The elite bastions of the Oxford and Cambridge unions have been exempted from the government’s counter-terror ban on extremist speakers from university campuses, Home Office ministers have confirmed.



The two prestigious student societies have escaped from the home secretary Theresa May’s counter-terror crackdown on non-violent extremism in higher education after strong lobbying from senior Tory peers.

The decision comes as the government issues new statutory guidance to university and further education student unions requiring them to have clear policies “setting out the activities that are or are not allowed to take place on campus”. The new guidance also suggests that elected student union officers and staff should also undergo Prevent counter-terrorism awareness training.

The pressure to exempt the two elite student debating societies included protests from two ex-Cabinet ministers, Lord Deben and Lord Lamont, who claimed the ban would have stopped a famous 1960 Cambridge Union debate with the wartime British fascist leader, Sir Oswald Mosley.

Mosley was invited and then directly challenged by two students who were both future Tory cabinet ministers, Kenneth Clarke and John Selwyn Gummer, despite demands from some Cambridge students, including Michael Howard, that the meeting should be banned.

The issue was also raised with Home Office ministers by Lord Renfrew, a former master of Jesus College, Cambridge, who told them that the Cambridge Union, which is celebrating its 200th anniversary this year, could not continue to flourish with the freedom of speech constraints imposed on it by the new guidance. However, Oxford University insisted that because the debating union and the university were separate entities, it would never have been covered by the legislation.

Malcolm X in Oxford, before addressing university students on the subject of extremism and liberty, 3 December 1964. Photograph: Keystone/Getty Images

A Home Office minister, Lord Bates, has told peers that the two privileged debating societies will, however, be exempt from the statutory guidance denying non-violent extremists a platform in universities. He said it had been decided that the Oxford and Cambridge Unions would be exempt because “they exist separately from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and as such are not covered by the duty”.

University vice-chancellors face the ultimate threat of imprisonment for contempt of court if they fail to comply with a ministerial direction from the home secretary telling them to impose a ban on extremist speakers and take other measures to stop students from “being drawn into terrorism”.

Strong opposition from the House of Lords and from the business secretary, Vince Cable, within the coalition government forced a commitment from May to write academic freedom of speech safeguards into the guidance banning non-violent extremist speakers from campus.

Last week the internal coalition row over the issue broke out into the open when the home secretary claimed Cable was trying to water down the guidance by trying to give discretion to colleges over whether specific speakers should be banned or challenged in open debate.

“If colleges and universities did not realise before what we are up against they should now. We are not talking about regulating legitimate debate – we’re saying we need to do more to stop radicalisation on campus,” she told the Sunday Times.

But the statutory guidance shows the row remains unresolved. The new guidance issued on Thursday simply says: “Radicalisation on campus can be facilitated through events held for extremist speakers. There will be further guidance issued on the management of external speakers and events, including on the interaction of the Prevent duty with universities’ existing duties to secure freedom of speech and have regard to the importance of academic freedom.”

It is understood that the intention is that the rules detailing how the ban will operate will be published before the election campaign gets under way at the end of the month.

A spokesperson for Oxford University said: “The Oxford Union is legally separate from Oxford University, and always has been. As such it was never covered by the anti-terror legislation, and any implication that an intervention needed to be made on their behalf is wrong.”

The National Union of Students said the fact that the Oxford and Cambridge unions were not affected by the proposed laws highlighted the bill’s confusion, and was another reason why it should be stopped.

“We are alarmed about the speed at which the bill is being introduced. Rushed laws are very often ill-thought out, or otherwise poorly scrutinised, and we will continue to strongly oppose the bill while calling for a thorough assessment into the legality of its proposals,” the NUS said.

The Home Office’s statutory Prevent duty guidance for universities – issued on Thursday – also applies different guidelines to Scotland compared with those given to universities in England and Wales.

The guidance for England and Wales says that “young people continue to make up a disproportionately high number of those arrested in this country for terrorist-related offences and of those who are travelling to join terrorist organisations in Syria and Iraq. Universities must be vigilant and aware of the risks this poses.” This passage is omitted from the guidance for Scottish universities.

Universities in England are told that their risk assessments should include “not just violent extremism but also non-violent extremism, which can create an atmosphere conducive to terrorism and can popularise views which terrorists exploit”. Non-violent extremism is not mentioned in the Scotland version, as a result of lobbying by the Scottish government.

Pam Tatlow, chief executive of the university thinktank Million+, said: “The story here is we’ve got universities in Scotland doing one thing, and universities in England and Wales doing something else.

“The inclusion of a reference to non-violent extremism in the guidance for England and Wales but its exclusion from the guidance in Scotland reveals the extent of the disagreements between governments and the determination of the Home Office and No 10 to put universities in the frame.”