My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 23 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Sikka. I said at Second Reading that there was a lacuna in this Bill, in that it did not deal with finance and money. Finance, of course, is what makes the world go round, and the scope for using money to limit freedom of expression and academic freedom is obvious. It hardly needs to be explained. So why would a Bill that addressed academic freedom not deal with this question of money and its potential abuse?
Quite independently of the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, in Committee I tabled three amendments trying to cover such aspects as the use of donations, the use of research grants and a couple of other matters which I thought were worthy of debate. Independently, the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, tabled an amendment much along the lines of the one he has just spoken to. As we proceed to Report, I have dropped mine, but the noble Lord has refined the drafting of his amendment considerably, and it is now a very good amendment and one that I think deserves a response. Sadly, in Committee, I do not feel it had quite the response or the engagement from either Front Bench that this important topic deserves.
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I said at the outset that there was a lacuna in the Bill in relation to finance. That is not entirely true, because if it is overseas money, the Bill is not silent. Clause 9,
which deals with overseas funding, inserts a new section that relates to many of the things that concerned me in Committee. For instance, new subsections (5)(a), (b), (c) and (d) list:
“by way of endowment, gift or donation … by way of research grant … pursuant to a research contract … or pursuant to an educational or commercial partnership”.
These are all to be monitored now by the OfS, with a view to assessing the extent to which the funding presents a risk to the matters in new subsection (2), which are, in fact, freedom of speech and academic freedom. So the principle that money and the influence of money needs to be, and can workably be, monitored seems to me to be established in the Bill where it relates to overseas funding, but the lacuna remains in relation to those matters in respect of funding that might arise domestically.
I do not think the noble Lord intends to press his amendment to a vote—that is a matter for him, of course —but the Government should be able to say something more than has been said so far, because these are very important issues and I do not feel they have been properly addressed. I, for one, am grateful to the noble Lord for bringing them back to your Lordships’ House for your attention on Report.