I take the point from the noble Lord, Lord Judd. However, I think that it would be important for the avoidance of doubt to ensure that there can be no doubt about the ability of a very focused university, concentrating on a particular range of subjects or type of subject, none the less to stand tall and clear as an accepted university. Laying aside the point about “must” and “extensive range”, the whole thrust of this amendment and the principles behind it are absolutely in the right direction. For heaven’s sake, let us put this into the Bill and then set about making one or two adjustments at a subsequent stage of our discussions to get it specifically right. The broad principles enshrined in the amendment are absolutely the right ones that we need to focus on. I make two observations in relation to that.
First, academic freedom and autonomy is not a luxury for a university; it is part and parcel of what a university is. It is rightly said that a university does not teach people what to think but how to think, and that happens through debate, discourse, discussion, research and the contestability of ideas. It arises from a clash of minds and, above all, from no one in a university being told by anyone—government or anyone else—what to think. Secondly, in the ghastly jargon of the age, we are, I fear, living in a post-truth society. Universities, par excellence, are about truth and evidence. They are about making sure that we pay attention to knowledge and reality. I particularly like the phrase in Amendment 1 about,
“the pursuit, dissemination, and application of knowledge”,
because a university absolutely has to do that: pursue knowledge and research, attend to it and discuss it, test it, then disseminate and apply it. It has a duty to its students, to itself as a research community and to wider society. This amendment gets it broadly right. It does not have every single word right, but let us put it in the Bill and then make it even better when we come to further stages of discussion.