In today’s Times, the Government has trailed the fact that it intends to part-commence the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, which Bridget Phillipson torpedoed earlier this year. The devil will be in the detail, but this looks like a solid win for all those who’ve been campaigning to save the Act, including the Free Speech Union. If the Times has all the details right, the only thing we won’t get is the tort, which would have enabled a wronged student or academic to sue a university in the county court.
New laws protecting free speech on campus are likely to be given the green light in the new year.
However, the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act — shelved when Labour won the general election — is expected to be watered down from the proposals first set out under the Tory government. This could remove the right for cancelled speakers to seek compensation.
Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, faced a backlash after announcing in August that the act, which had already been passed, would be paused while options were considered.
The act was designed to strengthen existing laws by putting a duty on universities and student unions to actively promote as well as protect free speech — and it would have left them liable to being sued by aggrieved parties.
It also created a new role of director of free speech within the Office for Students (OfS), the independent regulator of higher education in England, giving it the power to deal with complaints and penalise universities or student unions for breaches. The Cambridge philosopher Arif Ahmed was appointed to the job but has kept a low profile. Lord Wharton of Yarm, a Conservative peer who retained the Tory whip and was a campaign manager for Boris Johnson, stood down as OfS chairman within days of the election.
Sources say that ministers were taken by surprise at the strength of feeling when the act was put on hold, as it had been widely criticised when going through parliament and was amended by the House of Lords. They believe it will now proceed but discussions about revisions are continuing.
There was an outcry from hundreds of academics and high-profile campaigners, including Stephen Fry, AC Grayling and Richard Dawkins, against it being axed. An open letter said that academics and students had been hounded, censured, silenced or even sacked over the past 20 years for expressing legal opinions.
The Free Speech Union, led by Toby Young, an associate editor of The Spectator, is bringing a judicial review at the end of January to challenge the decision to suspend the act.
Under discussion is the removal of the “statutory tort” element that would allow those who felt they had suffered loss from their free speech being impinged to bring civil claims for damages against universities or student unions.
Worth reading in full.
Not getting the tort is bad news, but if the Government commences the remainder of the Act’s outstanding clauses, that is a far, far better result than complete repeal of the Act, which I suspect the Government would have done in the absence of the campaign various groups have fought to save the Act.
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