Fly-sheets reprinted

The following fly-sheets etc., are reprinted in accordance with the Council's Notice on Discussions and Fly-sheets (Statutes and Ordinances, p. 114).

REPORT OF THE COUNCIL ON GOVERNANCE: MEMBERSHIP OF THE COUNCIL, ETC.

Fly Sheet for Ballot on Governance: Council Recommendations(Grace 2 of 5 December 2007) and Amendment

This ballot is about making sensible changes, which the University needs, to improve our governance arrangements.

The main proposal is to strengthen the Council by increasing the number of external members from two to four. The present two external members provide valuable service to the University by presenting a wider perspective to Council discussions, and by participating in such functions as chairing of the Audit Committee (where it is essential that the chair is external). However, the two existing members are over-stretched and a small increase in the number of external members would enable the Council to benefit from their useful advice across a wider range of activities, and in particular, in more of the committees of the Council.

The proposed change does not constitute a large increase in the membership of the Council, for there are also twenty-two other members, including the Vice-Chancellor and sixteen elected senior members. However, the Council is proposing an increase in the quorum to nine.

The Council's recommendations also make provision for the appointment of a deputy chair of the Council, to chair the Council when it is inappropriate for the Vice-Chancellor to do so. This is a minor change and is not intended to detract from the Vice-Chancellor's role as the normal chairman of the Council, and indeed as the principal academic and administrative officer of the University. The proposals also bring the statutory requirements for meetings of the General Board in line with current practice.

We urge you to vote yes to these proposals (Grace 2 of 5 December 2007), which are tailored to meet the University's needs.

Why is there an amendment? An amendment was put forward by some members of the Regent House to make statutory provision for the calendar for the appointment of the four external members, and to make statutory provision for their appointments to be staggered. The Council supported this amendment but unfortunately it contained a drafting error. The Council has therefore put forward a redrafted amendment for voting in its place. We advise you to vote yes to this proposal also.

We believe that these proposals are sensible and should not be controversial. We therefore urge all members of the Regent House to give them strong endorsement by voting yes for both propositions.

Flysheet for the Ballot on the Governance Grace of 5 December 2007

The University of Cambridge has been successful as a self-governing community of scholars, and we need to keep it that way. At present we Regents elect a majority of the members of Council from among our own number. However there are regular contested elections only in classes (b) and (c), who make up twelve of the twenty-two members on Council. If we add two external members, we will no longer be the majority.

We therefore strongly urge you to vote against this grace. It will not only undermine our self-governance but will invite further pressure from Government for yet more external members. The logical conclusion of this process would be for both University and College governing bodies to be dominated by external members. The autonomy that has made Cambridge great would slowly be lost.

We urge you to vote against this Grace.

We also urge you to vote in favour of the Grace of the Regent House of 23 January 2008, as a fallback position; so that even if the number of external members is increased, the method of their nomination should be made as resistant to systems of patronage as is practical.

Ballot on Grace 2 of 5 December 2007

The proposal on which we are voting is to add two, and only two additional external members of the Council, bringing the total number of external members to four. The total membership of the Council would then be twenty-four, of whom seventeen, the Vice-Chancellor and sixteen others, would be members of the Regent House.

The increase of external membership from two to four will make a significant contribution to the effective running of the Council. It should be remembered that the Chairman of the Audit Committee is required to be an external member of Council and this is an onerous task. The practical consequence is that when an external member is needed for some other significant duty, there is effectively only one candidate. Having four external members would solve this problem and provide significantly more scope for contributions in other areas. Overall, Council believes that its external members play a valuable role and this modest, albeit important, increase in numbers will enhance this role and will not, as some have claimed, prejudice the academic self government of the University.

The proposal to increase the number of external members has also caused Council to consider the nomination process. It believes that the arrangements for the nomination of external members are well worked out, robust and effective in operation. They are consistent with the University's academic self government, and specifically they provide: a clear transparent process which includes public notice; involvement by members of the Council, who have already been elected by the Regent House; and guaranteed involvement of non-resident members of the University (members of the Nomination Board). This provides independence and externality; and also provision for Regent House endorsement (or rejection) of each nominee. In view of this, Council believes that no purpose would be served by changing this process.

So the Council's advice would be:

and

2.	Vote NO for the January Grace to set up a different Nominating Committee.

S. J. YOUNG

Member of the Council

REGULATIONS FOR THE NOMINATION OF MEMBERS OF THE COUNCIL IN CLASS (E) (EXTERNAL MEMBERS)

Fly Sheet: Initiated Grace (Grace 1 of 23 January 2008)

This ballot is about the composition of the Nominating Committee for the external members of the Council.

We have a perfectly satisfactory Nominating Committee, established by Ordinance without controversy, which has already operated well. It consists of one of the senior honorific officers of the University in the chair (the High Steward acted on the last occasion), the Vice-Chancellor, two of the elected members of the Council appointed by the Council, and four other persons appointed by the Council from the members of the Nomination Board for the offices of Chancellor and High Steward. These four must not be members of the Council, and at least two must not be members of the Regent House. It is therefore at present necessary for at least two, and possible for up to four, of the members of the Committee not to be members of the Regent House, and this is a desirable provision.

A Grace (Grace 1 of 23 January 2008) has been initiated by members of the Regent House which provides for a Nominating Committee of a different composition. It puts an external member or a former external member of the Council in the chair, but this could place such an individual in an invidious position. It is also quite possible that there would be no one eligible or available to serve. The Grace provides for members of the Council to be appointed, through further election by the Regent House; but members of the Council in classes (a), (b), and (c) are already elected by the Regent House. The Grace provides for four members of the Senate elected by the Regent House to serve on the Committee. All members of the Regent House are members of the Senate. Therefore it is possible that those elected could all be members of the Regent House. This is not satisfactory since it does not allow for the balance provided by the composition of the present Committee.

The various provisions for appointment and election set out in the Grace are complex and cumbersome (for example nomination by the Proctors and the Deputy Proctors in one case, election by the Regent House in two others). The resulting committee could be less effective in identifying the best possible external candidates for this very important and demanding role. Hence, it seems to us that the University should rely on the present, satisfactory, composition of the Nominating Committee and on the good sense of our elected Council in making its appointments to it.

There seems to us to be no need for the initiated Grace and indeed, if approved, we believe that its provisions could be significantly less effective than the current arrangements. We therefore strongly urge you to vote against it, and by doing so to express confidence in the present, satisfactory, arrangements.

Flysheet for the Ballot on the Grace of the Regent House of 23 January 2008

Up to now, the University has been a democratic institution, in the sense that the Council (the principal executive and policy making body of the University) is largely composed of members who are directly elected and who, if they are to continue in office, must face the electorate at intervals: a necessity which imposes a measure of accountability. Other than the Vice-Chancellor, the unelected members of Council are the two external members (who are proposed by a Nominating Committee). We believe that if the academic membership of Council is to be further diluted by doubling the number of external members, there needs to be increased democratic accountability in the way by which those external members are appointed.

One way forward would be to elect the external members directly. An argument voiced against this is that it might prove difficult to persuade desirable persons to stand. Hence, as an alternative, the proposal contained within this Grace is that a majority of the Nominating Committee should be directly elected by the members of the Regent House, rather than appointed by Council.

A motivating principle behind this change is that we consider it inappropriate that the Council itself should have a significant say, even at one remove, in deciding who is a member of Council; if a body controls its own membership, this is the route to oligarchy. This is already recognised by the Statutes in that Council has no power to co-opt to its membership in the event of a vacancy. Further, our proposal has a pragmatic advantage too. External members proposed by an elected committee will be less likely, we believe, to precipitate embarrassing and harmful opposition (as recently happened in Oxford) should a significant body of opinion in the Regent House be opposed to that nomination.

At present the Nominating Committee consists of the Chancellor (or his deputy), the Vice-Chancellor, two members of the Council appointed by the Council, and four other members appointed by the Council. These last four are not members of the Council but are members of the Nomination Board for the Chancellor. The members of this Nomination Board are appointed by Grace on the nomination of the Council. The result is that the Nominating Committee is dominated by members of Council and persons selected by Council.

The reasoning behind our proposal for a different kind of Nominating Committee is as follows. In order to ensure that the Committee knows what is required of an external member the Vice-Chancellor, a current or past external member, and two of the elected members of the Council would be members of the Nominating Committee. The current or past external member would be Chairman and would be nominated by Proctors who, as observers at Council, could make an informed independent choice. The two members of Council, and a further four members of the Senate (i.e. members of the Regent House or of the University holding a degree of M.A. or above) would be elected by the Regent House. The result would be a nominating committee which would be well informed of the nature of the task it has to perform but which would be able to do so with a direct legitimacy.

In its Notice of 5 December 2007, Council suggested that a directly elected Nominating Committee 'would risk reducing the independence and externality of those recommended for appointment'. With this we disagree. In our opinion, what would risk reducing the independence and externality of the University's governance would be if we change the constitution so that not two, but a block of four of the members of Council were nominated by a committee appointed by Council itself. It is for this reason that we propose that, henceforth, a majority of the Committee that chooses the external members should be directly elected by the Regent House. We urge you to vote for the Grace.

Flysheet for the Ballot on the Grace of the Regent House of 23 January 2008

The University of Cambridge has been successful as a self-governing community of scholars, and we need to keep it that way. At present we Regents elect a majority of the members of Council from among our own number. However there are regular contested elections only in classes (b) and (c), who make up twelve of the twenty-two members on Council. If we add two external members, we will no longer be the majority.

If Regents accept more external members, then the mechanics of appointing them become important. We believe that the nomination process should not be under the control of the majority on Council. We therefore propose that most of the Nominating Committee be elected by the Regent House. External members should not feel beholden to those members of Council with whom they serve; a small majority on Council should not be able to build a larger one by appointing like-minded externals; and Council membership should not become part of any system of patronage.

We urge you to vote for the Grace.

Flysheet for the Ballot on the Grace of the Regent House of 23 January 2008

In another flysheet it is claimed that the Nominating Committee has already operated well. It has operated once, when there were only two external members to nominate. Whether the current process has the necessary checks and balances has not been tested; we believe that it is not sufficiently robust. Oxford's original nomination method for externals, which needed revision last term, was proved to be deficient only on its fourth time out. Good governance is pro-active governance; the aim of the Grace is to correct a deficiency.

Criticism is also expressed of the proposal that an external member, or a former external member, of the Council should be chairman of the Nominating Committee. This idea is borrowed from Oxford, and was justified by the Master of Balliol on the need for the chairman to have both knowledge of other externals and knowledge of the workings of Council, on the desirability of the chair being someone able to talk to potential externals with some authority about being an external, and on guidelines of the Committee of University Chairmen (see http://tinyurl.com/yr8cvc).

Next, criticism is expressed that the various provisions for appointment and election set out in the Grace are complex. Yes, the legislation is not straightforward, but it ensures that the elections will occur contemporaneously with the elections for the Board of Scrutiny, so reducing administrative burden and cost.

There is also criticism that all four members of the Senate could be members of the Regent House. We note that all four members of the Senate need not be members of the Regent House. The composition of the revised Nominating Committee would be such that members of Council could propose the same membership as the current Nominating Committee (with the exception of the chair); the difference would be that if that proposed membership was unacceptable to the Regent House an election could be forced.

We urge you to vote for the Grace.