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Report of Discussion

Tuesday, 23 October 2001. A Discussion was held in the Senate-House of the following Report:

The Second Report of the Council, dated 24 September 2001, on the Unified Administrative Service (Reporter, p. 23). Under the provisions of Regulation 6 for Discussions (Statutes and Ordinances, p. 112) the Registrary has omitted nine words from the remarks made by Dr Evans; these omissions are indicated by square brackets.

Dr J. P. DOUGHERTY

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I am grateful to the Council for publishing this Second Report on the Unified Administration. The First Report attracted a lengthy debate last May. But when the reply came, very little notice had been taken of the views expressed by speakers, and Graces for the enactment of the recommendations were submitted. A group of critics then submitted four amendments, and I must own up to having been one of the ringleaders.

The Long Vacation then intervened, but I am glad to say that the opportunity was taken to hold further discussions between some of us and senior members of the administration. I can speak only for myself, although not expecting contradiction, in thanking wholeheartedly the Registrary and University Draftsman for their time and trouble. The outcome is that the Second Report does incorporate the substance of the four amendments, while improving their drafting. As far as I am concerned, I now recommend approval of the new recommendations, subject to any new points that might be revealed by today's proceedings. It should also be noted that the four amendments did not necessarily cover all the points that had been raised in the earlier Discussion.

The second Grace, to rescind the existing regulations for the Estate Management and Building Service, follows automatically if the first Grace is approved.

I would like to remind members of the Regent House that the First Report proposed a considerable increase in the amount of delegation involved in University administration. The common thread in the four amendments was to prevent such delegation, both by the Regent House to the Council in some areas, and by the Council to officers in others. We were not seeking to disparage current members of the Council or current officers. The point is simply that in large institutions things can go unexpectedly and badly wrong. It is easy to supply examples: the Equitable Life Assurance Society, Railtrack, Baring's Bank, BSE research. Here at home, I hesitate, but refer to CAPSA again. A frequent cause was that insufficient checks and balances were in place, or, if in place, were subject to secret corner-cutting.

Of course, a balance has to be struck between such caution on the one hand and excessive restrictions, preventing prompt action, on the other. I think we felt that that balance was being unwisely disturbed. But, if after a few years of experience, the Council has clear evidence of disadvantage, they can return to the Regent House for reconsideration.

Our procedures did not serve us well in the early stages of this business. Following the Discussion of 1 May, it took until 20 June for the Council to publish their reply, which, apart from a minor change, signalled the Council's determination to go ahead. This gave the critics only nine days to respond, in the busy end-of-term period. The four amendments were hastily drafted, without the advantage of the University Draftsman's professional advice.

As the Second Report explains, we have to conduct a ballot offering three choices even though the Council have withdrawn their support for the original proposals. When such a position as this arises, maybe it should be possible to cancel the First Report and all action flowing from it. One could then start afresh with the Second Report, which then may or may not be the subject of a request for voting. However that may be, I am content to await the outcome.

Professor D. N. DUMVILLE (read by Dr G. R. EVANS)

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I was unable to attend the Discussion of 1 May and I regret equally my absence abroad today. My remarks I shall keep to a minimum, since they will have to be read on my behalf. The creation of the formal Divisions in the Unified Administrative Service is a sensible measure which I welcome.

There are aspects of the proposed arrangements which made the First Report very odd. That which recurs here in the Second Report in a unique footnote to Annex 2 (p. 26, n.1) is simply daft, that two Directors of Divisions will be called not Directors but Secretaries: the University would find it instructive to have the reasons for this muddle published. The crucial problem which fails to reappear here but which has certainly not been dropped is the central one: the curious duplication of functions whose duplicatory character has been barely cloaked. We are told that the Service is under-resourced and that it is under-manned at senior levels. We hear that the Vice-Chancellor is to acquire an angelic circle who will think strategically (about how, yet again, to abolish these Discussions, no doubt: see Reporter, p. 60, §20) and who will shuttle between him and the Directors of Divisions. I can hardly imagine that those divisional chiefs will be delighted with this. And I very much doubt that the University as a whole will be pleased to have a collection of further Pro-Vice-Chancellors, drawn (at great expense, no doubt) from the usual names and faces, perhaps even nominated by themselves, and perhaps a refuge for those who would be better retired. We could usefully do without that extra layer of administration. It would be better if all the Directors reported to one person and one person only. Let us avoid both the less happy aspects of our past and present and the top-heavy character of so many other UK universities. Future proposals for senior offices will have to be scrutinized with the greatest care. And the nettle which is the General Board must be grasped.

What is revisited in the Second Report is much improved. I should like to pay tribute to the Registrary and the University Draftsman for their willing-ness to engage with those urging amendment of the proposals first brought forward. I think that everyone involved was very satisfied with the nature and the outcome of the discussions on these points. I am happy to commend the revised proposals to the Regent House.

Dr G. R. EVANS

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I rise to welcome what has been achieved here. I hope that welcome will not be lost sight of amongst the contextual points I want to make.

A series of notable Discussions was held in the last year, beginning with the one on CAPSA (and it was the Board of Scrutiny, not the Council, at whose instigation the inquiry was set up, Vice-Chancellor (Reporter, p. 60); these constitutional points are important, not to mention getting the facts right in your annual speech). One of them was the Discussion which led by various by-ways to the Report before you. For surely the Discussion on the Unified Administrative Service on 1 May was as memorable as the one on CAPSA? It was precisely because that was felt to have been ignored that there was so much anger in the summer over the first version of these Graces. So I think there are two lessons to be learned. One is that Discussions may be an important indicator of the feeling in the community. The other is that if there is proper consultation over points raised, preferably not after the event, but before the publication of a Notice with 'Graces', most problems can be resolved.

If the Vice-Chancellor were here presiding in person, as historically he did do until very recently, I should be in a difficulty, for he has now put into a public speech the personal hostility to 'the traditional Discussions' (Reporter, p. 58) I heard him express many times while I was on the Council. Last week a member of the General Board Promotions Committee, Professor Grant, got up at the end of a series of Reports to make a speech with no visible reference to any of them. In his speech on the unpublished Grant Report, he took the opportunity to imply that because most of those present on 16 October were the actual speakers, what they were saying did not constitute a contribution to our democratic process. He chooses to forget how avidly the Reporter is read when there is a Report of a Discussion in it.

How many were actually present in the Senate-House to hear your annual speech, Vice-Chancellor? Should it disappear from the Reporter merely because busy people prefer to catch up at their leisure by reading it later? Should you cease to make one because only a handful are there to hear you?

Besides, Professor Grant clearly did think he was making an important contribution. He just happened to have about his person the promotions procedures, containing the criteria for promotion, on the off-chance that Dr Evans would be mentioning the matter. He, who was one of the judges of my application, in fact the Chairman when my case was considered, a land economist and planning lawyer, well versed I am sure in medieval theology, came as near as dammit to a personal comment on the candidate he had so knowledgeably judged. In fact he has done that before. Read Reporter (2000-01, pp. 233-35), and then read Professor Grant (Reporter, 2000-01, pp. 390-91), commenting on my research output (after naming me) that 'to some people the pursuit of research is often a more attractive activity than preoccupation with the governance of the University'. A judge with no prejudice? It is a bit like the year when Professor Hugh Williamson of Oxford appeared in the Senate-House after serving on the General Board Committee (Reporter, 1997-98, pp. 682-83). He just happened to be passing when we were discussing that year's promotions. I later got an admission from him in writing that the Old Schools had put him up to it. (He is on the final stage Appeal Committee this year, I see. Fat chance I have.)

I bet there will be similar scenes this year, as we move towards the litigation which is now in train. So can we please have an end to the claim by members of the central bodies that this parliament is of no effect and ought to be closed down, when they are very glad to be able to 'use' it for their own ends when it suits them.

In any case, it is a commonplace that it is precisely when those with a mite of personal power express impatience with democratic processes that the preservation of those processes becomes most important. The Vice-Chancellor said in his annual speech that he was happy for our more colourful pageants to continue; we do those rather well. Easy good publicity. But of course those are the bits of our historic conduct of our affairs which do not challenge what our would-be overlords are doing. Those 43 words missing from one of my speeches last week refer to [nine words omitted.] The Vice-Chancellor is a non-executive Director.

I hope what has been learned has really been learned. When there is strong expression of feeling by a series of speakers in a Discussion, even when a single telling point is made, the Council ought to take it seriously, to consult, and not try to crash on regardless. The alternative is the need for embarrassing U-turns, such as the withdrawal this summer of the Grace on the Commissary at the threat of a petition to the Universities Committee of the Privy Council, and the rethink about taking the Reporter off the web, and the need to set up an inquiry into the CAPSA debacle - do read the whole of the Vice-Chancellor's revisionist words on that in his annual speech (Reporter, p. 60).

I say advisedly that I hope what has been learned has really been learned. I see in the Reporter of 17 October that the Commissary plan has made a come-back. This is unbelievable. It is admitted that it is a flawed plan as it stands, denying a remedy to staff and students in most of the areas where they most urgently need one (promotions for one). It will mess up hopelessly the application of the work of the proposed national independent review system in the Cambridge context. It will cut across the work of the Cabinet Office Better Regulation Task Force, which is, later this year or early next, now going to look at the possibility of adopting the independent review scheme or bringing universities within the remit of the Public Sector Ombudsman. I shall now have to go back to the weary task of submitting a petition to the Universities Committee of the Privy Council, which will cost the Clerk to the Privy Council and the University and the Lord Chancellor and two High Court Judges an immense amount of time. Please Vice-Chancellor, withdraw this Grace again and let us wait just a few more months and create something which will fit in properly with the national schemes.

But let me get back to positive things I want to say about the remarkable document before you. To their credit the Registrary and a member of the Council deputed for the purpose and the University Draftsman were prepared to sit down with the signatories and others who had been involved in calling the ballots, and discuss the underlying issues and the better formulation of the proposed Graces you now see before you. Remember, it was because of the right of a few members of the Regent House to call a halt that we were able during the summer to achieve the memorable rethink you see before you. It is memorable because it is a rethink.

The Vice-Chancellor's speech of 1 October (Reporter, p. 58) sent various signals about the forward movement not only of the administrative but also the proposed governance reforms, about which we shall, I understand, be hearing more later this term after we have debated the CAPSA Report. The two of course will form a single 'package'. The Vice-Chancellor appears to think that there is some sort of 'either/or', in which we can either take our constitution seriously or maintain our 'character', best summed up in his throw-away comment, 'the tree we were planting was from north America'. (Cambridge's recent love-affair with the United States, dates I think from about October 1996.)

Our Statutes and Ordinances are our best protection against high-handedness in the central bodies: indeed, our only protection, for they have made possible the rethinking we now see before us. Yet we find ourselves in difficulties every day because of their obscurities and contradictions. One of the most frequent problems concerns the level of a set of rules within the legislative hierarchy, its authority and bindingness. 'Is this an Ordinance?' becomes an important question when one can use Statute K, 5 only to challenge alleged breaches of the Statutes and Ordinances. It was important in the case of those 'read your e-mails guidelines'. It is going to be important in court any minute now in connection with the promotions procedures so cheerily broken by the 'authorities' while remaining a straightjacket for candidates.

The Data Protection Act allows access to manual records from 24 October. The University has 40 days to hand them over. The original date for lodging appeals this year was 30 November. It has been moved forward (GBD.0106.0818) to 7 November. We candidates would like all the papers the committees created. Shall we get them in time for 7 November? Why have candidates not been told of their legal rights to see all this documentation and allowed to get at it?

When William Laud was made Chancellor of the University of Oxford in April 1630 he took in hand the 'broken, crossing, and imperfect statutes of the University of Oxon; which had lain in a confused heap some hundreds of years' (Works, III, p. 253). He says in his History of his Chancellorship that he had remarked to one complainant that 'he would never have remedy, until the statutes of the university were reduced to a body and settled' (Works, V, p. 13). By 1636 he had them revised and in order.

Oxford has been revising its Statutes again; and it presented them in draft reduced to quite a small body in a midsummer issue of the Oxford University Gazette, for consultation this term. I have been calling for a long time for Cambridge to undertake this task. I am told that it is too big; that there are not enough resources; that it will have to wait. I do not think it can safely wait. If Oxford has done it, so can we. Just compare our flimsy draft mission statement discussed in the last Discussion of the summer with the polished University of Oxford Corporate Plan published in the Gazette on 26 September. One may not approve of everything it contains. But one must admire its style and air of settled purpose and balance. None of that 'goal of making money' nonsense there; but they do, you know, they beat us on research income, quietly, despite all our greedy grabbing at the sleeves of our industrial 'friends'.

And members of the University of Oxford are admitted to the University offices without signing in, too. In Oxford, the University administration still recognizes members as being in a rather different category from visiting consultants from KPMG.

There are many reasons why it is urgent that we begin the overhaul of our Statutes, but the most important of them is perhaps the slippage of control which has been pulled back in this present Report. Two brief examples in conclusion:

First, there is a letter signed by the Director, Business and Europe, for the Government Office for the East of England, dated 26 April 2001, to the Planning Director of South Cambridgeshire District Council, about the controversial Centre for Behavioural Neuroscience at 307 Huntingdon Road. It accompanies a letter from Lord Sainsbury (to whom we gave an honorary doctorate a few years ago), to Sir Alec Broers, acknowledging 'correspondence' from the Vice-Chancellor. 'I confirm that the DTI would regard this proposal as nationally important'. He gives it Government backing. He acknowledges, disingenuously, that 'the location of the Centre is a matter for the university and the planning authorities'. The Government Office for the East of England sent this to the planners, with the indication that it constitutes 'a Government office view'. I wonder what planning lawyer M.Grant makes of this. Was he involved? If he disapproves, is he going to be passing the Senate-House by chance again next week and will he take the opportunity to make another speech to say so?

Second, 'The Council are publishing this Notice in response to the recommendations made for the acceptance of benefactions by their Working Party on ethical guidelines for financial arrangements with external bodies.' (Reporter, 17 October). Why is the Report, which was much longer and contained important points about further work, not published in full or referred to on the web in a blue line in the text? Why are we not having a Report on these issues of immense importance to the University? Who decided to 'digest' the report and shrink it to insignificance? Why no proper guidelines? We who put effort into the report with a small 'r' would like to know why it has not become a Report with a capital R.

In short, and this speech is quite short for the importance of its themes, can we make sure that what has been achieved this summer, a willingness to listen properly to members of the Regent House and to revise hastily-thought-through decisions to meet legitimate concerns, becomes the norm? Can we get someone 'targetted', Registrary, on the task of checking that when serious worries have been voiced someone makes sure they have been properly dealt with. Let us avoid ballots, by ensuring that there is proper consultation. That is the way. And it will build that confidence in the benevolent intentions of the administration, which will become more not less necessary with the passing of these Graces. I hope they will now go smoothly through.

Professor J. R. SPENCER (read by Mrs S. BOWRING)

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I was one of those who, last summer, helped to block the Council's original proposals by requesting a ballot on the Grace and by proposing a set of amendments. I did so largely because I (and others) thought the original draft put too much power into the hands of the Registrary, and provided for too little accountability. I believe the new draft, which the Council has put before the University, plus the Council's proposed procedure for the appointment of junior administrative staff, meets the objections which we had to the earlier draft. I am grateful to the Council, the Registrary, and the University Draftsman for taking seriously our concerns. I hope that when the time comes to vote, Regent House will approve the proposed revised regulations.

No remarks were made on the following Reports:

The Report of the Council, dated 24 September 2001, on the sale of land at Laundry Farm, Barton Road (Reporter, p. 20).

The Report of the Council, dated 24 September 2001, on the Occupational Health Service (Reporter, p. 22).


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Cambridge University Reporter, 31 October 2001
Copyright © 2001 The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Cambridge.