The UK’s complex tangle of regulations governing free speech on university campuses should be replaced by one clear set of guidelines for both students and institutions, according to the universities minister.
In a speech at a closed-door seminar on free speech on campus, the minister, Sam Gyimah, will suggest the Department for Education oversees the creation of the first new set of guidelines – since the free speech duty was first introduced in 1986 – to “provide clarity”.
The current web of rules allows “bureaucrats or wreckers on campus” to block discussion of unfashionable views, according to Gyimah. He blames the complexity for the rise in safe spaces and no-platform policies.
“A society in which people feel they have a legitimate right to stop someone expressing their views on campus simply because they are unfashionable or unpopular is rather chilling,” the minister will say. “There is a risk that overzealous interpretation of a dizzying variety of rules is acting as a brake on legal free speech on campus.”
Among the guests invited to the seminar are Matt Collins, the Home Office’s director of Prevent, a programme to tackle extremism and radicalisation, and Helen Stephenson, chief executive of the Charity Commission.
Gyimah’s idea would bind both students and universities to a common code of practice on free speech, although there appears to be little enthusiasm for this among either university or student leaders.
Alistair Jarvis, chief executive of Universities UK, will also attend the seminar. He said a recent parliamentary inquiry had found no systemic problems with free speech at British universities.
He said: “Universities are committed to promoting and protecting free speech within the law. Tens of thousands of speaking events are put on every year across the country, the majority pass without incident.
“A small number of flash points do occasionally occur, on contentious or controversial issues, but universities do all they can to protect free speech so events continue.”
Gordon Marsden, the shadow higher education minister, said Gyimah was trying to “micromanage free speech issues”, and that any discussions about regulation should be conducted in the open, rather than at private meetings inside the DfE.
“This announcement is simply another piece of meaningless posturing from the government, while it has nothing practical to offer students dealing with record levels of debt,” he said. “If the minister was serious about the challenges students face he would abandon his unworkable plans to fine universities over the actions of independent student unions and follow Labour’s commitment to bring back maintenance grants and scrap tuition fees.”
The DfE said participants in the seminar would discuss how the guidelines would be compiled, with the the department overseeing their creation.
The Office for Students, the new higher education regulator, will also have a duty to protect free speech, with powers to publicly shame or fine institutions for not upholding principles of free speech.