Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill — House of Lords, 2015-01-28
Topic: Civil Rights
Helena Kennedy (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I shall start by mentioning that I, too, serve on the Joint Committee on Human Rights—I am afraid that a whole flurry of us are getting involved in this debate. There certainly was a real consensus within the Joint Committee that applying this duty to universities would be detrimental to freedom of speech. We have been most concerned about it. One of the things that I think we have all now acknowledged is that freedom of speech is an absolute value to higher education. To interfere with that or to create a chilling effect is something that we should step back from. I endorse entirely all that has been said by others on this subject and want to add one or two things I have acted for a number of people involved in failure to fulfil their responsibilities in the criminal field, where they have not informed on those who seemed to be involved in terrorist activity. The duty to inform is real. The universities are very conscious of it, as are the student bodies. The concern that seems to be at the base of this—and which the public would want to see being at the base of this—is that, if you were to hear that people are planning and plotting things, there is a responsibility to do something about it. That already exists in law. It is the further steps that are involved in this that worry people Like the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and others, I am involved in higher education, and I have been for some time. I too am the head of an Oxford college. Oxford University senior administrators have written to heads of house, such as Lord Macdonald and me, expressing their concern about this part of the legislation. This is partly because, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, has said, it is almost impossible for us to oversee it sensibly. For example, in Oxford it would be hard to count the number of meetings that take place in any one week across the college structure and the whole of the university. I cannot imagine what the numbers might be. The noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, and I talked about the possibility of doing a review to see what the number was. We are certainly talking about hundreds. The same would be true in Cambridge and in universities around the country. The autonomy of student unions to invite their speakers quite independently of the governance of the university must not be forgotten I speak from my experience as a lawyer who has acted in the criminal courts in this field during the Irish Troubles, but most particularly in recent years around the recent phase of terrorism. I acted in the case that came to be known as the Crevice trial; the fertiliser bomb plot. I acted in the transatlantic bomb plot where seven young men were put on trial for trying to blow up aeroplanes. I have acted for a number of the different wives of men involved in terrorism in relation to their duty to report. I have acted for a boy who was groomed while he was on the internet in his bedroom in his parents’ house. I have acted for those who were involved in trying to dispose of evidence in the aftermath of the 7/7 bombings in relation to 27 July 2005. So I have acted in a whole series of these cases and I can honestly say that my experience is that these are not people who were radicalised in universities Radicalisation does not go on in universities. By and large I am talking about young men and it is about friendships and networks of friendship where people learn from each other and pass books and material to each other. It is not about closing down what happens in universities. It is really about what happens in our communities. So the work that is already going on in communities is probably the stuff that needs to be strengthened. All I urge is take a look at the real evidence of this. It is not enough to tick a box and say, "Some of these boys went to university, some of them were on access courses". Many of our young around the country are going to university, but these boys were not radicalised because they were university students, in the way in which we think of university students. I see noble Lords nodding. That really has not been the case I go back to my concern about the chilling effect, which has been described by others. There is also the deterioration of trust effect, which is very important in the relationships between those who teach and those who learn. The other thing is that I spend time with the students in my college. I have them in regularly to gatherings. I do a regular meeting with sets of 12 at a time. We have discussions; they talk about all these things that are being described, some of them by the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald. They debate things such as, "Is democracy so wonderful, when it is bought wholesale by donations to political parties and where the small people do not get a voice? Is it right that religion can be denigrated?". They want to debate things such as, "What is the point at which people are entitled to take up arms?". I remember when I was president of SOAS, the School of Oriental and African Studies, there would be incredibly vital debates and arguments about the circumstances in which someone was entitled, as Mandela was in his time, to take up arms against the state. When is it appropriate? That is how young people learn about the nature of our society. It is where they learn and hear the counter arguments to some of the things that they feel seem so obvious to them This is not, by and large, where your radicalised young person is giving voice to his views. That is happening in the café down the road. It is happening in the kebab shop. It is happening in people’s rooms, but it is not happening in the universities in the way that somehow is imagined by this part of the legislation. I urge against it and ask that the bit about universities is taken out, because we are interfering with one of the most important freedoms that should be protected in our society.