Ministers drop plans to censor academics

The Government has climbed down over plans for a new Export Control Bill which led to accusations it was attempting to stifle academic freedom.

Lord Sainsbury of Turville, the Science minister, moved an amendment yesterday to the Bill which will preserve academics' freedom to teach students sensitive information, such as biotechnology and nuclear physics, without requiring a licence from the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), as had been mooted earlier by the Government.

It represents a victory for academics, who had loudly opposed the idea, and for Conservatives who had complained that the Bill gave too many powers to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.

The move follows earlier attempts to widen controls through legislation. Last month David Blunkett was forced to abandon moves that would have given a huge range of non-governmental organisations the power to spy on e-mails.

Diana Warwick, the Labour peer who is also chief executive of Universities UK, told the House of Lords: "I'm glad to say that the amendment does what I hoped for – it provides real protection for the academic community for the teaching and research work carried out in our universities."

She also acknowledged that Conservative peers, such as Baroness Miller of Hendon, had played a key role in pushing for the change. The Government had previously used its overwhelming majority in the Commons to erase amendments safeguarding academic freedom.

After winning the amendment, Lady Miller said: "Getting this control-minded Government to accept the importance of academic freedom was like squeezing water from the desert sands. At times in the days of march and counter-march, Lord Sainsbury and his team behaved as if they viewed any academic involved in highly technical research as a potential terrorist."

Among those who pointed out the threat that the original Bill posed was Dr Ross Anderson, of the University of Cambridge, who said the DTI was "trying to extend the scope of the Export Control Bill to interfere with all the nooks and crannies of science and technology".

The Bill would originally have let the Government review and even suppress scientific papers before they were published, and potentially prevent academics from swapping e-mails on sensitive topics with colleagues abroad.

But now it will guarantee that the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry may not "prohibit or regulate" the communication of information in the ordinary course of scientific research, the making of information generally available to the public, or communicating information that is already public, unless there is an absolute necessity to do so – and even then it can only apply to that particular information.

The Export Control Bill is intended to update the original, which dates back to the 1930s, to include software and intangibles. Many of the changes follow on from the 1996 Scott report into the arms-for-Iraq scandal.