Newly elected chancellor William Hague has said 'cancel culture' is "absolutely wrong" and he "absolutely" defends Prof Kathleen Stock's right to speak at the Oxford Union.
Lord Hague, who will be inaugurated as chancellor early in the new year, told Radio 4's Today programme: "Cancellation culture towards speakers that we disagree with is absolutely wrong.
"I would encouragement the government to bring forward into law the Act that was passed under the previous government, reinforcing freedom of speech in higher education or to if they think it is deficient to come up with proposals of their own to do that in an amended form."
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But he added: "I think freedom of speech is thriving most of the time in Oxford. I don’t want to suggest there is a crisis over that but it will be very important to defend it."
Hundreds of protesters marched to the Union and LGBT+ activists stormed her talk in May 2023 before one of them glued themselves to the floor.
Mr Webb said "a lot of academics, women academics in particular, think it might be a crisis. What do you say to them and to her?"
Lord Hague said: "I agree with them absolutely. That was an extremely serious business and that cannot go on like that in the future so I absolutely defend her right to speak in Oxford.
"When I say it is not a crisis I only mean that it is on the vast majority of occasions if you go down to the Oxford Union you will find people giving very forthright examples of freedom of speech on a whole range of issues.
"People like Kathleen Stock will certainly find me as university chancellor a defender of her right to speak."
During the interview he also said “it is inevitable tuition fees will rise".
He told Radio 4’s Today programme: “The new government has said they will increase them in line with inflation.
“It certainly not enough to rescue the financial position of universities in general in the UK. Particularly as the whole benefit of that has been wiped out by the increase in employer national insurance contributions which the government has also introduced at the same time.
"The net effect is universities are no better off."
He said "we have to make sure that there is still access to higher education for students irrespective of background.
"So that means in the case of somewhere like Oxford, increasing the support that we are able to give through scholarships over time to make sure there is access".
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"A stable contract between the university sector and government that lasts 10 or 20 years would be a very powerful and useful thing for universities to build on," he said.
The former Conservative leader, who was heavily defeated in the general election of 2001, said it did not feel like revenge over rival candidate New Labour peer Lord Peter Mandelson.
"No of course it doesn’t," he said. "I pay tribute to the other candidates, including him. They showed great dedication to Oxford over the past few months. We all spent a lot of time in Oxford and talked about our hopes and ambitions for it.
"And it’s not a political position.
"People weren’t voting Conservative or Labour or anything else. I probably wouldn’t have been elected had they been voting on that basis."
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