Government Has Just Declared War on Free Speech

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.