1 March 2026
The Free Speech Union has drafted a draft Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) (Wales) Bill – a Welsh adaptation of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 ("HEFSA") – and we’re inviting any of the political parties fielding candidates in the Senedd election on 7th May to adopt it as a manifesto commitment.
The case for this legislation is clear, and it is getting clearer by the week.
When HEFSA came into force in England on 1st August 2025, it created a set of enforceable duties that we and other free speech advocates had long been demanding. English universities are now legally required to take all reasonably practicable steps to secure freedom of speech for staff, students, and visiting speakers; to maintain updated codes of practice explaining how they will do so; to prohibit the use of security costs as a mechanism for effectively banning speakers; and to refrain from using non-disclosure agreements to silence victims of campus misconduct. We and others are lobbying the Government to commence sections 8 and 9 of the Act, which will provide additional free speech protections.
It’s early days, but we’re already seeing a positive impact. Across England, universities have revised and strengthened their free speech codes of practice to comply with the new duties, following guidance published by the Office for Students (OfS) in June 2025. The University of Sussex was fined over half a million pounds by the OfS after a review found that its policy on trans and non-binary equality was incompatible with its free speech duties – a powerful signal that the OfS takes free speech seriously. The OfS has also appointed a Director for Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom – Dr Arif Ahmed – to oversee enforcement. As one leading law firm’s analysis concluded, the new duties demand “more than cosmetic revisions” and require institutions to “articulate explicit free-speech values, streamline event procedures, codify expectations for protest and conduct, and embed rigorous governance”.
Welsh universities, regulated instead by the Commission for Tertiary Education and Research (MEDR), enjoy no such framework. MEDR is not required to promote free speech, has no free speech complaints scheme, and has no direct regulatory authority over students’ unions. As one commentator recently noted, while the OfS has a duty to “promote” free speech and academic freedom, MEDR merely has to “take into account” the importance of protecting it. That is woefully insufficient when it comes to safeguarding free speech and academic freedom at Welsh universities.
The need for this legislation isn’t abstract. Last year, the FSU had to pay £1,600 towards the cost of providing private security so a meeting of the Cardiff Academic Freedom Association could go ahead at Cardiff University, and last month, the Bangor University Debating and Political Society – Wales’s oldest student society – publicly refused a request from Reform UK MP Sarah Pochin to hold a Q&A for students ahead of the Welsh election on 7th May, declaring it had “zero tolerance” for the party and urging other societies to join it in “keeping hate out of our universities”.
Under the new English regime created by HEFSA, universities charging for security costs before lawful meetings can go ahead, and banning MPs from campus, would attract regulatory scrutiny. That’s why we need a similar regime in Wales.
The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) (Wales) Bill we’ve drafted is modelled closely on HEFSA, adapted for Wales’s distinct higher education framework under the Tertiary Education and Research (Wales) Act 2022. It places a duty on Welsh universities to take all reasonably practicable steps to secure freedom of speech for staff, students, and visiting speakers; requires them to maintain codes of practice; prohibits security charging as a backdoor speaker ban; and bans non-disclosure agreements in misconduct cases. Crucially, it gives MEDR enforceable regulatory powers over students’ unions, establishes a free speech complaints scheme, and creates a Director for Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom on MEDR’s board.
We’re offering this draft bill to any political party that wishes to include it in its Senedd manifesto. We’re not a partisan organisation. Our only interest is in ensuring that Welsh students, academics, and visiting speakers enjoy the same legal protections that their counterparts in England now take for granted.
We’re also working on a draft bill for Scotland, which we will publish shortly. The case for legislative protection of free speech and academic freedom in our universities does not respect borders – and neither does our commitment to making it happen.
