Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what guidance her Department has published on preventing speakers intending to incite hate being given a platform on university campuses.

Universities are required to balance their freedom of speech duty alongside other legal responsibilities, such as laws against different types of speech that can incite hatred. This includes the statutory Prevent duty. The government has published statutory guidance on Prevent (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/prevent-duty-guidance) explaining that universities are required to consider the impact and mitigations needed to host a particular speaker and whether their views constitute extremist views and risk drawing people into terrorism.

The sector takes these issues seriously and has produced a variety of helpful guidance for hosting speakers. This includes the Universities UK guidance: Freedom of speech on campus (http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/policy-and-analysis/reports/Documents/2011/freedom-of-speech-on-campus.pdf) and External speakers in higher education institutions (http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/policy-and-analysis/reports/Documents/2013/external-speakers-in-higher-education-institutions.pdf).