Students should be made to feel “uncomfortable”, the incoming chair of the Office for Students has said, as he insists that the new watchdog will not curtail free speech.

Sir Michael Barber, who will head the new higher education regulator, has warned that those who try to limit discussion and debate for fear of offending their peers are embarking on a “slippery slope”.

He said that the OFS will adopt “the widest possible definition of freedom of speech: namely anything within the law”, and urged all universities to follow suit.

Writing in the Times Higher Education magazine, he said: “Ideally, we will never have to intervene, but if we do, it will be to widen freedom of speech rather than restrict it.”

Sir Michael went on to recount a conversation he had with a “well-informed student" on the topic of freedom of speech.

The student agreed the concept was important but added that “it might need to be limited in relation to questions of identity because otherwise it might make some people feel ‘uncomfortable’.”

Sir Michael said: “But ‘comfortable’ is the start of a slippery slope towards ‘complacent’ or ‘self-satisfied’. And doesn’t much of the most profound learning require discomfort?”