Government Finally Addresses Free Speech Crisis at Universities

20 April 2026

The Free Speech Union welcomes Bridget Phillipson’s decision to introduce the complaints scheme provided for by the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023. This will help ensure that free speech and academic freedom are better protected at our universities.

It was because the Education Secretary decided to ‘pause’ the implementation of the Free Speech Act in July 2024 that we brought legal proceedings against her, arguing that a minister of the crown could not defy the will of Parliament. She did a U-turn a week before the High Court hearing, promising to introduce the complaints scheme among other things, and we withdrew our claim. She has now made good on that promise — and we thank her for that.

From April of next year, academics and visiting speakers at English universities who believe their speech rights have been breached will be able to complain to the Office for Students free of charge instead of having to bring expensive legal proceedings. If the OfS upholds their complaints, universities will have to pay the victims compensation.

This is long overdue. For years, university officials and their political allies have claimed that the free speech crisis on Britain’s campuses is a figment of our imagination, even as survey after survey has proved otherwise. At the Free Speech Union, about 8% of the 5,700+ cases we’ve fought over the last six years have involved universities failing to protect free speech and academic freedom on campus and, in the absence of a proper complaints scheme, we have had to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds defending our members in court. From next April, they’ll be able to obtain justice more easily.

But it isn’t all good news. Students won’t be able to make complaints under the scheme that Bridget Phillipson intends to introduce. Their only means of redress, apart from going to law, will be to complain to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator, which is legally not able to determine whether a university has adequately discharged its free speech duties. The complaints scheme included in the Act would have been accessible to students, but the Education Secretary is intending to introduce a version of the scheme that excludes them. That isn’t right and we will continue to campaign for their inclusion.

In addition, only academics and visiting speakers at English universities will enjoy this new free speech protection; those living in the rest of the UK will not. The next focus of free speech campaigners should be to extend the protections provided for in the Act to every part of the UK. We need Free Speech Acts in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

So while this is welcome news, it remains only a partial victory. Campaigners have won an important battle, but the fight to restore free speech to its rightful place at the heart of our universities continues.