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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now should universities be forced to report on students they suspect of holding extremist views?  That’s the subject that’s going to be debated in parliament tomorrow as part of the Counter Terrorism Bill.  It’s pretty controversial of course and the former head of MI5 said it restricts free speech.  Well Lord Butler was at the heart of government for so many decades as Principle Private Secretary to the Prime Minister, then of course Cabinet Secretary.   He is also Master of University College Oxford for ten years and as you can see he joins me now, a very good morning to you Lord Butler.  Well I’m referring there to Eliza Manningham-Buller there who says well she thinks this clause within the Bill is retrogressive, it would affect free speech, what’s your view?  

LORD BUTLER:  Well universities have got a duty of care to their students to prevent them breaking the law but they’ve also got an obligation, a legal obligation to encourage free speech within the law so for my part I think the government is going too far in requiring the universities to follow their directions, for example on the speakers that are allowed on university campuses.  As long as those speakers are within the law, the universities have got a duty to allow them.  .

DM: So within the law, the test is already there and do you think there is almost a sense of double standards given what we’ve seen emanating from the awful events in Paris recently there, this defence of freedom of speech and the right to offend within the law.

LORD BUTLER:  Yes and I think it is very difficult for the government to have two laws that are alongside each other, one of which says you must follow our guidance on whom you allow to speak on your campus and the other is you’ve got to allow free speech within the law.  Now my problem with it is that the government is really treating universities as if they were schools.  Schools have got a duty to teach children what’s right and what’s wrong but universities are dealing with young adults and the whole point of universities is that they should have a good deal of freedom to hear different opinions and to  make up their own minds about what’s right and wrong.  

DM: But do you have a certain sympathy with them putting this in the Bill in that when we look and we ask ourselves all the time don’t we, where are the roots and where are the forums where radicalisation is taking place and universities are in some cases one of them, prisons being another, the internet of course and other locations but universities have been identified as a breeding ground.  

LORD BUTLER:  Well universities, as I say, have got their own guidance about what they allow and they must allow speakers within the law but as somebody said in the Lords debate last week, the radicalisation is much more likely to go on over coffee in student’s rooms rather than at public meetings so I think to be too restrictive about the meetings that universities can arrange and not to leave it to them is going too far.  

DM: Do you think if they proceed with this that they will see some kind of revolt within parliament and then if it were implemented, if it did hit the statute book, that universities would just refuse to comply?

LORD BUTLER:  Well I’m sure that universities will obey the law but no, I think it’s very likely that this week there will be an amendment to this Bill moved in the House of Lords to exclude universities.  Now I don't know whether that will succeed but what I hope is that even if the government are not prepared to go that far they will write into the law alongside it the duty to allow to free speech and that they will look extremely carefully at the directions that they are giving under this new law, that they are to give under this new law – on which they are consulting – to make sure that they are not too restrictive.   
DM: Just while you’re with us, Lord Butler, I just want to ask you and I mentioned your extensive experience in the civil service at the heart of Downing Street amongst other places, a lot of focus at the moment on the 1980s and what’s gone on in terms of child abuse investigations and paedophiles within Whitehall or wherever and whether or not there has been a cover up.  Presumably you agree we need an investigation to find out if there has been but your experience of being there at the time?

LORD BUTLER:  Well I think we do need an investigation but I think we have got to be a bit careful about the breadth of it.  There has been a lot of questions about the Chilcot inquiry and the time that that has taken in the last week or so and of course the Chilcot terms of reference were very wide, they covered 2001 to 2010 but this would go much, much further back, many, many more years and what worries me is that the people who have suffered will fail to get satisfaction because it will be very difficult to bring the thing to a satisfactory conclusion.

DM: But did you have no sense while you were there in the Cabinet Office for instance that things were being swept under the carpet?   

LORD BUTLER:  No and I was Principle Private Secretary to Margaret Thatcher in Number Ten in the 1980s when Geoffrey Dickens brought forward his complaints.  I can truthfully say it never came our way, never came my way.  I am confident from having been there that it didn’t come Margaret Thatcher’s way so I am sure that these reports were given to the Home Office and it’s worrying that they can’t be found but I just didn’t have any sense of it being an issue that reached Prime Ministerial level in the 1980s.  

DM: Lord Butler, thank you very much indeed, appreciate you being here, thank you.