OfS’ new free speech duties questioned as Labour plans reforms

Free speech campaigners are urging the new Labour government to push on with implementing regulation devised by the last administration amid suggestions that it might be delayed.

The new Office for Students (OfS) complaints scheme that will allow people to bring cases against universities when they feel their free speech and academic freedom rights have been violated was due to come into force on 1 August.

Rules in place during the election period delayed the OfS’ response to a hotly debated consultation on the plans and, with Labour signalling that it intends to reform the regulator, its future work in this area was said to be up in the air.

The OfS said it was still working to the published timetable but Dennis Hayes, director of the group Academics For Academic Freedom, said he was worried that the work that went into the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act that mandated the complaints scheme “will come to nothing” if it is repealed by the new government or is not commenced.

The act, brought in to address concerns about “cancel culture” on campuses, also placed new duties on universities to promote free speech, created a new directorial-level post at the OfS now held by University of Cambridge academic Arif Ahmed and applied regulation to students’ unions for the first time.

Professor Hayes said that universities had begun to draft policies on free speech in response to the act but may now feel they should “do nothing but wait and see what the government does”.

Smita Jamdar, partner and head of education at the law firm Shakespeare Martineau, said she felt students’ unions in particular were “nowhere near ready” for the scheme, with several practical questions raised in the consultation still to be addressed.

Professor Ahmed has indicated that he will seek to protect all speech that is within the law, raising questions about how it might conflict with other duties such as the need to protect students from harassment, and Ms Jamdar said the new government needed to ask itself whether this balance was right.

“The question for the new government is: ‘is this the scheme you want?’,” said Ms Jamdar. “Because if it isn’t, if it doesn’t reflect government priorities, then you are going to have the regulator moving in one direction whereas the government might want them to do something else.”

She said her understanding from policymakers was that the scheme’s commencement date could be delayed by the new secretary of state, Bridget Phillipson.

And if Labour did decide it wanted to change the plans, it would need to act quickly or risk being painted as a government that was trying to “suppress free speech”, said Ms Jamdar.

Bryn Harris, chief legal counsel at the Free Speech Union, said the OfS had “adopted a cogent and principled approach to freedom of speech in recent years” and Professor Ahmed was “one of the more intellectually impressive figures in public life, and we would be surprised if the new government chose to pick a fight with him”.

“We recall also that Labour’s final position on the act as it completed its passage through Parliament was an acceptance of its necessity,” he added. “I don’t see any respectable argument for resiling from that position.”

tom.williams@timeshighereducation.com