Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)

My Lords, Liberal Democrats welcome this Statement, but for entirely different reasons from those that noble Lords have just heard from the Conservative Front Bench. This provision removes parts of the Act that we opposed during its passage through Parliament, and we welcome that; we were not persuaded that the Act as such was necessary. It was driven by the right-wing culture war against the “liberal elite”, with the Conservatives taking their cue from the Republican right and Fox News as, sadly, they so often have done in recent years. The Act contradicted Conservative and Liberal principles of respect for autonomous bodies and limits to government regulation and state interference. The costs of litigation imposed on cash-strapped universities threatened to be heavy. The burdens on student unions were likely to be beyond their capacity to manage. The proposed duplication of complaints schemes was badly designed. The requirements for accepting outside speakers virtually unconditionally potentially opened the door to Holocaust deniers, as well as to extremists of the right and left. A number of universities clearly made mistakes in responding to student attempts to cancel academics and visiting speakers with whom they disagreed. I recall at least one vice-chancellor admitting in a private conversation the mistakes that he had made in responding to conflicting pressures. But it is not the first time that university administrations have made mistakes in responding to student protests—this is not new. I have been on both sides of student protests and staff responses since the 1960s, with changing political crises and student generations protesting on South African apartheid, Vietnam, civil rights and race inequalities, fossil fuel investments and tuition fees. Previous British Governments had wisely left it largely to universities as autonomous bodies to moderate intolerant demands and teach their students—and some of their staff—to disagree well and respect those with different opinions. Some of today’s student radicals have been determinedly intolerant in defending identity politics, but many on the right have also become determinedly intolerant in their anti-woke crusade. The question of foreign funding is also difficult and delicate—but also not new. During my time at the London School of Economics, we had an embarrassing controversy over a large Middle East donation, but we later accepted a larger donation from another Middle Eastern ruler, after whom one of the LSE’s buildings is now named. There are potential problems about undue financial dependence on funding from any foreign state, especially if it is a non-democratic state. Can the Minister explain further what the reference in the Statement means when it refers to taking “more time to consider implementation of the overseas funding measures”? What sort of consultation with the HE sector is intended, and how long might it take? The Act as passed was disproportionate in responding to incidents that had failed to respect freedom of speech. It was also disproportionate in the regulatory and financial burdens that it imposed on universities and student unions. I hope that the Minister will reassert that freedom of speech is a principle to be cherished, recognising how difficult that can sometimes be—and it is not a weapon to be used in a Trumpian “war against woke”.