Beyond the specific issue of speech which may (or may not) be protected under Article 10 read in its entirety lies a wider problem, and that is that the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, particularly as interpreted and enforced by the OfS, may operate as a kind of reverse Section 28. This was a highly controversial clause in the Local Government Act 1988 which prohibited local authorities and state schools from “promoting homosexuality” or teaching the acceptability of same-sex relationships as a “pretended family relationship”. Continue reading
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Tag: Julian Petley (Page 1 of 6)
Critics of the three-step process laid out in RA24 argue that the proportionality test needs to inform each step and not just the final one. Such critics include Wonkhe, Professor Naomi-Waltham Smith of Oxford University and James Murray, legal director at Doyle Clayton solicitors. In order to illustrate why this is necessary in order to comply fully with the HRA they draw on a recent case occasioned by the Austrian drag artist Conchita Wurst winning the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest. Continue reading
Given the manner in which the OfS conceived of and carried out its duties in relation to Sussex’s conditions of registration (E1), it is perhaps unsurprising that it reached the Final Decision that it did. However, this does not augur well for how it is going to conceive of and carry out its duties under the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act. Continue reading
The notion of freedom of speech within the law played a key role in this case, and in her judgment Lieven J observed that “there is an immediate question as to what ‘freedom of speech within the law’ means and how it relates to the need to undertake a proportionality balance within Article 10 of the ECHR, in order to comply with s.6 of the Human Rights Act 1998” (200). The latter states that “it is unlawful for a public authority to act in a way which is incompatible with a Convention right”. Continue reading
In March 2025, the Office for Students (OfS) fined the University of Sussex £585,000, the highest amount ever levied by the regulator. This was largely because after a three-and-a-half-year investigation, which the University’s vice-chancellor Professor Sasha Roseneil described as “Kafkaesque”, the OfS had decreed that the University’s Trans and Non-Binary Equality Policy Statement (hereafter the Policy Statement), which sought to protect the rights of trans and non-binary people in the University, breached the institution’s regulatory requirement to uphold freedom of speech and protect academic freedom. Continue reading
Twenty years later, and under a new prime minister, Labour now appears to want to make good on Blair’s promise to ‘change the rules’ as far as human rights are concerned, and to do so for much the same reasons and in much the same way. Continue reading
Every time that threats are made to pull the UK out of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), those opposed to such a drastic move remind us that Britain was its first signatory and that Winston Churchill was a strong supporter of the project. Continue reading
What the matters discussed in Part One of this post demonstrate above all is the complexity and difficulty of critiquing the OSA as a threat to perfectly legitimate forms of expression when such significant parts of the mainstream media, namely the Telegraph, Times, Sun, Express, Mail and GB News, along with pressure groups such as the Free Speech Union and powerful right-wing ‘think tanks’ (in actual fact, ‘free market’ lobbyists) such as the Adam Smith Institute and Policy Exchange have, in pursuit of their own political and ideological ends, repeatedly set it up as a straw man and attacked it from the perspective of what has come to be known as free speech fundamentalism. Continue reading
In a recent article for the journal Porn Studies I raised doubts about whether children and young people watching porn online is apparently so harmful to them that the restrictive measures proposed by the Online Safety Act (OSA) are necessary, proportionate and compatible with the UK’s various human rights obligations. I also posed the question of whether these measures, and particularly the requirements for age-verification, are actually workable. Continue reading
Readers of Byline Times are likely to have been among the many who have complained to Ofcom about GB News and its partisan political stance. Continue reading
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