My Lords, this is a very important debate. We are grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for raising again with such powerful arguments the point she has been making consistently throughout Second Reading and Committee about the need to focus on this and get it right in the legislation. This issue is at the heart of what we really think about universities and higher education providers more generally. As the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, said, it is almost shocking to think that the understanding we have of what constitutes a university does not read across to what actually happens on the
ground. The stories are legion and very unpleasant, and in many cases almost too awful to talk about in these circumstances.
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It may be true, as the Government assert in their amendment, that there are powers in legislation already and that all those necessary powers will be sufficient to achieve what the noble Baroness is asking for. But the tests she has laid out are: first, we have to be sure that it is not just the promotion of free speech but the outlawing of unlawful speech; and, secondly, that this happens right across the university estate and off the estate when university personnel are involved. We have to be certain, as she said, that these things are joined up and approached systematically, which, I am afraid, they seem not to be at the moment.
It would be relatively easy just to say, “Well, we have to pass Amendment 152”, but there are the makings of a joint approach here, which I put to the Minister as something worth doing. His amendment is, in many senses, where we want to be. If we are building on the past, that is a good thing, but we need to be sure that the points made by the noble Baroness about outlawing unlawful speech and absolute certainty about the premises concerned are included in the legislation—plus swift and direct action where these laws have been shown to be broken.
Perhaps the Minister can address these points and satisfy us. If not, I urge him to look carefully at Amendment 152 to see whether a joint approach can be brought back at Third Reading which will solve this problem once and for all.