The Free Speech Union has launched its judicial review of the Government’s decision to ‘pause’ the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, naming Professor Arif Ahmed, the Government’s ‘free speech tsar’ as an ‘interested party’. The Telegraph has more.
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson last month halted the introduction of the legislation, aimed at forcing universities to actively promote free speech on campus, just days before it was due to come into force.
She announced she was pulling the plug on the flagship Tory policy, and said she will now consider repealing it.
Ms. Phillipson’s announcement to shelve the law threw Prof Ahmed’s position into doubt. While he is still formally employed as a director at the university watchdog the Office for Students (OfS), the complaints system he was meant to oversee now faces uncertainty and could be axed altogether.
He has spent the past year designing the complaints scheme, which would have allowed him to take submissions from academics who had been “cancelled” over their personal beliefs.
Prof Ahmed had been due to oversee all the OfS free speech functions, including carrying out investigations into universities that have been accused of breaching their duties under the act, which also gives the OfS the power to impose fines.
Since Ms. Phillipson’s announcement, Prof Ahmed, a former philosophy professor at Cambridge University and outspoken champion of free speech, has not issued any public statements.
But legal documents, seen by the Telegraph, reveal that Prof Ahmed has been named as an “interested party” on an application for a judicial review of Ms. Phillipson’s decision.
This means he will have the opportunity to take part in the Free Speech Union’s (FSU) legal challenge of the Government’s decision to halt the introduction of the bill.
Prof Ahmed, a former member of the advisory council at the FSU, will be able to make written submissions to the High Court and also appear in person with a barrister to challenge the Government on its arguments.
The development will be seen as highly embarrassing for ministers, as it now leaves them open to criticism in court from their own free speech tsar.
The OfS is also named on the document as an “interested party”, meaning it is directly affected by the claim.
The FSU launched a legal challenge against Ms. Phillipson, saying that the Government’s decision to “kill off” the legislation would make it “virtually impossible for students and academics to challenge radical progressive ideology on campus”.
Bryn Harris, the FSU’s Chief Legal Counsel, said: “The Free Speech Union has formally commenced legal proceedings against the Government following its revocation of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023.
“These proceedings are of the highest constitutional importance. For almost 350 years, the governance of this country has rested on a golden premise: ministers of the Crown may not set aside the law made by Parliament.
“We say that a new government, flushed with power and ideological fervour, has thrown that rule to the wind. We believe the law is clear: our fundamental right to free speech, as protected by our sovereign Parliament, cannot be treated with such cavalier contempt.”
Worth reading in full.
You can contribute to the crowdfunder the FSU has set up to help with the legal costs of this case here.
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The greatest hate seen by the common man, comes from the government. They hate us and want to see us silenced. They hate freedom. They hate our culture.
The answer to all this overwhelming hatred is to love truth and love all who love truth. Love also what truth is left in all who have been taken in by the propaganda and deviated from the truth. It is a still at some level a desire to find truth that has been used to led them away. So the actual truth when delivered with care and at just the right time always has more appeal.
Nurture truth. Even those who have been swayed by the authoritarian propagandist evil that has wormed its way into the heart of government will be attracted by it. Stay true. The truth may sometimes be obscured, but it cannot be eradicated. Ever. It abides and will always win. Do not deviate from it just for an easy life or you will be lost.
They hate us and want to see us silenced. They hate freedom. They hate our culture.
And they want us gone from our country.
I’m surprised that the government has not already replaced Professor Arif Ahmed, or abolished his post.
I remember someone arguing against mass surveillance because “what if an authoritarian Government was to take power in the UK”….Oh the irony!
Funnily enough, many years ago as I was cleaning out my car, I put on the radio and there was a BBC Radio 4 program going on. This was around the time when surveillance cameras just started to become common in town centers.
I remember listing to the “experts” verbally tripping over each other in their effort to emphasize that any concerns about privacy were totally unfounded, nothing more than paranoia and conspiracy theories.
I was suspicious because I have never seen a government not use power that they could use.
Well, as they say, last year’s conspiracy theory is this year’s government policy.
Forgive my naivete by I don’t really understand the use of the word ‘tsar’ in such circumstances. Are you trying to suggest complete authority or is it irony trying to address a conceit of complete authority. It seems a rather vague and clumsy use of language to me but perhaps I am missing something.
Of course I sympathise with the FSU here.
But just to make a point: if the Conservatives had not passed such a shoddy law in the first place, there would be no issue here.
As usual with modern “Acts of Parliament” (sic), the Act relies on a Minister issuing a regulation to put it into effect, which is what has allowed Ms Phillipson to stop the implementation. If the Act contained all the detail itself, it would need to be repealed to stop it.
And what is this antidemocratic bilge about the OfS having the power to impose fines without reference to the courts?
It is a sloppy and technocratic law that was passed by a sloppy and technocratic Fake Conservative government.