There’s an important lesson in trust that Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg seems to have trouble remembering, writes

David Maddox

THE free schools row between the coalition parties may seem to be a distant problem for Scotland given that the policy only affects England, even if it was introduced there by a Scot – the Aberdeen-born Education Secretary, Michael Gove.

But Liberal Democrat Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s decision to break ranks over the weekend and attack a policy he helped vote through in 2010 has a much wider significance.

In the 2010 election, Mr Clegg and the Lib Dems opposed the Tory policy of introducing free schools, which was essentially setting up a private sector education system without the parents of pupils having to pay fees. As independent schools, free schools are free of the national curriculum, teachers and heads need no formal teaching qualification, and they can be set up by parents, teachers, individual benefactors or companies.

The idea was first successfully run in Sweden and one of its biggest fans is the SNP Scottish education secretary Mike Russell, but it has now run into problems in England. In the past month a 27-year-old head with no teaching qualification or experience has resigned from a London free school while an Islamic free school in Derby has been failed by Ofsted.

Also, the claim by Mr Gove that the extra funding for children in deprived areas would see free schools set up there has failed to materialise. Instead many of them have been set up by what shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt has dismissed as middle-class “yummy mummies” in well-to-do areas, trying to keep their children away from the hoi polloi.

Suddenly, Mr Clegg has decided to oppose much of what makes free schools free from the state.

The fact that he is too late in expressing his opposition won’t have gone unnoticed by his own party, but his decision to attack another part of the coalition agreement and essentially go back on his word could have a major impact on any post-2015 election coalition deals.

The decision to go back on boundary changes has already shown that the Lib Dems cannot be entirely trusted to keep a coalition agreement. The excuse over the Tories blocking House of Lords reform does not stack up in the print of the agreement document. And the Tories are still sore over the way Mr Clegg changed direction on NHS reforms in England.

If the Lib Dems do hold the balance of power in 2015, which is still a fair bet, then the rhetoric over a key Tory policy is going to get in the way of the two parties making another deal, as is the lack of trust on the Lib Dems keeping their word. But significantly, there are now voices in Labour saying that it would be better to have a minority government than risk trusting the Lib Dems.

The whole pitch to voters of the Lib Dems is that they are the party of coalition, but if they cannot be reliable partners, then it undermines their own case.

TIME spent at university as a lecturer or a student should be spent discussing and debating ideas. Whether they concern literature, chemistry, or politics, no idea or concept should be protected from questioning and probing. This should include discussions about how the university is run as well as the difficulties that staff and students face. Having these arguments helps to highlight serious problems and resolve them, it helps in getting to the root of issues and in addressing them.

There is no better way to address differences of opinion than to have it out. The alternative is to gag people, to shut them up, to close down debate, to stop people from speaking their minds, restricting the very words they can read and hear.

The University of Edinburgh is one of the best universities in the world. It has nurtured critical thinkers for centuries, and yet it has been seeking to manage and control the airing of student views in a manner that is questionable. This summer, the university demanded that the leaders of Edinburgh University Students’ Association (EUSA) sign a clause confirming that they would give the university 48 hours’ notice of any statement or publication that “may be detrimental to the interests of the student body or the university community”. Documents seen by the Journal, a student newspaper, reveal that an early version of the contract proposed by the university even required that officials have the power to amend statements made by the students’ association, which EUSA refused.

It’s hardly the worst case of the restriction of speech I have come across. It is understandable that universities take care to anticipate what is said about them. As someone who spends a lot of time in universities, I know that students whinge a great deal and are not always in the right. And as the university funds the body you can see why it might think it has a right to place restrictions on EUSA. But, despite these points, because the act of sending a statement to the university before anyone else is likely to have chilling effect on what is said – sending it to officials prior to a release will inevitably influence what is said and what is not said – the clause should not have been signed and it is wrong of the university to seek to monitor the student body in this way.

EUSA has to be able to act in the interests of students which will not always be in the interests of the university. Students have to be able to act independently and autonomously. This means that the university has no place in obtaining the formal right to check critical statements, and it is concerning that they think that doing so is OK.

Sadly, however, it’s not that hard to see where it got the idea that asking for the right to check the statements (and suggest they amend them) is OK, because not a month goes by without some new restriction on our speech. Some are clearly very serious, others less so, and some address language that you might not like at all, or would not agree with.But all are united by the notion that others have the right to decide what we can say or hear, adding up to a progressing curtailment of speech.

The impending regulation of the press is one such case. Although we do not yet know the final details of the Royal Charter agreed by the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Labour, which will be put forward for approval at a specially-convened Privy Council at the end of this month, there will be a regulatory system for the industry in place at some point, even if some papers and magazines will opt out and protest against it. In Scotland, certain sectarian and political songs are now out on and off the pitch and men have already been sentenced for such singing. Anyone who travels on the ScotRail Edinburgh-Glasgow service will have seen the poster threatening: “Use sectarian language on the train and who knows where you’ll end up.” The sign depicts a railway map with tracks leading to the locations of Scottish prisons, and spells out: “You could get a five-year prison sentence and a criminal record.”

Banter is also off limits, even when no-one is offended. Last week, the England manager Roy Hodgson had to apologise after making a joke about a space monkey and a Tottenham Hotspur player. It was something he said to the team during half-time, in a semi-private space – hardly broadcasting to the nation – and no-one complained. Even so, after someone leaked it, he had to say sorry.

And these are only a few current examples. There is a long list that continues to grow detailing what we cannot say and what we cannot hear, but perhaps the most pertinent example of a recent restriction of free speech was brought in by EUSA, the student body that now protests its need for free speech.

In September, EUSA banned a song from being played in any of the University of Edinburgh’s student buildings. The song was one of the summer’s biggest hits – Robin Thicke’s song BlurredLines – which had reached No1, but it has controversial lyrics that EUSA argued trivialises rape and promotes an unhealthy attitude towards sex. While debate about these lyrics and their impact would be healthy, acting as censors in relation to what students listen to on campus is not. I expect that had the university tried to ban a popular song the student body would have rightly protested.

The problem is if you approve the restriction of speech in one case, it is difficult to protest it in another. What many fail to realise is that when certain words or groups are restricted in their speech, it endorses the further restriction of others – that means for you and for me. Staff and students in elite universities, people on the train and men watching and playing football should be free to say and think what they like. We may not like what they say but we should defend their right to say it.

One lesson these students could do with learning is that in defending the right of others to say and hear words for themselves we defend our own right to speak out and to listen for ourselves.