Labour’s General Election victory last July filled me with pessimism about the future of free speech in the UK. But has there been a change in the Government’s attitude to free speech as a result of US pressure? An unlikely statement from Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson this week suggests this may be the case.
After the University of Sussex was fined a record £585,000 for failing to uphold freedom of speech, Phillipson said that free speech and academic freedom were “non-negotiables” in universities and “robust action will be taken” if they are not upheld.
“If you go to university you must be prepared to have your views challenged, hear contrary opinions and be exposed to uncomfortable truths,” she said.
The Office for Students (OfS), the independent regulator for higher education in England, launched an investigation because of the controversy over Sussex University’s dismissal of senior academic Professor Kathleen Stock in 2021 after she was accused of transphobia. Professor Stock had faced protests on the campus after publishing a book on gender identity, an experience she told the BBC was like a “surreal anxiety dream“.
Bridget Phillipson also said:
We are giving the OfS stronger powers on freedom of speech so students and academics are not muzzled by the chilling effect demonstrated in this case. Through our Plan for Change we will restore the integrity of our universities as rigorous centres of intellectual debate, sparking new ideas that will cement their status as engines of growth and opportunity.
The fact that she is now banging the drum for free speech on university campuses is significant. Last July, soon after she became Education Secretary, “with a stroke of her pen (and a one-line statutory instrument) she revoked the order bringing into force the most important sections of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023, including the much fought-for statutory tort”, as Oxford University Associate Law Professor Julius Grower described the move in the Daily Sceptic.
It seems likely that the change of tone has been ordered by the Prime Minister himself. Keir Starmer’s defensiveness when Vice President J.D. Vance challenged him in the Oval Office in February about the “infringements on free speech” in the UK was on the face of it risible. How can a Government that allows people to be arrested for praying near abortion clinics be described as upholding free speech?
But the upside of Starmer’s spiel about the UK’s free speech record is that he now has to prove his commitment to it if he wants to keep the ‘special relationship’ with the US. I suspect the UK’s power-savvy ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson, has been bending Starmer’s ear on the need for a change of tone in the Government’s discourse about the manifest threats to free speech, particularly in universities.
There is a very long way to go before free speech is truly restored in this country. The salami-slicing on the freedom to express socially conservative opinions has been going on for more than two decades since New Labour came to power in 1997. The Blairite Conservatives did very little to remedy the infringements.
Could even the most pessimistic person about the UK’s trajectory back in 1997 have imagined that in 2025 a nurse would be facing disciplinary action by the NHS for calling a manifestly male patient “Mr”?
The Christian Legal Centre, which is supporting black Christian nurse Jennifer Melle, broke the story last week.
While working a shift in May 2024, Jennifer was called to assist with a volatile patient, a prisoner who wanted to self-discharge. His medical records listed him as male – not female or transgender. The name board simply gave a feminine name. He appeared masculine, standing over six feet tall and of large build. After Jennifer referred to him as “Mr”, he screamed, “Do not call me Mr! I am a woman!” Jennifer replied that she couldn’t refer to him as ‘her’ or ‘she’ as it was against her Christian faith, but instead offered to call him by his name.
The man then subjected her to racialist abuse. But “rather than giving her support and protecting her, the NHS Trust where she worked punished her. She was pulled aside and told she had to respect equality and diversity. Then, she was pressured to supply management with a statement and warned that if she didn’t attend a mandatory meeting with HR, she would be sent home while the investigation was happening,” the Christian Legal Centre (CLC) reports.
Despite dire cases such as these, the pro-free-speech statement by such an unlikely person as Bridget Phillipson is perhaps a sign that the neo-Marxist snow covering the land is beginning to melt since the arrival of a US administration with such a strong commitment to freedom of speech.
Julian Mann, a former Church of England vicar, is an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire.
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