Let me convince you: Britain needs a US-style free-speech First Amendment

If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
John Stuart Mill

In this strand of mini lectures, we have asked one speaker to convince YOU the audience of an unpopular opinion.

The guest lecturer will have 12-15 minutes to make their case before the session chair and audience members are invited to push back, scrutinise, pull apart their arguments – or explain why they agree with them. The aim is for these quick-fire exchanges to allow attendees – and indeed the speaker – to robustly defend positions, develop critiques beyond caricature and ad hominem attacks, and steelman their own arguments. This should allow us to dig deeper into contested issues beyond today’s soundbite-and-meme culture. And perhaps – just perhaps – some in the room might be convinced to change their minds.

Nearly 1.2million ‘criminal incidents’ involving speech or expression were recorded in England & Wales in 2025. In 2024–25 alone, two provisions within the Public Order Act alone led to 19,000 convictions for speech and expression. Britain is an international leader in censoring and punishing its citizens for their speech.

Yet criminal law represents just the visible tip of the iceberg. Beneath it lie professional and media regulators and employment sanctions that penalise millions of Britons’ speech and work in tandem with activist campaigns to turn such powers against people for their opinions.

In the face of this free-speech emergency, Britain needs its own version of the US First Amendment. Along with lawyers Preston Byrne and Elijah Granet, I have drafted the model Freedom of Speech Bill. Let me convince you that that it will provide a permanent solution to Britian’s censorship problem.