Education Minister Claire Coutinho has said the government will ensure that academics and speakers who have their free speech rights wrongly infringed, can sue for compensation.
According to The Telegraph:
The MP for East Surrey is spearheading a fightback against vice-chancellors and Lords trying to scrap a planned tort in the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill that will give academics and students the power to sue universities for breaching their free speech rights.
Writing in The Telegraph as the Bill returns to the House of Commons on Tuesday, Ms Coutinho – a former aide to Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister – said that the law is “necessary to secure the cultural change needed on campus.”
She said that in recent years, there has been “a disturbing trend of forcing people into silence if they dare to go against what has become a progressive monoculture”.
The legislation follows a string of examples where academics have been “cancelled” over their views.
They include Prof Kathleen Stock, a philosophy professor who resigned from Sussex University after what she described as a “witch-hunt” because of her views on transgender issues.
Members of the House of Lords, including some of the party’s peers, voted in December to scrap the statutory tort in the Bill that would allow academics to seek compensation in the courts.
Instead, peers sided with universities who say the risk of being sued would create a huge administrative burden and put societies off hosting events.
The Government had tried to compromise by tabling amendments to water down the tort so that academics and students could only use it as a “last resort”. It would have meant they would have first had to pursue complaints through the lengthy procedures of the relevant university and the higher education regulator.
However, after a backlash from cancelled academics who said such a move would make the legislation “toothless”, Ms Coutinho has fought a battle to restore the tort in full.
She said: “I‘ve listened to people who have concerns about the legal mechanism, known as the ‘statutory tort’, which provides a means for people to go to court.
“However, I firmly believe the tort provides an important legal backstop for the duties in this legislation.
“It will allow those who have suffered any loss – financial or otherwise – to seek redress through the courts where needed.
“I’ve spoken to many leading academics who share my belief that the tort is necessary to secure the cultural change needed on campus.”