The home secretary, Theresa May, is facing defeat next week over her plan to impose a legal duty on universities to prevent students being drawn into terrorism and to ban “extremist” speakers.
The former head of MI5, senior Tories, academics and legal peers have made it clear that they want to see the plan removed from the counter-terrorism and security bill when a key vote takes place next week.
Lady Manningham-Buller, the former director-general of the security service, has warned the home secretary that banning non-violent extremist views from campuses will clash with the duty of universities to protect free speech.
She told peers: “I am afraid it is a profound irony that we are seeking to protect our values against this pernicious ideology by trying to bar views that are described, too vaguely, as ‘non-violent’ extremism, but which fall short of incitement to violence or to racial or ethnic hatred, which is already forbidden by law.”
May has also been warned by her former cabinet colleague Lady Warsi that such a ban on extremists on campus could, as currently defined, include anyone “opposed to democracy”, and could have a chilling effect on work being done to engage with those at risk of radicalisation.
Lord Macdonald, the former director of public prosecutions, said the guidance to be issued under the new counter-terrorism and security bill would turn universities into “places of surveillance” in which speakers with unpopular or offensive views could be banned. He added that it would mean “no one in a university could give a lecture that evinced lack of respect for someone else’s religion”.
One senior Conservative peer, Lord Renfrew, who is a former master of Jesus College, Cambridge, even voiced fears that the move would endanger the future of the Cambridge Union Society, which is marking its 200th anniversary this year.
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Home Office ministers have already promised to “rework” the wording of part of the new legally binding guidance to universities that requires “all visiting speakers to submit their presentations in advance”.
But judging by the breadth of opposition expressed by peers during a House of Lords debate late on Wednesday, the government faces a serious defeat when an amendment proposing to exempt universities and other academic institutions goes to a vote next week.
The Home Office is to set up a monitoring body to track the compliance of universities and colleges with the new guidance. The legislation includes powers to charge university vice-chancellors with contempt of court if they fail to enforce the statutory guidance.
A group of 24 university vice-chancellors and chancellors in a joint letter earlier this week said they are “profoundly concerned about the consequences for UK universities”, and pointed out they already support the government’s Prevent Strategy to counter terrorism and radicalisation through existing obligations.
“Universities are at their most effective in preventing radicalisation by ensuring that academics and students are free to question and test received wisdom within the law,” the letter read. “The bill is not the best means of maximising the contribution universities can make, and may indeed be counterproductive, causing mistrust and alienation.”
However, Home Office ministers have told peers that universities cannot be exempted from the legal duty because 30% of the people convicted of al-Qaida-related terrorist offences between 1999 and 2009 attended a higher education institution.
They claim that while existing voluntary Universities UK guidance covers 75% of colleges, there is evidence that some institutions are not taking their obligations in this area seriously.
