In a written statement to the House of Commons this morning, Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, said the following:
I have written to colleagues… about my decision to stop further commencement of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, in order to consider options, including its repeal.
At present, my Free Speech Union colleagues and I are urgently trying to clarify what it is, exactly, Bridget Phillipson has done or is intending to do. She says in her statement that she has “written to colleagues”, but we’ve contacted numerous MPs on both sides of the House and no one has received a letter from the Secretary of State about the Freedom of Speech Act. I asked a press officer at the Department for Education if he could send me a copy of it, but he said the Department does not intend to publish it. I wonder which “colleagues” Phillipson has sent it to? Or if it actually exists? So much for the new Government’s commitment to ‘transparency’.
Nevertheless, it’s clear that Phillipson intends to do something to stop the Act dead in its tracks, which is a disaster. The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 was the one thing the Conservatives did in the last 14 years to defend freedom of speech. The reason the last government passed this Act was to address the free speech crisis in Britain’s universities (although it only applies in England). The Act does two things: it imposes a new legal duty on universities (and student unions) to uphold and promote free speech; and it creates two mechanisms to make sure they’re discharging this duty – a ‘free speech tsar’ in the Office for Students whom students, academics and visiting speakers can complain to if they think a university has breached their right to free speech, and a new statutory tort enabling them to sue a university if it’s flouted the new duty.
This decision gives the lie to the Government’s claim that it is committed to human rights. Freedom of speech is the most important human right of all because without it we cannot raise the alarm about any of our other rights being eroded. What it means is, the Government is committed to upholding those human rights it likes – such as Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the right to respect to privacy and a family life), which has prevented so many violent criminals and illegal immigrants from being deported – but not those it doesn’t like, such as Article 10 (the right to freedom of expression).
I don’t need to rehearse here the reasons why this Act is so necessary. Daily Sceptic readers will need no convincing that free speech now plays second fiddle in Britain’s universities to the need to protect ‘vulnerable’ students – fashionable identity groups like Muslims and trans students, but not jews and gender critical women, obviously – from ‘microaggressions’, ‘harassment’ and ‘discrimination’, i.e., hearing opinions they find disagreeable. But in case you aren’t aware of the full extent of the problem, see this Free Speech Union briefing on the subject.
I fear this brazen and shameless decision is just the beginning and the Government will attack free speech in countless other areas. Get ready for a Hate Crime Act in England and Wales, the criminalisation of ‘Islamophobia’ and an attempt to force newspapers and magazines to submit themselves to a state-controlled press regulator. I set out some more of these fears in a recent piece for Spiked.
The Free Speech Union intends to fight all these attacks on free speech, starting with Bridget Phillipson’s decision. If she intends to block those clauses in the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act that were due to be activated on August 1st, as per a statutory instrument laid in the last parliament, we will bring judicial review proceedings against the Government. Stay tuned.
If you haven’t joined the Free Speech Union yet, you need to do so now. It is clear from Phillipson’s announcement that this Government has zero regard for free speech. We need to band together and defend it, otherwise the Government will start picking off its critics one by one.
If you’re already a member of the Free Speech Union, you can contribute to our Legal Fighting Fund here.
Stop Press: Claire Coutinho, the Conservative minister who steered the Freedom of Speech Act through parliament, has written an excellent piece in the Telegraph defending the Act and decrying Labour’s act of vandalism. Worth reading in full.
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They fuck you up, these men are mad.
That is incredibly sad.
The Hull Daily Mail (Mirror Group) is obsessed with Covid above all else. Numerous very poor quality click bait articles appear each day, especially the online version, and gather many public comments (but very hit and miss which articles allow comments at all and comments are frequently removed as the editorial style is very pro-woke).
For a city with a reputation as being exceptionally down to earth and anti-authority, there are unfortunately a large number of Covid cult members who want lockdown and all the accompanying nonsense to continue indefinitely to protect them from their irrational and increasingly rabid fears (particularly of children and young adults).
That lockdowns could trigger suicides goes against the beliefs of the cult and simply closing the well used walkways/cycle paths at either side of the Humber Bridge has been generally welcomed as being a proportionate anti-suicide measure despite the huge inconvenience to other bridge users.
I live in a relatively small Scottish city and have lost 4 friends in the last 9 months to suicide. As noted, figures are not widely publicised in general for various reasons. However, there seems to be much reticence in any discussion of increases in suicide and attempted suicide in the mainstream media during the current ‘crisis’ regardless of the undeniable rise in self-harm being reported by many frontline services including the London Ambulance Service across the UK. Mention of the loss of the will to live seems to be neglected when listing the myriad of spurious symptoms attributed to covid.
so sad, I am so sorry for you, and for them. Sending love
Throughout Lockdown 1. Local Live (mirror group news) Online would usually publish one, two or even three articles daily along the lines of ‘womans body found at base of cliffs’, ‘man found dead in car on bridge’, or ‘well known publican found dead in house’.
Few details other than location would be given but the reports generally ended with ‘police say there are no suspicious circumstances but the coroner has been informed’.
The words ‘lockdown’ or ‘suicide’ were never used but to help the hard of understanding such items were often accompanied by an advert from The Samaritans.
‘Quarter of deaths may not have been due to Covid’ “new figures reveal” fucking Telegraph man, well the whole rotten corrupt system. We have been pissing into the wind for a year now sounding the bleedin obvious to anyone that cared to look. What a farce our country, and frankly species has become.
People literally jumping off buildings in record numbers, makes me sick.
I’m off to YouTube to look at orangutans. Good night all.
the worst thing is that this whole thing is mainly self imposed. Whenever I am online with people such as yourselves I feel like we are a majority, but then when I try to approach friends and colleagues with these views I find they are all utterly brainwashed.WAKE UP I say WAKE UP
Frankly I’m not sure how much longer I want to live amongst these stupid people
Even my closest friends who are otherwise sceptical and cynical told me they will vote Con on the 6th.
One is concerned that if she misses her ‘chance’ to have the jab when called that she won’t be able to go abroad for a hen do NEXT May! “If I don’t take it now will they punish me and say I missed my turn?”.
It’s terrifying.
I’ve always had a very low overall view of humans, yeah we can create great things but ultimately we are greedy, self serving, grubby little things. Try putting a single toy in a room with 2 toddlers and you will see human nature, we spend the next 15 years training them to share. It’s not in our DNA, nor would you expect it to be or our ancestors wouldn’t have survived, we form groups when it serves our interests.
I was raised to work hard, tell the truth and be honest in my dealings. Seems as much as I respect those views, very few people who end up in positions of power share them. More and more I’m thinking, why follow the ‘rules’ if it’ll leave me poor and powerless.
‘Miss her chance’? Fat chance! They’ll lock onto her like a guided missile until she succumbs.
I have of late, but
wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all
custom of exercises, and, indeed, it goes so heavily
with my disposition that this goodly frame, the
Earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging
firmament, this majestical roof, fretted
with golden fire—why, it appeareth nothing to me
but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapors.
What a piece of work is a man, how noble in
reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving
how express and admirable; in action how like
an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the
beauty of the world, the paragon of animals—and
yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust? Man
delights not me, no, nor women neither
Suicides can only be declared as a verdict by coroners court. There is a lag in figures, no doubt made worse by both Covid restrictions and increased volume of work through more suicides.
As a meaningful proxy, London Ambulance service tweeted in Nov they were responding to 37 suicides per day.
That’s an annualised amount of 13,500 in their catchment of 8m people.
If you extrapolate the rate of 13,500 for 8m out to 67m population it gives a figure of 113,000 deaths by suicide for the U.K. I believe it is likely that this figure may well be higher than the number of people who died FROM Covid.
Or to put that in Daily Mail headline speak:
“Suicide epidemic killed more people than Covid-19”
I think that figure was a rise from an average of around 24 a day in Greater London before the pandemic. A HUGE increase. Of course, thankfully not all of those attempts are successful – but as you point out – that is an awful lot of lost souls.
Did I hear somewhere that the Samaritans have been pointing out that the suicide rate has not increased during LD? I find it hard to believe, if so. Why would they parrot the narrative? Have they been given a large donation or something? I’d hate to denigrate a worthwhile organisation but I’m not sure they have come out of this smelling of roses.
Funnily enough, I was chatting yesterday to a friend who’s a fireman. He said that he’s never attended so many suicide calls in his time in the service. They’re coming at a rate of almost one for every four-day shift. When asked about claims that this is nothing to do with lockdown, his response was “bollocks”.
Unfortunately one of those suicides last month was my cousins daughter, 41, left husband and two kids. Depressed because of lockdown….