The Charity Commission, the regulator of charities in
England and Wales, has today published
its response to the
Joint Committee on Human Rights report into Freedom of
speech in Universities.
Helen Stephenson, chief executive of the Charity
Commission said:
I am absolutely clear that charitable students’
unions, universities and other higher education
providers can challenge traditional boundaries,
encourage the free exchange of views and host
speakers with a range of opinions, including those
who might be controversial or divide opinion.
These activities are entirely in line with their aims
to promote education. Our role as regulator is to
provide guidance that enables trustees of all
charities carry out their activities while complying
with their legal duties and responsibilities as
charities and where necessary hold trustees to
account against that guidance.
The response sets out the Commission’s role as
regulator of students’ unions and Higher Education
Institutions (HEIs). It stresses that students’ unions
and HEIs play an important role in providing discussion
and debate, encouraging students to develop political
awareness, to debate, to challenge their own views and
perceptions and to form views on political issues.
The Commission says it agrees that freedom of speech
should form part of students’ unions’ and HEIs’
activities in carrying out their educational charitable
purposes. The regulator says that, as the Joint
Committee has acknowledged, freedom of speech is not
absolute and must be within the limits of the law.
The Commission says its guidance is an important tool
for explaining its regulatory approach to all
charities, and is written to enable and support all
charities to recognise and manage the risks that arise
from some activities that may present higher risks in
order to support them to go ahead.
Ahead of the JCHR’s report, the regulator had already
committed to reviewing two of its publications:
-
chapter 5 of its guidance ‘Protecting your charity
from harm’ to make sure it sufficiently stresses
what charities can do, to support trustees to
recognise, and then to manage and mitigate, risks
to their charities.
-
its internal staff guidance on students’ unions
(OG48) to
ensure it sufficiently reflects relevant aspects of
freedom of speech when students’ unions carry out
activities, and ensure a clearer distinction is
made between the responsibilities of the trustees,
students’ union bodies, student societies and the
broader membership.
