Secretary of State for Education, Bridget Phillipson, announced today that she was pausing the implementation of the Freedom of Speech Act.
This follows four years of sustained lobbying from students’ unions, NUS Charity and the Union of Jewish Students, citing concerns over the Act’s impact on marginalized students, who would not be protected from hate speech under the Act as was.
Specific concerns included that the Act would leave universities with a legal obligation to protect Holocaust deniers from being ‘no-platformed’ on campuses, causing severe distress amongst students.
Furthermore, legal guidance obtained by NUS Charity stated that plans to mitigate harm: “[…] fail to acknowledge inequalities in power and privilege between different groups, which are obvious and were the rationale for the development of equalities law. Speech which marginalises, offends, victimises, harasses or discriminates against people who share particular protected characteristics or have otherwise been oppressed is more likely to be harmful than against other groups. Securing the freedom of speech for people in these oppressed groups will not mitigate this, because a lack of freedom of speech was never the cause of their oppression.”
Freedom of Speech is still protected under 9 laws including The Education Act ‘94, the Education Reform Act 1988 and the Higher Education Act 2017 and students’ unions are already guided and regulated on freedom of speech issues by the Charity Commission and charity law. Students’ unions facilitate tens of thousands of speaker events and debates every year.
Saranya Thambirajah, NUS UK Vice President Liberation and Equality said:
“The government told us that the culture wars were over – and now they’re taking action to prove it. We’re delighted that the Secretary of State has actually listened to students - and in particular to Jewish students - on the Freedom of Speech Act.
Students have been calling for the dangerous ‘culture wars legislation’ imposed by the previous government to be scrapped. Many of us were truly dreading the impact this Act would have, serving to further divide our campuses and put marginalised student communities further at risk. The government has sent a clear message that they won’t be playing politics with either free speech or hate speech. We absolutely love to see it.
Unis can now be confident in tackling hate speech.”
