The neglect of free speech is a national embarrassment

Max Thompson, Campaigns Officer

28 April 2026

There have been no shortage of blockages in the path of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act (Hefsa), not least from this Labour Government.

Bridget Phillipson’s decision to pause implementation was one of her first acts as Education Secretary, only for her to partially reverse course following a sustained pressure campaign. This week, however, has brought welcome news.

The Education Secretary has been forced to eat humble pie, finally announcing the complaints scheme promised under Hefsa. Academics, university staff, and visiting speakers will now be able to bring complaints directly to the Office for Students, free of charge, should they believe their free-speech rights have been breached. Universities that fail to protect free speech on campus could face fines of up to £500,000 or two per cent of their income, whichever is greater.

However, this is only the beginning of the battle. Phillipson had to be dragged to this point kicking and screaming.

The free-speech problem in British higher education is structural. Universities ought to be places where open debate is actively encouraged and intellectual curiosity flourishes. Instead, we have watched a culture of censorship take root. Academics, visiting speakers, and students have been hounded off campus, ostracised by their peers, and subjected to torrents of abuse for holding or expressing lawful views — most often those holding gender-critical, Zionist, or religious beliefs, or raising concerns about foreign interference in academic life.

The result is a deeply entrenched culture of two-tier policing of free speech on our campuses, one that has been allowed to fester because universities have faced no meaningful consequences for looking the other way.

For decades, universities have neglected free speech and academic freedom to kowtow to fashionable ideological positions. This is not merely bad for students’ intellectual development. It poses a genuine risk to national security and to Britain’s global reputation as an academic powerhouse.

The Government’s repeated delays have created precisely the vacuum that hostile foreign powers — China foremost among them — have exploited. By failing to implement Section 9 of Hefsa — which would have required universities to disclose overseas funding to the Office for Students — this Government has left universities free to take money from hostile foreign states with no obligation to disclose it and no regulator with the statutory power to act.

The consequences were best illustrated at Sheffield Hallam University, which in early 2025 ordered Prof Laura Murphy to cease her research into the forced labour of Uyghur Muslims in China’s Xinjiang region. In 2022, China had blocked access to the university’s website. Rather than defend her vital work — and human rights — the university chose to prioritise lucrative Chinese students’ fees. It took Prof Murphy threatening legal action under Hefsa to force a reversal. Had Section 9 been in force, the Office for Students could have intervened far sooner.

Britain now ranks lowest of any Western European nation on academic freedom: 64th out of 179 countries. Burkina Faso, Malawi, and Sierra Leone now rank above us. This is a national embarrassment this Labour Government should be made to wear.

The new complaints scheme is also not the one the last government promised. Students remain unable to bring complaints to the Office for Students and must still face financially ruinous litigation against well-resourced institutions. As Jack Rankin MP asked in Parliament, were ministers planning to rename it “the Office for Everyone on Campus Except Students”?

Over the last six years, nearly one in 10 cases handled by the Free Speech Union has involved a university failing in its legal duty. Hefsa is rightly celebrated — but we must be more ambitious. We need a Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish version of the original act, not the neutered version being implemented at a snail’s pace by Phillipson. Without a fully functioning nationwide complaints mechanism that supports students, universities will continue to ignore their duty with impunity.