University of Sussex fined £585,000 by Office for Students

If the Uni won the Government have to revisit the legislation re the powers and what is needed to regulate the industry (eg the 2023 free speech act)

The Uni staff's conduct is outside the Uni Regulators remit while staff conduct and T policy created an undue bias within the organisation.

High level oversight is never a benefit to the public when staff can freely go rogue. The argument that staff can write policy and the OfS cant hold the Uni accountable is interesting as how is governance upheld if a Uni allowed that to happen.

The public funding of student loan finance will be a key driver to force 3rd levels into tighter regulation.

I listened to an interesting podcast a while ago with Arif Ahmed, the free speech tsar, and he said he couldn't say much about the Uni of Sussex case because of ongoing legal action.

I really hope they lose their appeal. So much of the intolerance and hostility of GC views and concerns is being fostered in universities. They really need a clear message to that this is unacceptable and that they have a legal duty to protect all lawful free speech.

Someone has helpfully uploaded the webpage to Archive

https://archive.ph/jlaL0

I think the appeal against the fine is currently being heard. All I've seen though is a headline in the TES, which is behind a paywall that i've not been able to finagle.

So [some] universities seem to be hiding reviewing their policies.

Universities review trans policies after Sussex’s record fine

https://www.thetimes.com/article/5474da65-4cf3-4c53-afea-7fb5c36dba28?shareToken=163d45f4f5e0cca24dbf336d5bb6f355

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5262744-assisted-dying-and-coercion?utm_campaign=thread&utm_medium=app_share

There is a separate thread. Started here in FWR by @ArabellaScott.

Good news

Marie, I very much do respect your views and as I said up thread, am not against the concept of medically assisted suicide in the right circumstances. However, there are activists - even if you are not one of them - who are shouting down the mildest of questions, and for me that is where the parallels with some trans activists come in.

It’s too important for no debate and I would be interested in a separate thread to discuss the feminist issues to avoid further derailment. It’s incredibly important that women’s voices are heard. Whether it is women’s pain and symptoms not taken as seriously as men’s, women’s not being believed to know their own minds or women becoming default carers, there are barriers to good palliative care and good death that would be good to discuss in a woman centred way.

This isn't the thread for it, but you are dismissive of my core point about dealing with concerns rather than the hand waving of 'im commited and it will be all fine'.

All of this 100% and yes looking at what has happened in Canada is also cautionary - where people who society doesn't want to have to support and who are mostly depressed / struggling due to lack of support and a crappy environment seem to be offered assisted dying with very few safeguards in place.

I have a family member with dementia and I've already had some frankly disturbing conversations about the level of medical care they're entitled to. Their condition is terminal but right now they are happy. They are not who they were but they are in a good care home and are happy and have a reasonable quality of life. There are definitely those in the pubic sector I've spoken to who basically without that much pretense think my relation - whose family would like to stay alive - should just be allowed to die. And that's WITHOUT assisted dying.

Care homes not being able to opt out is truly dystopian.

Edited to add: I previously posted in favour of assisted dying, but seeing how a good care home has improved my relative's quality of life has totally changed my opinion on this, for what it's worth, plus a deeper analysis of the issues. Given we can't even adhere to statutory guidance on safeguarding of children in schools my confidence our society can in practice safeguard against abuse of this law is flat zero.

RedToothBrush
It's brushed away as being cruel to let people not have the decision..
demonstrating emotional blackmail tactics..
tone deafness..

Again I have to ask for respect to be shown to people like me who are as sincere and genuine in our belief in favour of assisted dying as you are in your opposition to it.

Using phrases like 'brushing away' 'blackmail',' tone deafness' to characterise other people's deeply held convictions, and insinuating that there is a parallel between deeply held convictions and trans rights activism is disrespectful.
The fact that 'the other side are doing it too' is no justification.

I am deeply committed to the right to assisted dying, and I have been for decades, even before it became an issue with personal resonance for myself. I am just as deeply opposed to gender ideology, and I refuse to be force-teamed with trans activism.

People are 100% entitled to disagree with supporters of assisted dying, but there's no need to cast aspersions on the sincerity of their views. My views.

It's so that mps can vote by conscience instead of being whipped, i think.

I was thinking more that it's contentious social legislation that the government would give a free vote anyway so prfers not to get involved with the controversy.

The 1968 Abortion Act was a private members bill introduced by David Steel.

The Wolfenden Committee reported in 1960 recommending legalisation but the Macmillan government that had commissioned the report refused to implement it.
The 1967 Sexual Offences Act that legalised male homosexuality in private for over-21s was introduced in the Lords as a private members bill.

@RedToothBrush The Times was asking that question on its leader page last week. The Bill isn’t good enough for its limited purpose and their view is that Starmer promised Dame Esther that it would happen and then chickened out. They then persuaded Kim L to run with it. Very few PMBs now affect contentious areas of legislation. The government is better placed to do it and can do after a PMB doesn’t become law. Most don’t. The PMB is frequently a “stalking horse” to gauge opinion. A government is far better placed to write a robust piece of legislation and get it into the statute books.

Or because they know it's a bit of a car crash as it stands.

What's fascinating in this sense is that it's not being put forward by the Labour Cabinet as a bill. Why?

Perhaps for the same reasons that the 1967 Abortion Act was also a private members’ bill?

It's not about drowning anyone out.

If the idea is good enough and well thought out enough then the church and doctors are irrelevant because the case will be well thought out and articulated. And there will be good counter arguments to concerns.

What's fascinating in this sense is that it's not being put forward by the Labour Cabinet as a bill. Why?

If the argument is compelling enough.

@RedToothBrush No activist is as entrenched as the Church and many doctors. The voices for assisted dying have long been drowned out. The sad thing is the private members’ bill is the wrong vehicle and it should have been a properly thought through bill.

Tbh I have seen a sizeable amount of emotional abuse thrown at people who have concerns about this being pushed through by better off people without concerns to proper safeguarding of the disabled, old, mentality ill and the poor (there are concerning examples of this in Canada). It's brushed away as being cruel to let people not have the decision, with no further comments about safeguarding apart from 'it will be fine and we will stop coercion'.

Unfortunately since the police, the justice system and the NHS already have great difficulty in recognising coercive behaviour and there's little effort being paid to tackle this lack of awareness (contrast with the big push for awareness of LGBT issues).

So I do think there a lack of trust going on (again) which is forming part of a pattern and there is a lack of self awareness from activists trying to push assisted dying through - who perversely are demonstrating emotional blackmail tactics to do so whilst also claiming emotional blackmail will not be used to coerce people into assisted suicide.

The optics aren't great and when put into the context of the wider political landscape, I'm hardly surprised frustration at the tone deafness from better off quarters is coming out.

I don't think saying someone is 'sneering' for making that observation is much better if I'm perfectly honest.

'The moist eyed noisy activists '

'rich liberals living in north London going, ‘It’d be nice to have a service that can off me in my penthouse.'

What is it with opponents of assisted dying that they feel the need to be so sneery about those who support it?

I respect that you, CarefulN0w, and KS have a different perspective on this difficult issue, and you are 100% entitled to your opinion, but how about reciprocating that respect?

Re KS and assisted dying. I’m a nurse who has worked in end of life and palliative care for a good chunk of my career. I’m broadly in favour of the idea of assisted suicide, but it needs to be thought through extremely carefully. I’m concerned by the current proposed legislation and by those who are so keen to bring it in without sufficient parliamentary scrutiny. The moist eyed noisy activists might think they are on the right side of history, but they really don’t like being asked for the details about how it will work in practice. Can anyone see any parallels?

Hard to say … it’s all turning into a big showdown between the OfS and ‘EDI academia’. To really bring it all down you would have to get rid of Advance HE and its various charter mark schemes, and you would probably also have to engage with Universities UK. This isn’t so much about individual academics but about structures.

There are how many other academic institutions cross the country to whom this STILL remains a HUGE issue.

There should be a damn burst moment on this if academics really see their entire integrity at risk.

I was merely pointing out conflicting statements also in the public domain. Ultimately, we may never know the full story as I can’t imagine any Sussex academics will talk publicly now that their employer is appealing the judgment.