Ministers Defeat Lords Who Wanted to Withhold Right to Sue Universities on Free Speech Bill

A graduation ceremony at the University of Suffolk's campus in Ipswich, England, in October 2015. PA

The UK government has won a vote in upcoming legislation that'll ensure that cancelled academics and students will have the right to sue universities over free speech infringements.

Lord’s amendments to the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill were debated in the House of Commons on Tuesday and Amendment 10—which sought to remove the right of students and academics to sue universities that breach their speech rights—was defeated.

In December, when the Bill passed through the House of Lords,  former Conservative universities minister Lord Willetts and others voted to remove the statutory tort from the legislation on the basis that it risked “imposing unnecessary additional costs on universities.”

The government faced a backlash from MPs and free speech campaigners after it was accused of making concessions to universities after concerns that the amendment watered down the Bill as it only gave academics and students the option to sue as a last resort.

‘Chilling Creep of Self-Censorship’

Minister for Children, Families, and Wellbeing Claire Coutinho has pushed for the right to sue over free speech, saying it is “an essential part of the Bill.”

On Tuesday, Coutinho told The Epoch Times by email that “learning how to have civil discussions about things we disagree upon is central to the university experience.”

“I stand firm in my belief that academics, students, and speakers must be able to go to court when their rights to free speech have been wrongly infringed,” she added.

Writing in the Telegraph on Tuesday, Coutinho warned of the “chilling creep of self-censorship” at universities.

“In recent years, there has been a disturbing trend of forcing people into silence if they dare to go against what has become a progressive monoculture,” she said.

“Speaking invitations have been cancelled, visiting fellowships have been withdrawn, and academics have been subject to intimidation for taking part in debates on controversial issues,” she added.

“Even more worrying is the chilling creep of self-censorship. One in three academics in the UK report that they self-censor because they worry about the negative consequences that might come from speaking their mind,” said Coutinho.

Free Speech

The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill is legislation to safeguard free speech at university campuses.

The proposed act of Parliament would impose requirements for universities and student unions to protect freedom of speech, tightening existing legislation to make the promotion of it a statutory duty.

Policy Exchange’s 2019 and 2020 publications, both entitled “Academic Freedom in the UK,” revealed concerning levels of self-censorship among academics.

It added that the latest update from the Academic Freedom Index project stated that the country is experiencing “increasing limitations of academic freedom.”

Professors such as Kathleen Stock and Jo Phoenix have been harassed on campus for years by transgender activists for their views on sex and gender.

Stock was forced to resign from the University of Sussex in 2021 for saying that trans women shouldn’t be in spaces such as female dressing rooms “in a completely unrestricted way” because many of them “are still males with male genitalia” and “are sexually attracted to females.”

‘The Fear of Lawsuits’

Eric Kaufmann, a professor of politics at Birkbeck College, University of London, told The Epoch Times by email that he believed that a “climate of anti-conservative intolerance and cultural socialism” has grown for years.

“It’s an important step as the fear of lawsuits will help to prevent universities caving into woke activists in the future,” he said.

Kaufmann is a leading researcher into cancel culture in the world of academia and has pioneered the use of surveys to research “authoritarianism and political discrimination” in universities in the United States and the UK.

He has previously warned that unless politicians begin to take these issues more seriously “cherished values” such as “free speech, scientific reason, and national heritage” will lose ground in the years to come.

Kaufmann said that the fact Tory MPs are “willing to overrule the pro-university lobby in the Lords led by ‘wet’ Tories” shows that the Conservative party has “finally faced the fact universities have been playing them for fools on free speech for years while tacitly encouraging a climate of anti-conservative intolerance and cultural socialism (aka wokeness) in the academy.”

The Free Speech Union (FSU) said has previously said that “the only way to make sure universities uphold the new free speech duties in the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill is to give aggrieved parties the option of suing them in the county court.”

“The FSU’s position is that the statutory tort is what gives the legislation’s new free speech duties teeth, and if that’s removed then the Bill is essentially a dead letter,” it told The Epoch Times in an email.

The Bill is currently in its final stages before it officially becomes law.