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Tuesday, 12 March 2002. A Discussion was held in the Senate-House of the following Reports:
Report of the Council, dated 25 February 2002, on the construction of new laboratories and offices at Strangeways Research Laboratory (p. 573).
Professor A. W. F. EDWARDS:
Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, the buildings proposed in this Report are required for projects in genetical epidemiology that involve just the kind of expansion to which I drew attention in my remarks on the Report on the Unified Adminstrative Service on 5 May last (Reporter, 2000-01, p. 664).
I suggested that by allowing similar expansion in the past the University had not always protected its own interests, and that often there had been no compelling reason for the University to incorporate such projects. In particular, the growth had created great strains for the central administration, especially in regard to the financial systems and the obligations placed on employers; it had hastened the demise of the University's system of government; and had created false expectations of participation in the collegiate university amongst those employed, not to mention pressure for Professorships, Honorary Professorships, and so on. Often, I understand, the wealthy charities do not pay a proper share of the cost of overheads, to which the response should surely be that the University is just as much a charity in law as they are.
In reply, the Council were kind enough to say that they had noted my remarks and had asked the General Board to consider my suggestions for alleviating the problem (Reporter, 2000-01, p. 827). How are their deliberations progressing? One of the advantages of these Discussions is that fundamental issues such as this can be aired which the Council, I surmise, would otherwise never debate.
I should not like it to be thought that I am picking on genetical epidemiology in order to labour my general point when I know nothing about the field. I am, in fact, the longest-serving member of the Institute of Public Health and its predecessors, and have an intimate knowledge of the growth of the subject from its very beginning.
It may be said to have originated in the 1950s and 1960s from the interaction of statistics and human genetics. It was at first called epidemiological genetics, which in some ways is more appropriate because epidemiology contributed little to its birth. Its founders pioneered the use of computers in human genetics, driving forward the theoretical development of methods, and then along came molecular biology with its Aladdin's cave of data.
The first University lectures in statistics were given in 1890 in the Moral Sciences Tripos by Dr John Venn of Caius College (Reporter, 1890-91, p. 20). Called 'Theory of Statistics' they were the first such lectures in England. Venn's notes are in the College archives.
The first University lectures in human genetics were given in 1969 in Part II of the Natural Sciences Tripos by me (Reporter, 1969-70, p. 1411). I still posses the notes for the sixteen lectures. It is a long time ago now, but I tried very hard to interest the University in human genetics and computing in the early 1970s. I had come to Cambridge from Aberdeen, where I ran the Human Genetics Computer Project, initially with support from WHO and then with a project grant from the MRC.
I wrote memoranda to those establishing the new Clinical School, and indeed my first remarks in a Discussion, on 25 May 1971, were on how important human genetics was going to be in the future and on 'the importance of devising a suitable administrative framework within the University for studies in human genetics'.
A 1975 memorandum finds me writing 'the emphasis in medicine has shifted towards the study and treatment of the age-related disorders, such as the cancers and circulatory diseases, and of the congenital diseases of the very young. With this change in emphasis has come a shift from the traditional investigative tools of medicine towards epidemiological and genetical investigations'. I concluded 'In sum, modern human genetics has implications for individual patients and society at large that medical education must come to terms with, and any developing medical school must give due priority to its teaching'.
It all fell on deaf ears, I'm afraid, and the MRC declined to support in Cambridge what they had enthusiastically supported in Aberdeen, so I turned my hand to other things. But two of my former students are leaders in the field, and they have proved excellent teachers, so I am blessed with numerous academic grandchildren.
Thus I am all in favour of genetical epidemiology, even when the adjective turns American. But what is not clear is why, if the MRC want to run a gargantuan project involving sampling half-a-million people, the University should become involved as an employer, as the negotiator of leases of someone else's land, and as the constructor of buildings. The MRC is perfectly capable of doing all these things itself, and if in Cambridge, so much the better. After all, it is pretty good at employing the molecular biologists in the LMB and the statisticians in its Biostatistics Unit.
I have little idea what JIFs and SRIFs are, but if the University has already accepted £4.5m for this scheme I suppose the die is cast. I hope the General Board approved the application with their eyes open. The involvement of the University then raises another question. If the University's name is to be associated with a massive MRC project, I think it should insist on some input as to what goes on, exercised by an advisory committee perhaps. I know some of the best names in the field, who I am sure would be glad to help. I should be happy to make some suggestions if asked.
And by the way, what does the Council mean by a 'sui generis purpose' for a building?
Report of the General Board, dated 25 February 2002, on amendments to the regulations for Part III of the Natural Sciences Tripos relating to Chemistry (p. 574).
Professor J. K. M. SANDERS:
Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I speak today as Head of the Department of Chemistry to welcome this Report. The proposed regulations will enable the class awarded to candidates taking Part III Chemistry to take into account the level of achievement in the previous year, that is, Part II Chemistry Option B. Essentially this amounts to 'carrying forward' marks from Part II to Part III. In the Department's view, there are strong educational and practical arguments for this change.
The educational argument derives from the fact that Part II and Part III Chemistry are conceived as a continuous two-year course, although a significant number of candidates choose to graduate after taking Part II Option A. In Part II, undergraduates are continuing to study a broad range of topics in chemistry, building their general skills and knowledge. In Part III the work is more specialized, there being a wide choice of research-level options on offer. We believe that the final class awarded should reflect this study of both general and specialized topics.
The practical argument is that the outside world - and in particular the Research Councils - regard the class awarded in the final year as the 'class of degree'. In Cambridge this is not the case, of course, but it has proved hard to get the Councils to recognize this. BBSRC is particularly inflexible in this regard. We believe that this is both unfair and unjust, in that it puts too much weight on the final year of four. I cannot speak for other subjects, but as far as Chemistry is concerned, Cambridge is unique in the UK in not allowing marks to be carried forward from year to year. Our External Examiners have consistently criticized our practice in this regard and are frankly incredulous that we do not follow the usual practice. The Department of Chemistry agrees with them.
Much of the flexibility and strength of the Tripos system derives from the long standing tradition in Cambridge that separate parts of the Tripos are indeed separate. It is not our intention to threaten or dismantle the Tripos system, as I wish now to demonstrate.
Undergraduates can only take Part III Chemistry if they have taken Part II Chemistry Option B. So, by carrying forward marks we are not cutting off any existing routes into or out of any other subject.
We agree entirely that it would be inappropriate to carry forward marks from Part IA to Part IB, or even from Part IB to Part II. In the Natural Sciences, the first and second years provide the opportunity for undergraduates to explore options and find out what they want to do; it would be wrong for them to be burdened with marks from these years. What we are proposing is a carry forward of marks much later in an undergraduate's career when their choices have been made.
Our proposals do require the Part III Examiners for one year to accept marks from the previous year's Part II Examiners. We do not believe that this will cause a problem in practice: the internal Examiners are all members of the Department who are working to a consistent policy set by the Department's Teaching Committee after wide-ranging consultation. As a further safeguard, the terms and timing of External Examiners' appointments are arranged so that normally two of them are Part II Examiners one year and also Part III Examiners in the following year, thereby providing a considerable degree of continuity.
The proposed regulations make special provision for those undergraduates who do not have a set of marks from Part II; such individuals will have had their case considered by the Applications Committee and will have been 'deemed to have deserved honours' in Part II. In such cases the proposal is to base their class in Part III solely on the marks available to the Examiners for that year. We have consulted the Chairman and Secretary of the Applications Committee, and they have agreed that this is the appropriate way forward.
I should also like to record that successive cohorts of undergraduates have, through the Chemistry Consultative Committee, consistently supported these proposals.
In conclusion, we commend this Report to the University because we believe that it enacts a change that is educationally and practically desirable for students of Chemistry without having adverse effects in any other parts of the Tripos system.
Dr G. R. EVANS:
Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, once again I have read a Report not expecting to be moved to make any remarks and been surprised by the scale of a proposal tucked away in a corner as though it were merely a passing thought. The University should not fail to notice what it is doing here. It may or may not be a good thing to carry forward the marks from one part of a Tripos to another. I have no view on that at present. But it surely needs to be discussed as a general issue of immense importance to the whole University before we let one Faculty do it? If this is allowed, it will set a precedent and it will become impossible to resist proposals to do the same in other subjects.
'The award of honours in Part III Natural Sciences would carry a different meaning in different subjects' it casually says (p. 575). What will the consequences of this 'different meaning' be for our students in their later lives?
How did this get as far as a Report without someone insisting on a proper consideration of the larger issues? There are, I think, two reasons. One is the drift towards a 'subsidiarity' which increasingly allows Faculties and Departments and Schools to make moves independently even if they may affect the whole University's policy, playing to the dangerous territoriality of our politics. At one of the road shows, Dr Johnson spoke of the General Board's 'tact and management and good supervision', how it has to 'be sensitive to and respond to the initiatives' which will 'come forward' from the Departments. Are we convinced from this kind of evidence that the supervisors have even glanced at the papers when these matters come before them? And that the General Board's members should be allowed to sit on the Council too, with even more papers to read?
The second reason is the serious constitutional confusion we are now in about the role and powers of the officer through whose hands pass the proposals which actually come before the General Board. There is notice in print of my intention to return to this subject. According to the Statutes and Ordinances (Statute D, VIII, 4-6, 8-9), the very senior administrative officer known as the Secretary General has certain defined responsibilities and is placed under the direction of the Council. Exactly the sort of line of responsibility the Shattock and Finkelstein CAPSA report said we needed better defined. But the individual who is continuing to be paid in this post is no longer discharging the duties of the office. We had (Statute D, VIII, 9) an Acting or Deputy Secretary General, although strictly there was no 'vacancy', as the Statutes require. But at least that officer arguably had some statutory authority. Suddenly, and without changing the Statutes to transfer some of the powers of the Secretary General to the Academic Secretary, we have an officer exercising many of those same powers - surely ultra vires - as though he were still doing so under Statute D, VIII, 9.
I hope the Deputy Vice-Chancellor will hear me out on this, for it is only too relevant to the basis on which this proposal has come before us in this form, with the assertion that 'the General Board have agreed'. The General Board's agreement is given to what is put before them, so it matters a good deal who puts it there. This is exactly the issue being addressed by the Committee on Standards in Public Life in its consultation paper about the civil service and the 'special advisers'.
Some of us sat round a table with the Registrary redrafting the United Administrative Services Graces, while we were assured that we were not putting unreviewable personal power into his hands. The moment the Graces were through the Registary advised the Council to give the post of Academic Secretary to Graham Allen without advertising it and allowing others to compete …
Mr DEPUTY VICE-CHANCELLOR: You are wandering rather a long way off the topic of Chemistry. Could you please return to the point as quickly as you can?
Dr G. R. EVANS: I will come back within half a page, Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor. I defer, of course, to your wishes in this matter, but would be grateful to be allowed to continue.
Mr DEPUTY VICE-CHANCELLOR: Please continue.
… I quote from one of Dr Mead's e-mails (15 February). 'As to the appointment of the Academic Secretary, I advised the Council on what, in my view, needed to be done following the vote in December 2001'. I pressed him for the content of that advice, 'I am not willing … to show you the advice that the Council received' (15 February) he replied. But the Annual Accounts claim the University abides by the seven principles of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. One of these states that office holders 'should give reasons for their decisions and restrict information only when the public interest clearly demands'. Does it here?
This appears to be a clear breach of the University's rules about advertising posts, which may be obtained from the Personnel Division for confirmation. Only 'managerial reasons' can justify not advertising the post of Academic Secretary. We do not know what the 'managerial reasons' were, because the Registrary is keeping them secret, and of course the Council's business is confidential and its Agenda and Minutes are still not on the Web. Are they Registrary?
Now one reason which might have weight in allowing a post to be awarded without advertisement would be that someone was already legitimately in a post which was in all important respects the same as one to which he was simply being 'transferred'. Graham Allen was being deputy to the old 'Secretary General' who still lingers on his huge salary somewhere in the Old Schools. So is he really doing the job of the Secretary General under another title? It seems not, according to the Registrary. 'The role of Academic Secretary,' he says, 'is not at all the same as that of the Secretary General' (15 February). This was, then, a brand new post. There was a clear duty to advertise it. The actions of the Registrary in doing this and then refusing to explain himself to the University seem to me to be quite unacceptable. This is all made far worse by the denial of opportunity to women, ethnic minorities, and the disabled who might have wished to apply. The Vice-Chancellor told Anglia TV that his New Year's resolution was to get more women into senior posts in the University. I know of one outsider, a woman, who has written to ask when this post would be advertised.
Now any Big Leading Player in the University will be able to argue that there are special 'managerial reasons' when he wants a post given to one of his 'own'. How can Graham Allen insist that jobs are advertised when he did not insist that his own was open to competition? It would surely have been an act of integrity not to countenance their 'fixing' it for him.
We now have a post-holder who appears to have no powers since the job was never defined and its responsibilities never put into the Statutes and Ordinances. It is this officer who now services the General Board and through whose hands pass proposals such as these, before they are turned into Reports and approved first by an overloaded General Board and then by the fast-track procedures of the Council. The reality is that what Graham Allen says goes. But at least when what David Livesey said went there was some statutory underpinning and he could in principle be called to account (as at last, and rather fudgily, he was). But to whom is Allen answerable except his line manager the Registrary? And who is telling him what he can do? Not the Regent House. Not the Statutes and Ordinances. The Registrary (who will not give any explanation to a member of the Regent House who inquires).
Administration and governance are becoming welded together into 'management'. And that is, as predicted, affecting the educational and academic project. So I come to my point once more. Let us have a proper discussion of this really very important question of the relationship of the parts of the Tripos to one another and the papers to be taken into account in the classifying of candidates. Why did the 'Academic Secretary' not 'advise' the General Board that that would be the right thing to do?
Professor Sander's remarks betray the fact that there is rightly a degree of sensitivity over this matter.
Report of the General Board, dated 25 February 2002, on the establishment of a Professorship of Learning Disability Psychiatry (p. 576).
Dr G. R. EVANS:
Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, in January 2001 a couple of rather illiterate advertisements appeared at the tail end of the Reporter, not under University posts. 'PPP Healthcare Medical Trust': 'The University is seeking to make applications to the PPP Healthcare Medical Trust for their proposed Professorships in Health Economics and Learning Disability, and now seeks candidates around whom to develop such applications.' 'Further information for both Professorships may be obtained from the Deputy Secretary General of the Faculties.'
'It is expected that the candidate [for the Learning Disability post], if successful, will be based in the Department of Psychiatry in the School of Clinical Medicine. They will have the opportunity to enhance existing strong links within the School and throughout the University, such as those with the Institute of Criminology, the Institute of Public Health, Psychology, Genetics, and associated research institutes such as the MRC Cognitive and Brain Sciences Unit. There are close working relations with colleagues in Education and the NHS, including child and adolescent mental health, forensic services, and youth offending teams.'
I have read and re-read this advertisement and the present Report, in search of any mention of the University's Disability Resource Centre and in particular its work in Dyslexia support. I have an unusual degree of standing to ask why not, since the Council left me on the Disability Advisory Committee and on the Steering Group for the Disability Resource Centre. None of the appointing committee to this post is on either body. HEFCE funded the Disability Resource Centre partly as a research project. Opportunity lost.
I hope Dr Holland, of whom I know nothing, and who I am sure is an excellent appointment, will hasten to make the connections which should have been made at the outset and that the Unified Administrative Service will get in some practice in joined-up thinking.
The Abstract of Accounts for the year ended 31 July 2001 (Reporter, Special No. 10).
TREASURER:
Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I must begin by apologizing to Professor Edwards for failing to provide him with his usual Christmas reading. The University's Abstract of Accounts is normally published in the Reporter around 20 or 21 December, and from the congratulatory note which I received from Professor Edwards some years ago when we started to publish Trust Fund information again after a long gap, I know that he usually likes to read it over the Christmas vacation. There are other busy academics for whom the tedious hours of Christmas afternoon are no doubt usually enlivened by their treasure hunt through the University's Financial Statements looking for clues which might point to inappropriate or unauthorized expenditure, or for unexplained changes in presentation. On behalf of all those involved in the preparation of the Financial Statements for the Year Ended 31 July 2001 I apologize to anyone who waited in vain for his or her Christmas cracker this year.
The Draft Financial Statements were in fact presented to the University's Finance Committee on 6 December 2001, at which meeting the Director of Finance reported that the audit procedure was behind schedule due to the delay experienced in closing ledgers at the year end, and to hardware downtime. First-time use of the new chart of accounts made the job particularly complex. KPMG had not been able to complete their audit work in certain areas, in particular the analysis of Research Grant Debtors. The Finance Committee gave the Draft Financial Statements considerable and lengthy attention but in the circumstances decided that it would be preferable to defer final approval of the Financial Statements until all the necessary audit work had been completed. It agreed that it would receive the completed Financial Statements at its next meeting which was not scheduled to take place until the middle of January.
Draft Financial Statements were nonetheless submitted to the Funding Council by their 31 December deadline and the final version, which had in fact changed very little, was placed before the Finance Committee on 16 January 2002 and Council on 28 January 2002. That is the version which was published in the Reporter on 22 February 2002. Members of the Regent House will note the Report from the Auditors, KPMG, on page 6 which indicates that in their opinion:
a) The Financial Statements give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the University's teaching and research activities at 31 July 2001 and of the related income and expenditure for the year then ended, and have been properly prepared in accordance with the Statement of Recommended Practice: Accounting for Further and Higher Education;
b) In all material respects income from the Higher Education Funding Council for England and the Teacher Training Agency and grants and income for specific purposes and from other restricted funds administered by the University during the year ended 31 July 2001 have been applied for the purposes for which they were received, and;
c) In all material respects income has been applied in accordance with the University's Statutes and Ordinances and where appropriate with the Financial Memorandum with the HEFCE and the funding agreement with the TTA.
Since 1995 the University's Financial Statements have been required to include a Treasurer's Report. This provides an opportunity to draw to the attention of the Regent House, through the pages of the Reporter Special Number, certain high-level points about the University's financial position. I hope that members of the Regent House will have read and noted the comments made in respect of the Accounts for the Year Ended 31 July 2001. Some of these, in particular those about the Amalgamated Fund, seek to answer in a clear and transparent way proper concerns which have been raised by the Board of Scrutiny about the treatment of income within the Amalgamated Fund and within the University's Financial Statements themselves. Both last year and this I also drew attention to the difficulties which had been experienced in introducing the new financial and accounting system across the University. I am pleased to say that all evidence points to a gradual improvement in overall performance. The first set of Financial Statements to be prepared from the new system were in the nature of such things likely to give rise to a range of problems. Once again, I wish to thank publicly all those staff who have been involved in the implementation of the new financial system over the past three years. The demands and difficulties have been extreme and in some cases excessive, both in the Old Schools and in Departments, and it is a credit to everyone involved that the Financial Statements were produced more or less on time and give a true and fair view.
Within the next week or so the Planning and Resources Committee will be turning its attention to the budgets for the year 2002-03, which is of course two years on from the year now under discussion. They will need to consider some extremely worrying trends which are highlighted in the Treasurer's Report for the Year to 31 July 2001. In that year, consolidated income for the University and its subsidiary companies (which excludes Cambridge University Press and the Local Examinations Syndicate) increased by 7%. Total expenditure excluding depreciation increased by 13%. To a modern day Micawber, this is 'result, misery'. Expenditure is racing ahead at a rate which cannot be maintained without major increases in our external income. Part of the increased cost in the year under review can of course be blamed on CAPSA, which cost £3.3m in 2000-01 to add to the £4.3m which had been spent in the previous year. However, it is unrealistic to think that a University as complicated and large as this can get away without spending this type of amount on computer systems virtually every year. The Student Records system is currently undergoing a feasibility and costing study which will lead to requests for major expenditure over the next few years. Staff records within the University are a disgrace and a large amount of money needs to be spent on computerizing them to meet modern standards. No doubt other systems expenses will continue to be necessary year by year.
Aside from some, hopefully short-term problems with cash-flow, which reduced the University's deposit interest over the year, my major concerns are twofold. First, the increase in premises costs, and second, the failure to recover adequate overheads on research grant costs. Last year the cost of premises, excluding depreciation, went up by 20% with a 25% increase in the cost of repairs and maintenance. At the same time, the recovery of overheads on research grants and contracts was 25% lower than had been estimated in June 2000. (I refer there to the payment to the Chest.) Some of that may be blamed on poor estimating and on a lack of understanding of the likely split between Research Council grants, charity funded grants, and industrial funded grants. Questions about estimating should not however be allowed to conceal a major problem which all research-oriented universities face because of the poor financial return which they receive on nearly all externally funded research. In this connection I recommend everyone to read the Report by J. M. Consulting which was published by HEFCE last month entitled 'Research Relationships Between Higher Education Institutions and the Charitable Sector'. J. M. have concluded that income received by Higher Education Institutions in respect of nearly all externally funded research is well below the full costs to the Higher Education Institutions of doing the work and that QR in total is not adequate to support all the externally funded work which does not pay full economic cost. Whilst recognizing the importance of charity-funded research for the HE sector and the relevance of such research to national research objectives, the Report points out, as has been well publicized, that the issue which eclipses all others is 'the financial strain of accepting high quality charity projects without either a contribution to indirect costs (which they receive from Research Councils) or indirect support for infrastructure (which they receive in respect of Research Council projects under dual support)', (paragraph 3.13). Important recommendations are made in this Report which would, if implemented, provide the much-needed major additional infrastructure support.
The Resource Management Committee has taken pains in recent months to emphasize the need for every new building project to come to it supported by a business plan which indicates how the recurrent costs of that building will be funded through increased income. Given the difficulty of persuading the government to provide the major new funding which the Funding Council needs to increase its T and QR funding to proper levels, such business plans depend crucially on identifying overhead income.
In this connection I should also like to mention the benefit which the University is seeing and will continue to see from Third Stream funding and from licence and royalty income. In the year to July 2001 the licensing income received through Cambridge University Technical Services Ltd totalled over £1m for the first time. This is part of 'Other Operating Income' which is shown in Note 5 to the University Accounts. One million pounds is a small amount in the context of the University's turnover and represents less than one day's income. However, there are many who believe that the active efforts of the entrepreneurial community within Cambridge University could increase that amount by a factor of ten or more over the next few years, provided that they are given adequate support.
If expenditure is not to be cut, and we all know how demoralizing savings exercises are proving to be in other universities, then the emphasis must be on increasing our income in all sorts of ways. This includes active fundraising for endowment and trust funds, and a much more active use of unspent trust fund income. An exercise on that was started some years ago but went into the sand. It has now been revived and a Report will be made to the Regent House in due course.
My final comment relates to the emphasis which has been placed over the years on the Chest income and expenditure as opposed to non-Chest. Those who delve into the pages at the back of the Abstract of Accounts will see on p. 38 the Table of Income and Expenditure in the Allocations Report format. From that they will note that the non-Chest income in 2000-01 was £209m compared with Chest income of £183m. With more than half of our income now coming from restricted sources it is absolutely vital that the changes to the planning process which were sign-posted in the Allocations Report of June 2001 are brought into operation as quickly as possible. It is also important that the Resource Allocation Model (RAM) should be implemented soon, so that devolved budgeting can be put in place. Central costs (such as buildings maintenance and utilities, security, administrative support costs, etc.) are not funded out of thin air - they are funded primarily by the efforts of academics who bring in T, QR, and research overheads. The RAM helps us all to understand that better.
Dr G. R. EVANS:
Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, at last the Abstract of Accounts, two months late. That cannot be explained by any attempt to ensure that they tell the story of our financial affairs with a new clarity. There are many outstanding questions in the wake of CAPSA which they do not even begin to answer. The Treasurer is looking forward to stability, she says (p. 3), so it seems she sees no reason not to stay at the helm of our financial affairs. The deficit for the year identified in the Treasurer's Report on the Financial Statements looks rather close to the sum we probably wasted on CAPSA. Don't get me wrong. We all like the Treasurer. But surely she or the Vice-Chancellor as our Chief Accounting Officer, or someone should be going? Even our expensive outside help is being neither disciplined nor sacked. KPMG are still our 'independent auditors' (p. 6), despite 'that little business of CAPSA' (I quote Gordon Johnson at the road show in the Chemistry Building on 25 February). Read that Notice calling no one to account over CAPSA. What did I say a few weeks ago about the unlikelihood that we should see tough action?
It would not be true, however, to say that they are sitting with their hands folded in their laps. Oh no. They are busy running road shows. I have heard several times at the consultation the view that it is not appropriate to change the governance of the University as a knee-jerk reaction to 'the little CAPSA débacle' (Gordon Johnson again). I agree. The 'change.governance' proposals before us are nothing but a displacement bid to get our minds off the faults, not of the system, but of the in-crowd who are failing to run it properly. Those few who have been attending in the embarrassingly large halls they have booked will have noted the patronizing tones of the one and the cooing tones of the other, as Johnson and Grant invite us, in effect, to blame ourselves and not the small group at the top for that mess; and to trust them and their like to mend all that broken crockery.
Even if you are not much interested in the present debate about governance 'changes', it is important to remember that 'this means you'. Wherever you are in the University and whatever you are doing, you will be affected in your daily work by the changes which are proposed.
Pages 4-5 of the Abstract of Accounts set out in brief the University's present governance structure. The reader browsing through it would be hard put to find any hint of the radical character of what is now proposed; he will be reassured that God's in his heaven; the Council in its place; the Regent House in charge.
Professor Malcolm Grant wrote an Opinion piece in the Times Higher Education Supplement on 8 March. There is a lot of talk of American models, of 'central leadership, expressed through a president with strong executive powers', of 'strong deans who work together strategically'. Well that rather depends whether your President is a Bush, doesn't it? What is to save us from the giving of these powers to a bear of rather little brain who can chant the business mantras the Government at present wants to hear? It has been known to happen. There are well-founded rumours that the present proposals for 'change' are Government driven. They certainly have many Blairite and Brownist marks.
Grant thinks the chief purpose of 'academic' leadership is the provision of 'the excellent facilities and the high salaries that attract and retain the best'. I would question his premises. The 'best' in academe are surely those who work for love and out of interest and enthusiasm. They are why Cambridge is a great university. 'The president's job is to deliver continuing enhancement of quality and resources', says Grant. An unbalanced portfolio, surely? What of the protection of academic freedom and the space to think? What of the great deep old things of learning and scholarship? What of stewardship? Where is the spirit of service to the community in all that macho directing and commanding?
Grant's article sees 'Cambridge's strengths of diversity, democracy, and decentralization' as 'weaknesses'. But instead of seeking to build on these strengths and allow the Regent House to finish what it began when it called the CAPSA Discussion, and call to account the individuals who are clogging the arteries of our decision-making with their self-indulgent and lazy habits, he wants to give all the power to the very artery-cloggers.
And he wants more and more of those partnerships which eat away our control of our own affairs. CMI, says the same issue of THES, is launching a Masters Course in 'bioscience enterprise'…
Mr DEPUTY VICE-CHANCELLOR: You are wandering very far off the issue of the Accounts.
Dr G. R. EVANS: Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, with respect, pages 4-5 of the Abstract of Accounts are concerned with the governance of the University.
Mr DEPUTY VICE-CHANCELLOR: Yes, not with CMI.
Dr G. R. EVANS: CMI will take me two sentences, Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor. I am talking about the governance of the University.
Mr DEPUTY VICE-CHANCELLOR: Stick to the point, please. We are supposed to be talking about the Abstract of Accounts.
Dr G. R. EVANS: With respect, Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, we are talking about the text of the Report on the Accounts before us; pages 4-5 of which are concerned with the governance of the University. I submit that that makes what I have to say about the governance of the University relevant to the discussion of the matter before us.
Mr DEPUTY VICE-CHANCELLOR: I was concerned that you were addressing CMI.
Dr G. R. EVANS: If I may continue with my second sentence on CMI…
… It is to be studied at the Judge Institute and the Institute of Biotechnology. If it is a degree of this University we have to be asked whether we approve its content and its philosophy before the newspapers are told it is definitely 'on'.
I am unimpressed by Grant's criticism in his THES article of the secrecy of the present decision-making, in the light of what I shall reveal in the moment about the opacity of the present 'consultation'. Compare (those who remember it) the respectful solicitation of the University's views by the Wass Syndicate with the present 'marketing of a product'.
The University, we are promised in the Abstract of Accounts, models its conduct of its affairs on the seven principles of public life identified by the Committee on Standards in Public Life (p. 4). I recently received the Committee's consultation papers on Standards of Conduct and Defining the boundaries within the Executive. I hope the University has copies, too, and is filling them in rather thoughtfully. A good part of that national consultation concerns the problems of ensuring compliance with the 'seven principles'.
I submit that until the question of 'ensuring compliance' with our present constitution's requirements is addressed, we should abandon any further thought of making these hasty changes whose consequences no one pretends to be able to see (the 'cock shy' in 'a very preliminary and crude form', as Gordon Johnson accurately described them at the 25 February road show).
The duo running the road show, are now affectionately known throughout the University as 'the Walrus and the Carpenter' (see THES, 8 March, on that too). In Lewis Carroll's version they ate the oysters, remember?
The Walrus and the Carpenter do seem to be at the beginning of their researches. Asked point blank whether the Governance Committee had read the various Public Accounts Committee and National Audit Committee Reports on the breakdown of just such a device as they are proposing (letting a Vice-Chancellor sit round the table with the body to which he is supposed to be accountable), Gordon Johnson was heard to say, 'Not as such', while his companion rapidly wrote himself a note (to look them up?). Perhaps they may both like to consult my recent article summing up the story of the invasion of universities by the State.1
But first let me finish my opening point on the lack of transparency in these Accounts. Note the figures for legal fees 'etc.' this year (Note H, p. 26). Every year I draw attention to that figure and every year it rises yet again. I should perhaps 'declare an interest' in view of the THES's coverage on 8 March.
1 'University Autonomy and State Control: legal implications of the historical invasion of Oxford and Cambridge' (2001). Education Law Journal, 134-143.
Last year the figure for legal fees 'etc.' was published as £423,000. This year it is £1,500,000. I asked the Treasurer about that. She said it included 'other services of various kinds including accountancy, external project management on building projects, general consultancy, etc., plus of course our bank charges'. I asked for more details. In particular I asked for a breakdown of the legal fees paid to the various solicitors the University uses (it will be remembered that the Treasurer is married to a senior partner in Taylor Vinters and I have queried before the inevitable appearance of conflict of interest in the University continuing to use that firm). The Registrary has instructed the Treasurer not to give out that breakdown. Can he do that? Surely the detail of our accounts ought to be available to the Regent House on request. Accounts and 'accountability' are surely supposed to be more than etymologically connected?
Now to the transparency of that 'consultation'. I do not think Professor Grant has ever tried to collect signatures in this University. He is, however, familiar with the methodology of Planning Inquiries which are, I am told, 'worked' in just this way to 'contain' criticism. Before he leaps up in indignation, perhaps he could have ready the answer to the question who designed the consultation questions on the official 'change' website? And who authorized them to be put up in that form? It seems they were not seen and approved by the Council.
It is confirmed (by the Pro-Vice-Chancellors' secretariat) that all messages sent in electronically to the official consultation are to be forwarded to the Walrus and the Registrary to be digested down. We shall have only their versions of what is said.
Are the alternatives to Discussion working? An informal 'newsgroup' ucam.change.governance was set up by Stephen Cowley and James Matheson outside the (non-interactive) official consultation. There are all sorts of interesting postings, but from a relatively small number of names, almost all of whom are apparently newsgroup regulars. It is also clear that this is not a user-friendly medium, requiring some expertise to get access at all. That would suggest that there are hurdles ahead before the web becomes an acceptable substitute for the live human voice and the paper record. Surely electronic and 'live' modes of taking the temperature of the University should be used side by side?
The official road shows are not doing too well either as a competing attraction to Discussions. If you take out the interested assistant staff (who can of course come and watch and, if they ask, speak in Discussions too) and the seeded 'bodies' from the Old Schools, and those of us who go to mount a watching brief, there seem to be about fifteen genuine attenders at each. At the governance consultations introduction each time I have heard it, the Carpenter's introduction was running close to forty minutes of the allotted hour and Grant was simply not 'answering' the more awkward questions.
I am sure he will be rising with one of his famous lists of 'corrections' after I have spoken. But before you assume he is right, remember that his correction in a footnote in the Reporter of 20 February (p. 551) is itself wrong. It had to be corrected again on 27 February (p. 589).1
What would the world be able to reconstruct of the way Cambridge's eight hundred years of democracy came to an end without the record in the Reporter where these Discussions leave their footprints? They still want to end Discussions because they are so powerful an instrument for bringing things to light. The Walrus says he would prefer cosy little get-togethers in Faculties or Schools. His eye had been fixed somewhat malevolently (in my view) upon my silent, note-taking form throughout, when he said at the first road show that he wanted Discussions stopped. He characterized speakers as 'pompous, pedantic, and half-crazed'. Then as a somewhat unconvincing afterthought, he said he meant himself of course. If he did, he is clearly not fit to be the next Vice-Chancellor. If he meant us, do we want someone with those attitudes to Discussions holding all that unreviewable executive power?
Assertions are repeatedly being made at those road shows to the effect that that the proposed 50-member requirement is just the same as Oxford. Read http://www.ox.ac.uk/gazette/2001-2/supps/resn.pdf (Gazette, 13 February) to get the real figures and the truth. Oxford is protecting its academic democracy at the key stage where concerns may be raised. The number of members of Congregaton needed to call the Council to account by objecting to any legislative proposal or proposed regulation by calling for an adjournment in Oxford is TWENTY. If the Proctors disallow any such call, any TWO members of Congregation may call for their decision to be put to the vote by rising in their seats at a meeting of Congregation.
Initiation of legislative proposals by Congregation requires only twenty members. Twenty members may at any time submit a resolution on any topic. If the topic concerns the policy or administration of the University the Vice-Chancellor may not rule it inadmissable and any proposal, amendment or repeal of a regulation shall be deemed to concern the policy or administration of the University. This appears to mean that Congregation can take the initiative in getting inappropriate subordinate legislation reviewed and it is impossible for administration officers in Oxford to create sets of procedures which cannot be so reviewed by the will of Congregation where TWENTY members so require.
Raising concerns. Any ONE member of Congregation may at any meeting of Congregation in Full Term ask a question relating to any matter concerning the policy or the administration of the University, with written notice signed by the member and ONE supporting member.
Grant accused me in a speech in the Senate-House (published in the Reporter, 24 January 2001) of being more 'preoccupied' with 'the governance of the University' than with 'the pursuit of research. He is now proud to claim that his 'passion is for the proper governance of the University and for the integrity of the conduct of its affairs' (Reporter, p. 550). If he truly cares about 'proper governance' he should familiarize himself with our constitution before rushing in to change it. But then he is not keen on pedantry.
I apologize for ending on a personal note, but even those who do not appreciate that 'I am but mad north-north-west. When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a hacksaw' (Hamlet, II2, 378-90), recognize that I talk a good deal of sense.
Predictability is surely a major element of good governance. In a well-ordered system such as we might find we already had if the existing constitution was not constantly subverted by the in-crowd in the central bodies we could expect a truer picture from these Accounts. The Council ought to resign. The Vice-Chancellor as Chief Accounting Officer, the Registrary, the Treasurer, and all those at those secret Monday morning meetings in the Vice-Chancellor's room which never tackled the CAPSA mess, ought to be considering their positions.
REGISTRARY:
Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I would like to comment briefly on the expenditure and the way the expenditure is authorized on legal fees since the matter has been raised by Dr Evans.
The conduct of the legal affairs carried out in the name of the Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of the University of Cambridge are, except for those of UCLES and CUP, in the hands of the Council. The Council some two years ago authorized the Registrary to conduct those affairs in day-to-day terms on certain conditions including reporting to the Council through their Executive Committee on matters which were likely to incur fees in excess of £15,000 or other matters which the Registrary thought to be of wide interest to the Council. It is on that basis that I instruct solicitors. None of those instructions are given by the University Treasurer. I last reported to the Executive Committee on Monday, 4 March 2002. That Report will be going to the next meeting of the Council. It is correct that I advised the Treasurer not to provide Dr Evans with details of expenditure incurred in a named list of solicitors, including those acting for the University in connection with her own legal actions, matters in which Dr Evans has this afternoon declared an interest, and that was the basis on which I advised the Treasurer. I submit, Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, that that is not the same as denying the information to the Regent House, that is something the Council will consider in formulating their response to the remarks this afternoon.
Professor M. J. GRANT:
Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I have come to despair of Discussions.
I promised myself on the way to the Senate-House this afternoon that I would not be drawn to the podium and I regret very much that I have had to be drawn to the podium.
I am concerned that a Discussion that was to do with the Natural Sciences Tripos was hijacked into a diatribe about the appointment of the Academic Secretary. It is improper, I would suggest, that Scholars of this University should use a public opportunity to undermine the work, the appointment, and the professionalism of their academic officers. I suggest that that is completely inappropriate and I speak as a member of the General Board. I also would wish to express my personal endorsement of the professionalism of Graham Allen as Academic Secretary. I am also astonished that that speech referred not at all to the work of the Education Committee of the General Board which to my knowledge on at least two occasions considered the proposals relating to the Natural Sciences Tripos and reported eventually to the General Board.
Secondly, Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, we have had the hijacking of the Discussion around the University's Accounts into a diatribe on the governance road show. Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, your skills are much greater than mine in understanding the link between these two and I am drawn to my feet only by the series of personal attacks that were made on me in the course of that speech. My shoulders are broad but I would protest about my comments being taken out of context. The article that I wrote in the Times Higher Education Supplement was quoted selectively and out of context. The comments that I have made at road shows were quoted selectively and out of context and even the concluding comment in which it is said that I had alleged that Dr Evans was more interested in University governance than in research is a misstatement.
I regret that, not being pre-warned of these personal attacks, I have not had the opportunity to bring with me a copy of the relevant Reporter (24 January 2001, p. 391), but I suspect that if Dr Evans looks at it carefully what she will find that I was saying, again in extempore comments in the Senate-House on that occasion, was that the new Grosvenor Professor of Real Estate Finance was somebody to whose attention I was willing to draw Dr Evans's comments about governance but that I suspected that that person might be more interested in research than in the governance of the University.
TREASURER:
Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I would just like to correct the point of fact. My husband is not, and never has been, the senior partner of Taylor Vinters. After a period of ill health he ceased to be a Partner of Taylor Vinters and he is currently a part-time consultant with that firm.
1 The Editor would wish to point out that the footnote to Professor Grant's remarks (Reporter, p. 551) was transcribed incorrectly. The text provided by Professor Grant was correct. The Editor accepts responsibility for the erroneous publication of the word 'inability'.
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Cambridge University Reporter, 20 March 2002
Copyright © 2002 The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Cambridge.