Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill — House of Lords, 2015-01-28
Topic: Civil Rights
Margot Aline (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, in moving this amendment I will speak also to Amendments 105, 107, 109 and 115 on behalf of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I am a member. The amendments give effect to the recommendations made in our pre-legislative scrutiny report. Amendments 107 and 109 would exclude higher education institutions from the new statutory duty to, "have due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism", although I suspect that the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, would do so rather better. Amendment 104 excludes, "an academic function of a university or other further and higher education institution", from that duty. Amendment 105 makes it clear that the Prevent duty is subject to the duty contained in the Education (No. 2) Act 1986 to uphold freedom of speech, covering staff, students and visiting speakers. Amendment 115 requires that when issuing guidance and giving directions, the Secretary of State should have regard to the principle of academic freedom as contained in the Education Reform Act 1988, which includes a duty, "to ensure that academic staff have freedom within the law to question and test received wisdom, and to put forward new ideas and controversial or unpopular opinions" These amendments may be technically deficient, but as they are for now probing amendments, I trust that the Minister will bear with me Recommendations stem from the JCHR’s conclusion that, "because of the importance of freedom of speech and academic freedom in the context of university education, the entire legal framework which rests on the new ‘prevent’ duty is not appropriate for application to universities", and from our observation that its relationship to universities’ existing duties with regard to freedom of speech is not clear. I have some sympathy with concerns about other parts of the educational sector, but following the JCHR report I will confine my remarks to HE institutions and will focus in particular on the question of academic freedom, therefore inevitably touching on some of the points already made. In doing so I declare my interest as an emeritus professor at Loughborough University Ministers have emphasised their commitment to academic freedom of freedom of speech, which I welcome. In a letter of 20 January to the JCHR, the Minister, James Brokenshire, pointed out that this freedom comes with a duty to ensure that it is within the law. Exactly. Given that, it is not clear why the Prevent duty has to be put on a statutory footing—moving from co-operation to co-option, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, so pithily put it. Universities are already required to operate within any law that circumscribes freedom of speech. At last week’s packed meeting, addressed by the Minister and Mr Brokenshire—I thank the Minister for arranging that—we did not receive a convincing explanation. I suspect that the purpose of the meeting was to reassure noble Lords; my impression was that it had the opposite effect Since then, the JCHR has received the Minister’s letter, in which he set out why the Government believe that the application of the duty to universities is a matter of enormous importance. He cited the proportion of people convicted of al-Qaeda-associated terrorist offences who had attended an HE institution—the implication, presumably, being that their HE experience helped to lead them there. He acknowledged that some students arrived already radicalised or are radicalised by external influences, while suggesting that others can become influenced by non-violent extremism at university but later move on to violence. That seems to reflect the kind of linear, conveyor-belt theory of the journey to terrorism, which is challenged by many experts in the area and which was questioned earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi There are two main areas of concern, which have sometimes been conflated: visiting speakers policies, and the free exchange of ideas that lies at the heart of the relationship between lecturers and students. With regard to visiting speakers, it is unclear how the new duties sit alongside the duty in the 1986 Act not to use beliefs or views as grounds to refuse access to premises. We shall look later at the draft guidance, so I will not go into that now, apart from coming back, in a moment, to the question of definitions.