My Lords, this amendment requires the Secretary of State for Education to appoint an independent person to review the Prevent strategy in higher education institutions. Such a review would be intended to cover the operation and effectiveness of the strategy—for example, by looking at the training of staff who have to give effect to the strategy—and at the legal obligations of universities, including human rights protection under the Human Rights Act 1998. It is essential that the reviewer of the strategy who would be appointed under the amendment should be quite independent of government.
I appreciate that this is a controversial issue, certainly as regards higher education and our universities. Many eminent bodies—parliamentary bodies and others—have
criticised the strategy because of its implications. For example, the Joint Committee on Human Rights in 2014-15 concluded that,
“because of the importance of freedom of speech and academic freedom in the context of university education, the entire … framework which rests on the new ‘prevent’ duty is not appropriate for application to universities”.
Government guidance requires higher education providers to entirely mitigate the risk of a speaker drawing an individual into terrorism. That is quite a complicated concept. It came out in a letter from a university in relation to a discussion with the organisers of an event that,
“there is a risk that given the topics to be discussed, it may attract attendees which hold extremist views”.
These are quite far-reaching bits of advice for universities, and it is not totally clear whether they could easily be implemented.
In July 2016, the Home Affairs Select Committee concluded in its look at radicalisation:
“The concerns about Prevent amongst the communities most affected by it must be addressed. Otherwise it will continue to be viewed with suspicion by many, and by some as ‘toxic’”.
David Anderson QC, the former reviewer of terrorist legislation, thought that there should be an independent review, as did Rights Watch (UK), Liberty, the Open Society Justice Initiative and many Members of Parliament across the political spectrum.
It seems to me fairly clear that there is serious concern about how the strategy should operate. I am arguing not that it should be scrapped but that we should know more about it. It has had long enough now for a proper review to take place. The communities most affected are sensitive to this, and the universities are worried about how to implement the strategy. I would have thought that the request in the amendment that the Government should review the policy is a fairly modest and reasonable one and that the time to do it is pretty soon. I beg to move.
7.30 pm