HC Deb 13 January 1988 vol 125 cc268-9W
Mr. Galloway

To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what steps the Government intend taking prior to the current Education Reform Bill reaching the statute book to ensure that individual universities' statutes give sufficient protection to academic freedom.

Mr. Jackson

We believe that the Education Reform Bill will ensure that individual universities statutes give protection to academic freedom in the following ways:

  1. i. by specifying the grounds on which the statutes are to provide for dismissal; namely, redundancy and good cause;
  2. ii. by requiring the commissioners to provide for an appeals machinery for staff who are dismissed. This should ensure that all academic staff have an effective measure of protection against any victimisation by their colleagues on account of their views;
  3. iii. by requiring the commissioners to send their draft modifications to, amongst others. Organizations 269 representing the staff concerned, affording such organizations an opportunity to make representations on those modifications, and to take those representations into account;
  4. iv. by providing for all instruments made by the commissioners to be subject to the approval of Her Majesty in Council who may remit them to the commissioners for reconsideration. It will be for the Privy Council, in considering whether to recommend to Her Majesty that amendments to university statutes put forward by the commissioner should be confirmed, to satisfy itself that the Government's objective of protecting academic freedom has been properly met.

In addition, the Bill requires the commissioners, in exercising their functions, to have regard to the need to apply the principles of justice and fairness. Further, the Bill will strengthen the protection academic staff have in another important respect: it will remove the exclusive jurisdiction of the visitor in cases of the dismissal of academic staff, and so will enable staff to bring actions in the courts for wrongful dismissal, which they cannot now do. This right of access to the courts will be in addition to the access that academic staff like other employees already have to industrial tribunals over claims for unfair dismissal.