The Free Speech Union has sent a letter before claim to the Secretary of State for Education under the Pre-Action Protocol for Judicial Review setting out why we think her decision not to commence the clauses of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act due to come into effect on 1st August was unlawful and notifying her of our intention to apply for a Judicial Review.

The Free Speech Union has sent a letter before claim to the Secretary of State for Education under the Pre-Action Protocol for Judicial Review setting out why we think her decision not to commence the clauses of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act due to come into effect on 1st August was unlawful and notifying her of our intention to apply for a Judicial Review.

The Free Speech Union has sent a letter before claim to the Secretary of State for Education under the Pre-Action Protocol for Judicial Review setting out why we think her decision not to commence the clauses of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act due to come into effect on 1st August was unlawful and notifying her of our intention to apply for a Judicial Review.

Local authoritarianism continues to spread, with a rash of local councils abusing their power to make Public Spaces Protection Orders (PSPOs) to crack down on speech they don’t like. Previously, the FSU has succeeded in persuading Redbridge and Cumberland councils to back down from making PSPOs which would have unlawfully restricted the speech rights of their residents. Last week, Thanet District Council passed a PSPO of their own, and this

The FSU’s General Secretary has written to Penny Mordaunt MP about a guide she commissioned, along with the Labour MP Lucy Powell, that’s designed to help Parliamentarians identify ‘conspiracy theories’ in the run-up to the General Election and which has been sent to every MP and member of the House of Lords. Although well-intentioned, it has several major flaws, e.g., two of the guide’s co-authors identified the lab leak hypothesis

The Writers’ Advisory Council of the FSU has written to the Council of the Royal Society of Literature to object to its failure to condemn the violent attack on Salman Rushdie by an Islamist terrorist. They copied in Her Majesty the Queen, who is the patron of the Society.

We have responded to two consultations run by the financial regulators, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Prudential Regulatory Authority (PRA). We’re concerned that the proposals will force regulated firms to embed politically contentious diversity and inclusion policies deeper into their businesses. We have shared with both regulators our first-hand experience of the chilling effect on free speech that diversity and inclusion initiatives have already had for employees of

I wrote to Dr James Mannion, the CEO of Rethinking Education, about his decision to no-platform Dr Alka Sehgal-Cuthbert, the Director of Don’t Divide Us, from a one-day education conference because some of the other speakers and delegates had objected that her presence would make them feel ‘unsafe’. I asked him to apologise to Dr Sehgal-Cuthbert and arrange for her to speak at a future event, which he duly did

The Free Speech Union has written to Professor Sir Malcolm Evans, Master of Regent’s Park College, about the College’s Trans Inclusion Statement, which is based on a misunderstanding of the Equality Act 2010. The Statement stipulates that any “unlawful discriminatory behaviour, including transphobic harassment or bullying by individuals or groups, will be dealt with under the College’s Policy on Harassment and Bullying and within the relevant legislation, the Equality Act

The Free Speech Union has written to the Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police to complain about the arrest of a 16 year-old autistic girl who compared a Women Police Officer to her ‘lesbian nana’. She was told she was being arrested for ‘homophobic hate speech’, but we don’t think her speech meets the criminal offence threshold under the Public Order Act 2006. We also point out that if the