Trevor Phillips:

I think I understand the premise of your question, but I do not really agree with it. The expression of an opinion, one way or another, should be protected, whatever your job. The reason that this particular individual ran into difficulty was not because he was not being asked to lecture students. He was a Labour councillor, and I think it was in that context that he uttered the views that were thought to be disobliging. The point here is that the censorship that is taking place is not just to do with what academics may be saying to their students in tutorials or lectures; the censorship here is being exercised against any individual who happens to be associated with the institution who may or may not take a view or write something in any guise.

We can take the case, for example, of Noah Carl. I do not agree with anything Noah Carl has written, by the way. However, the criticism of him was that he wrote an article in a journal that also published views that were disobliging; it was not actually about his views. The point here is that I do not think there is anything in this Bill, or indeed the harm that it is designed to remedy, that separates the questions of what might be said as part of a job and what might be said as a human being.