Is this government, or any government, able to intervene directly to tell academic institutions what to teach, or in this case not teach. I don’t quite understand from the article what recourse MPs have if they decide to ignore the majority view of students and lawyers and agree with the complaint

In fact that's what Judd is complaining about; the Council of Legal Education, a statutory body, setting the basic curriculum for all law schools. Imo they're clearly empowered to do so, whether one agrees with what they prescribe or not, and that is the end of the story.