! 6. Conclusion Ensuring that the risks posed by an external speaker are successfully mitigated and that a duty to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism is fulfilled while maintaining freedom of expression for visiting speakers presents universities with a unique challenge. Meanwhile, the Queen Mary University Students’ Union risk assessment seen by Student Rights highlights that even when policies and procedures are put in place, a number of significant problems must still be addressed, including attempts to hide the nature of invited speakers. With this in mind, the policy seeks to provide a framework for RHEBs to address these concerns, enabling a high level of oversight from staff and student union officials to mitigate the risk associated with external speakers while allowing as many events as possible to go ahead. While it allows for relevant local context and event-specific circumstances, the policy seeks to provide a framework which gives the decision-making process a level of consistency, and to ensure that the same processes are followed for all speakers regardless of background or views. Once this process has been followed, the policy also provides those staff who are tasked with making the final decision on speaker invites with a clear assessment of any controversial issues relating to the invited individual, as well as a number of potential actions which can be taken based on that assessment. While the feasibility of these actions will depend on the capabilities of individual institutions, the policy gives RHEBs a consistent basis on which to enforce these actions. Keeping the process transparent should see relationships between students and university staff improve. Ideally, this policy should enable institutions to demonstrate examples of how exactly they have sought to mitigate risk, to improve the number of genuine debates taking place on campus, and to ensure that compliance with the Prevent duty does not have a detrimental effect on freedom of expression. 22! !