Government to Change Impartiality Guidance on Speakers

Paymaster General Jeremy Quin arrives for a Cabinet Meeting at 10 Downing Street in London on November 1, 2022. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

The government will change its guidance used to vet speakers before inviting them to taxpayer-funded events, a Cabinet Office minister has announced.

Civil servants organising government events follow official guidance that instructs them to conduct due diligence on guest speakers.

If potential guests have expressed or supported extremist views, civil servants will not issue or will recall the invitation.

This ensures the “impartiality of the civil service,” Cabinet officer Jeremy Quin said in a statement, published last week.

“It has become apparent that the issued guidance may have been adapted for utilisation in areas for which purpose it was not intended and may also be at risk of being misinterpreted by implementing bodies outside of the Cabinet Office,” Mr. Quin said.

He has instructed the Cabinet Office to review and update its cross-civil service diversity network due diligence and impartiality guidance and suspended the current policy until the changes are complete.

The minister added that it was important to protect the impartiality of the civil service “but not in a way that could result in adverse unintended consequences.”

The decision comes following the removal of a weapons expert Dan Kaszeta from the International Chemical Weapons Demilitarisation Conference (CWD) that took place in May.

A social media check, in accordance with the Cabinet Office rules, showed that Mr. Kaszeta had posted critical comments of the government officials or policy. Mr. Kaszeta’s Twitter comments criticised Brexit and the government’s asylum policy. The expert was subsequently disinvited to the conference but later received an apology from the government.

Mr. Kaszeta believes both the 2021 and 2022 guidance and their application in his case were unlawful, said his legal representatives at law firm Leigh Day. He argued that the guidance was discriminatory and contrary to his rights under data protection law.

Leigh Day added that government lawyers don’t consider the guidance unlawful.

Mr. Quin said that he was committed to protecting free speech and has considered how the guidance has been implemented.

“For that reason, I have decided to withdraw the current guidance, review it and reissue it in the early autumn having ensured that the guidance strikes the right balance in the way it supports our civil service colleagues in protecting the service’s impartiality,” his statement said.

Mr. Kaszeta called the suspension of the Cabinet Office guidance a “substantive victory” but warned that more needs to be done.

“We do not know how many people were affected or how much valuable advice has been denied to government audiences. Clearly, there are people who deserve an apology that is as thorough as the one I received and I hope such apologies are forthcoming,” he said.

On Tuesday, Mr. Kaszeta tweeted that the government initially offered to pay him £800 to speak at the CWD 2023 conference, an offer he said he declined.

Taxpayers should not be funding speakers who have expressed or supported extremist views and the new guidance will make sure of it, said Mr. Quin. It will also protect both free speech and the impartiality of the civil service, he added.

According to Mr. Quin, “these are not mutually exclusive goals.”

In a similar case to Mr. Kaszeta’s, Professor Kate Devlin was disinvited from speaking at a civil service network within a government department last year. She said the decision was prompted by her criticism of the government’s Online Safety Bill.

On Monday, Ms. Devlin addressed the Ministry of Justice on Twitter, mentioning the suspension of the guidance that was used “in a way that was not intended.”

A Cabinet Office spokesperson said that the guidance has been withdrawn to “prevent any misinterpretation of the rules.”