Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has run up a bill of more than £500,000 in taxpayers’ money attempting to block free speech protections for university academics. The High Court has ordered the Government to pay the Free Speech Union’s legal costs of £353,748 after it successfully resisted her bid to scrap the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act. The Mail has the story:
Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has spent more than £500,000 of taxpayers’ money trying to water down laws which protect free speech in universities, it was revealed last night.
Ms Phillipson embarked on the legal battle after trying to dilute Tory legislation which put a duty on universities and student unions to actively promote, as well as protect, free speech on campuses, describing it as a “Tory hate speech charter”.
A free speech watchdog allows universities to be fined up to 2% of their income for censoring academics.
The laws came after university staff were hounded out of their jobs for expressing their opinions.
They included Professor Kathleen Stock, who resigned from Sussex University in 2021 after harassment and protests by trans activists, saying she felt pressure to “self-censor” her work.
The philosophy lecturer, who believes single-sex spaces are necessary in places such as prisons and public toilets, was accused by students of making trans people feel “unsafe”.
Ms Phillipson’s move to block the laws was successfully opposed by the Free Speech Union (FSU), run by Tory peer Toby Young.
Now the High Court has ruled that the Government should pay the FSU’s costs of £353,748, which takes the total bill to more than £500,000 when its own legal costs are included.
Within weeks of Labour entering office in July 2024, Ms Phillipson declared that she would revoke the planned introduction of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, which had been passed in 2023.
Internal documents, disclosed during the litigation, revealed that officials had been instructed before the election to have a statutory instrument ready to pause the Act “on ‘day one’”, and that the Secretary of State did “not wish to implement the Act, at least in full”.
But in January 2025, nine days before the case was due to be heard, Ms Phillipson capitulated and told Parliament that the majority of the Act’s provisions would be enacted after all.
At that point, the FSU offered to withdraw its claim in return for a fixed costs payment of £84,000.
The Government refused, offering instead a “drop hands” settlement under which the FSU, having won in substance, would recover nothing. Since then, the costs have spiralled as expensive KCs wrangled over the details.
Lord Young of Acton, general secretary of the FSU, said: “The significance of this judicial decision is that it confirms our view and the view of our lawyers that we won this case and the Education Secretary lost – costs are awarded to the winners, with the losers having to pay.”
Worth reading in full.
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to the Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Hopefully she is now the ex Education Secretary
Dear god, I pray britain gets its house in order. There is little hope of this, but something must change.
Only Tyrants attempt to prevent free speech. By their deeds you will know them ….
Well done all.
Just another stupid Labour woman in a job way above her pay grade
Great work FSU for holding this poor excuse for a government to account.
They want free speech but not other peoples they don’t like.
All that money to stop some offence on campus. Kinda pathetic.
Dear God – just look at that photo. A vile, spiteful and vindictive class warrior with a face that would curdle new milk.
Phillipson should have to pay the bill herself, not taxpayers.
Well done FSU, again!
Why would she care? it’s not her money.
Well done FSU – again!
There should be no Department for Education. The most useful thing it does is allocate funding – and in that it is biased. The Treasury is supposed to be good with money; how about they provide the funding and the schools provide the education?
Not all schools will be great; if they give really poor education parents will take their kids to other schools. I know this as I was for a short time a governor of a local school which was struggling and the number of kids on roll dwindled. The foundation eventually made a major contribution to fund and appoint a temporary head who turned the school around.
Many parents will not tolerate a substandard education for their kids. Given any choice, they’ll move kids to a place which gives better prospects. The minority who really don’t care won’t care no matter what changes.
Anyone who believes free speech is hate speech is suffering from a severe case of solipsism and needs therapy.
No. They’re lying.
Good for the FSU. Parliament passes laws and minsters decide unilaterally to ignore them – these socialists really believe in democracy.