Sir Keir Starmer has appointed his cabinet following a landslide Labour victory last week, with the post of Secretary of State for Education going to Bridget Phillipson MP.
To get a sense of how Phillipson is likely to approach the issue of campus free speech, it’s useful to consider some of her previously expressed views on this key area of her portfolio.
The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 (‘the Act’), which represents arguably the Free Speech Union’s (FSU’s) biggest legislative victory since we were formed in 2020, is technically already over the line in that the statutory instrument that activates the Act’s remaining clauses was laid before the last Parliament was dissolved in June.
All the clauses of the Act should therefore now be activated on1st August unless the new Labour government intervenes, which is unlikely.
Although the Labour Party’s opposition to the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act was fairly low-key, Ms Phillipson did speak out during third reading in the House of Commons, with the then Shadow Education Secretary claiming that the government’s focus on free speech in universities was a “distraction” and ministers should not “pick fights with students”.
Speaking to the PA News agency she said: “It’s clear to me that all of this is government ministers seeking to distract from their total failure on the wider challenges that we’re seeing right across education – it’s just pretty desperate stuff.”
“Vigorous debate and open debate in our universities is really important,” she conceded. “Of course, it mustn’t cross a line where it comes to violence or intimidation or abuse.” But then added: “I think people understand that students want to protest, want to express their views, and that’s right, that’s not a new thing. I don’t know why government ministers are surprised that 18 year-olds finding their voice want to express their views quite strongly.”
Quite apart from the question of where the line is to be drawn between students “expressing their views quite strongly”, and exercising a heckler’s veto, protests of this kind are not, when considered in isolation, an adequate measure of the free speech crisis on campus.
Additional evidence of the problem to which the Act responds is to be found in: event cancellations; internal regulation of lawful speech; ideologically loaded training; universities distorting the curriculum on ideological grounds; institutions taking political sides; physical intimidation of academic staff; universities investigating staff and students for lawful expression of views; and universities sacking academics for their beliefs.
The Act does two things that will help secure academic freedom.
First, it will impose a legal duty on higher education providers (HEPs) to uphold and promote free speech and extend that duty to students’ unions. The Education (No 2) Act 1986 already required HEPs to “take such steps as are reasonably practicable to ensure that freedom of speech within the law is secured for members, students and employees of the establishment and for visiting speakers”, but the new Act goes further. It will impose a duty on HEPs to actively promote freedom of speech, and to protect academics’ freedom to question and test received wisdom, put forward new ideas and express controversial opinions.
One of the enforcement mechanisms created by the Act to ensure universities aren’t able to ignore these duties is the creation of a Director of Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom in the Office for Students (OfS), whom students and academics can complain to if they believe their speech rights under the Higher Education Act 2023 have been breached. This new ‘free speech tsar’ has already been appointed – it’s Dr Arif Ahmed, a former professor of philosophy at Cambridge with impeccable free speech credentials – and he will have the power to fine HEPs if he finds them at fault.
Speaking at last year’s Universities UK conference, however, Ms Phillipson criticised the government for treating universities “not as a public good, but a political battleground” and for making the OfS a “politicised regulator lacking both the respect and ambition it needs to be effective”.
The exact target of the then Shadow Education Secretary’s criticism was never made clear, although as several leading academics pointed out in a recent letter to the Times urging all parties to commit to supporting the scheduled full implementation of the Act on 1st August, the OfS has “taken a thoughtful and highly non-partisan approach to the new legislation, recognising that freedom of speech protects everyone”.
In March, Ms Phillipson claimed the Act was already leading to a rise in antisemitism on campus. “I’m really concerned,” she told Jewish News. “We can really see the impact that rising levels of antisemitism is having on students… Sadly, the legislation brought in through the Freedom of Speech Bill has opened up, has allowed that to flourish. And it has made it more difficult for universities to tackle that kind of hate speech on campus.”
Which is nonsense, of course, since the clauses protecting students’ right to free speech won’t be activated until 1st August and in any case won’t protect antisemitic speech.
