Union Society regularly invite highly controversial speakers with whom there will be substantial disagreement among the student body, but the whole point is to hear views and debate them. That is how these things ought to happen.
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I have a lot of sympathy with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, that universities are not just about the growth and development of knowledge, wisdom and understanding, and the exploration of ideas. That is not just what universities are about. They are also about helping students to learn about life, to learn about being part of a community and to learn about how to live, work and play with other people as part of that community. That is also a crucial part of the learning that comes from a university experience, and we should never forget that.
Having said all that, I absolutely understand that there needs to be a duty in the Bill—if we are going to have the Bill—to promote and facilitate free speech placed upon student unions. However, I much prefer the wording set out in the amendment by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, to what is in the Bill as it stands. It usefully places the duty of free speech on student unions but in a slightly less prescriptive form than what is in the Bill itself. I ask the Minister to go away and think about whether that could be done in a rather better way than appears at the moment to be the case in the Bill, bearing in mind that we accept that there should be a purpose of free speech embedded in what student unions are all about.