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Report of a Discussion

Tuesday, 4 December 2001. A Discussion was held in the Council Room.

Professor D. E. NEWLAND, DEPUTY VICE-CHANCELLOR, IN THE CHAIR:

The Vice-Chancellor sends his apologies for not being able to be present at the start of this Discussion as he is delayed returning from the USA where he has been attending a Board Meeting of Cambridge in America and other related events. I understand that he has just arrived at Heathrow and he hopes to join us later in the afternoon.

There are five topics listed for discussion this afternoon and we shall take these in order (Reporter, p. 226) before resuming the Discussion on CAPSA which was adjourned last week.

The Joint Report of the Council and the General Board, dated 12 November 2001 and 30 October 2001, on the implementation in Cambridge of the 2001 pay increase for non-clinical academic and academic-related staff (Reporter, p. 233).

Dr H. R. N. JONES:

Mr Deputy Vice Chancellor, I wish to comment on paragraph 11 of this Report, in which it is recommended that the top of the Senior Assistant in Research scale is brought into line with the top of the Research Associate scale. This is entirely right and proper: the discrepancy between the two scales has clearly been anomalous ever since the Research Associate scale was brought into line with the national post-doctoral RA1A scale in November 1998.

Can I now urge the General Board to look at a related problem? Prior to November 1998, the top of the Research Associate scale coincided not only with the Senior Assistant in Research scale, but also the Technical Officer scale. There are a significant number of Technical Officers in this University who possess a Ph.D. I suggest that the very logic used by the General Board in proposing the revision in paragraph 11 applies equally to the Technical Officer scale, and I ask that the General Board now regularizes that scale so that Research Associates appointed to Technical Officerships are not disadvantaged financially.

The Report of the General Board, dated 30 October 2001, on the establishment of a Directorship of the Cambridge Endowment for Research in Finance (CERF) (Reporter, p. 240).

No comments were made on this Report.

The Report of the General Board, dated 30 October 2001, on the establishment of a Merck Company Foundation Professorship of Experimental Neurology (Reporter, p. 241).

Dr G. R. EVANS:

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I am faced with a literary conundrum. The Vice-Chancellor said from the Chair last week that no one who spoke in the CAPSA debate last week could do so again this week. There is no such rule, Vice-Chancellor. We shall not encourage people to treat Discussions as a real opportunity for debate unless replies are allowed. I would be keen for people to able to make a response when their conduct is criticized in ways they believe to be unjust and unfairly damaging.

So, breach of the literary unities though it is, I have to crave indulgence for a few remarks before I take the opportunity for the sake of economy to roll up into a single speech some thoughts on three of the Reports before us today, which raise inter-connected issues.

First, I want to flag up a very serious warning. I am informed through the Higher Education grapevine of which I am an increasingly active, and in some quarters even a respected member, that the Government has a notion of offering the élite universities that special money already hinted at in the press in return for reform of our governance. In other words, give up academic democracy and we will reward you financially. I doubt if the money will last long once they have got what they want. Our loss of academic control will be permanent. So the threat to our academic democracy attributable to our Vice-Chancellor is perhaps coming ultimately from politicians.

In the run-up to last Tuesday's Discussion the Old Schools did everything it could to set the event up to its own advantage. The decision to fill up the time until about 3.15 p.m. with 'seeded' speeches might well have ensured that the journalists from the broadsheets (briefed in advance by the Press Office) would go off to file their stories before the debate got fully into its swing. I was tipped off that the Press Office had invited the press to lunch before the Discussion. I joined them for a short time in the Combination Room. The heavy hint that Discussions are on their way out was somewhat undermined by the packed Senate-House into which they were then led.

Our Press Office should not be Jo Moore to the Vice-Chancellor's Stephen Byers. It should not have been used to try to obscure the failure of our Chief Accounting Officer to 'inform, without delay, the ... HEFCE Accounting Officer of any serious weakness … or major accounting breakdown'. If the Vice-Chancellor has in the end to 'appear before the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons' it will not be possible to put a spin on that (http://www.hefce.ac.uk/Finance/auditcop/).

A recent biography of Noam Chomsky, ironically of MIT, describes how he 'came out more and more strongly against the apparently willing collaboration of the intellectual community with the state' in the late-twentieth century USA. He was critical of 'media collusion with powerful elites' and of 'collusion between intellectuals and state policies'. He then found himself the subject of assaults on the quality of his work. 'But, aside from some trivial slips, Chomsky stood up to the test.' I do not of course claim Chomsky's stature; but I am not ashamed to be in that company.1

Professor Grant said informally after the Discussion featuring Dumville's trolley and the 'modestly gusseted A4 envelope' that he would have liked an opportunity to correct inaccuracies. I immediately e-mailed him asking for details of the inaccuracies he had in mind. Silence. He has not been able to identify a single one. I quote Professor Grant himself: 'In my opinion (and I stress that it is only a personal view) the quality of Discussions in the Senate-House could greatly benefit were … simple precepts of courtesy and integrity to be more generally observed' (Reporter, p. 298). I have done my three attackers last week the courtesy of sending them 'their' parts of what follows, in advance.

1 Robert F. Barsky, Noam Chomsky: a Life of Dissent (MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1997), pp. 176-7.

I fear I can point to inaccuracies in the speeches which sought to blame me personally for CAPSA last week. It was suggested last Tuesday that I was taking up too much of time of the two Principal Officers. I do not know who the second is supposed to be. The Registrary would, I believe, be the first to admit that he has found our conversations about governance valuable. There has never been any need for the huge waste of time over my 'case'. It could have been dealt with promptly and simply at any time in the last nearly twenty years. It was not I who let it drag on. Those who disapprove of my persistence in fighting injustice perhaps also forget the numerous others I help, here and in other universities.

Professor Spencer seems to think it intrinsically wrong to resort to the courts when a flawed system fails to protect an employee; this is odd in someone teaching future members of the legal profession. And surely no one is now going to contend that this is not a flawed system? He himself consented to consider an invocation of K, 5 made necessary solely by the University's saying in its defence to my application to the High Court that it was my duty to invoke the Statute. He spent three months and not ten days on it, causing the adjournment which keeps this case in existence. I was assured when I protested that he was a truly independent 'judge'. His attack on me last week must leave that in doubt.

By contrast, in his speech published in the Reporter, new Pro-Vice-Chancellor Malcolm Grant said, 'I have no difficulty with rigorous argument, nor with accusations of impropriety that are firmly based on evidence that is capable, if need be, of standing up in a court of law' (Reporter, p. 298). I would be glad to test his recent remarks and those of his fellow-lawyer Professor Spencer in a court of law.

Professor Lamb speaks of my 'attempts to dominate Council business'. Would that stand up in a court of law? He made these allegations, he tells me, on the basis of things 'people on the Council' had told him. He refused to hear my version when I offered to give it to him immediately after he had spoken. (Audi alteram partem?)

Professor Saunders made mysteriously similar assertions. It is important for the Regent House to get a sense of what it was like at those Council meetings, for there is no evidence that they are now running any more effectively. My regular, though not invariable, practice was to wait at each item to see if anyone else wanted to speak. Usually there was silence. If I did not raise a question the item would go by without discussion. So I tried to get discussion on important matters when no one would bother. I did not attempt to 'divert' the Council, but to keep it to the point. My 'agenda' was the one before the Council.

Sanders and Lamb, who was not even there, speak of 'domination' on my part. That takes me back to my remarks on chairmanship of committees last Tuesday. How could one small female have 'dominated, diverted, and potentially derailed' a well-chaired committee, even if she had wished to do so? And I did not wish to do so. I wanted its Chairman to show that he was on top of the papers and the issues and to conduct the meeting accordingly.

And as for 'the effect on the morale of individual members of the Council and senior officers, and the huge time and commitment required to deal with these matters outside meetings', surely that was their job? Had they done it better the Council might have been able to do its own duty within the meetings. Sanders admitted last week that he was on committees which should have been alerting the Council to the things I was trying to point out.

It is Sanders who comes closest to being defamatory. There is a very nasty undertow to Sander's remarks. I think it entitles me to recollect that I believe it was he who once said at a Council meeting that he did not see why we should be bound by the archaic rules of the Statutes and Ordinances. They put him onto the Governance Committee, of course.

The question of collective responsibility was raised by two of these speakers. In our system an individual member of the Council may dissent from the collective view. I frequently showed by the absence of my signature that I could not in conscience go along with a decision about which there had been no real discussion. But of course I am responsible as a member of that body. Was it not I who drew attention to its duty in a remark quoted by Professor Shattock in his report? (I suspect though, that a court of law might think I was almost the only one not in breach of duty as an individual.)

In case anyone wishes to check my assertions last week that I had been saying things now endorsed by the CAPSA report, I raised the £8m (?) loss on VAT (e.g. Reporter, 23 July 1997, p. 100). I also tried to get the Council to deal with it ('derailment'?). I raised the subject of the Treasurer accepting tenders unsupervised more than once (Reporter, 17 November 1999, p. 159; 15 December 1999, p. 292; 7 June 2000, p. 764), and several times at Council meetings ('diversion'?). As to 'training', that has been in almost every speech I have made since the Vice-Chancellor made his promise in his own speech (1 October 2000) that it would henceforth be a 'requirement' for those taking decisions in the University. These were, as it now proves, important warnings, which someone should have been heeding ('domination'?).

Opprobrium and petty undermining of one's reputation seem to follow from being a nuisance to powerful figures and interest groups. Nevertheless, I would rather invite comparison with a Chomsky than with those three holders of Cambridge chairs. Last Tuesday, Spencer wasted a chance to make a serious speech. People would have listened to him with respect as a member they elected onto the Board of Scrutiny. Lamb has no right to 'deplore' when he has not been willing to hear the evidence on both sides. Sanders should perhaps have stopped with the implicit admissions of his failures on the committees below to do what I was trying to get the Council to do. Those speeches speak for themselves and their speakers; they evince that failure to see the big issues which is so pervasive in the University. I believe the Registrary has found my capacity to do that a refreshing change in our conversations.

I turn briefly now, with apologies for this long prolegomenon, which I would have preferred to deliver in its proper place in the CAPSA debate, to the Merck Professorship. This is another example of a short-term Professorship becoming a permanency where the will is there, and of the consequent further blurring of the lines between established, personal, and research Professorships. There is nothing wrong with this in principle but there have to be some principles. They have to be laid before the Regent House and discussed. This has to be done rapidly, Business Committee of the Council and your 'clerk'. (The Council can still take no notice of what is said in Discussions. But if Professor Shattock' s suggestion is listened to, they will review their habits about that and begin to respond properly to points made in Discussions, and do it in a timely way. That Business Committee could begin to meet and do some drafting.)

All sorts of aspects need thought. In the case of the Report on Research in Finance, we saw that when the Director was appointed he could in principle be 'appointed to a Professorship'. 'In order to provide the necessary academic leadership, candidates for the new Directorship should have', as something of an afterthought, 'a strong research record in an academic discipline'. He is going to get study leave, so we hope he will be able to keep that up. And if his research record is strong enough, he will get that chair. It seems that another Professorship (History and Philosophy of Science), can simply be 'renamed'. Professor Lipton did not have to come here with his trolley to prove himself worthy of the new title, or is it actually a new Chair?

I have attempted unsuccessfully to get it accepted that the new Academic Secretaryship must be properly advertised and competed for and not merely given behind the scenes to the officer who has been acting as caretaker since the Secretary General was put on light duties. We are grateful to him for trying to hold the fort. But this appointment is of huge importance for all students and academic staff. Council, will you please put your foot down and insist? An Academic Secretary should surely have to produce the equivalent of a trolley, so that students and academic staff can look at his qualifications and his performance record before they entrust him with the post of adviser on the future of policy-making about appointment to chairs, let alone the academic future of the University. Or shall we risk a second CAPSize in that quarter?

Professor J. SPENCER:

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Dr Evans has used her speech to impugn my competence and independence when in January last year I acted as the Vice-Chancellor's deputy to investigate the two most recent complaints that she brought under Statute K, 5, alleging the Statutes of the University had been broken in connection with its failure to promote her. Unlike many of those who Dr Evans criticizes in Discussions I am both present and in a position to defend myself and I propose to do so. In saying this I regret its necessary to go into certain details of an investigation which in principle is conducted, I believe, confidentially.

It is true that I took much longer than the statutory ten days to investigate the complaints. The delay however was I believe entirely due to the tactics Dr Evans chose to adopt which greatly slowed things down. It would have speeded my handling of the matter if the Vice-Chancellor had been able to give me an initial briefing because, before I became involved with this case I was unfamiliar with the detailed background of Dr Evans's long standing dispute with the University. However, the Vice-Chancellor felt unable to do this because Dr Evans had made it plain to him that if he did so she would interpret this as an attempt on his part to compromise my independence. I took the view that it would have compromised my independence no less to receive an initial briefing on the matter from Dr Evans and I therefore had to familiarize myself with the complicated background to her complaints by conducting my own researches. These took me to the pages of the University Reporter over several years and a collection of documents held in the Old Schools relating to Dr Evans's previous complaints which are voluminous. All this took up a great deal of time. Furthermore Dr Evans was initially unwilling to clarify one of her complaints by identifying the acts she had objected to or the revisions of Statutes and Ordinances which she claimed were broken. Time was therefore wasted in correspondence with Dr Evans about this. It was only after I informed her that I would advise the Vice-Chancellor to dismiss a complaint unless she made it plain to me what acts she impugned or what Statute or Ordinance she claimed was broken that she did eventually do so (and her initial response to what I said was to ask the Vice-Chancellor to remove me on account of bias).

As to my independence, I had never had any dealings with Dr Evans before I was asked to investigate her complaint, I had never taken positions in respect of her various campaigns, and as I have explained I was not even familiar with the details of them. It was for this reason, I suspect, that I was asked to act as deputy in this case. I'm confident that I performed the task the Vice-Chancellor entrusted to me both fairly and conscientiously. This appears, I believe, in the written advice I tended the Vice-Chancellor on the 19 April in which the steps I took and the reasoning I applied are fully set out. This advice was written for the Vice-Chancellor but I would be very happy for him to disclose it to any member of the Regent House who wished to see it.

It was in the course of this time-consuming investigation that I discovered how much time and disruption Dr Evans's sustained campaigns of litigation against the University, both internal and external, have also caused the University administration in recent years. I would like to place on record now that it was these experiences that caused me to form the views that I expressed in last week's Discussion about CAPSA, and contrary to what Dr Evans suggests it was not the fact that I held those views already that led me to advise the Vice-Chancellor to dismiss the two complaints.

I apologize to the Regent House for taking up their time with a speech which is irrelevant to the subject matter of this particular Discussion. I've only done so because Dr Evans with equal irrelevance has used the Discussion to impugn my competence and my independence. To use Discussions to ventilate in public issues which have nothing to do with the matter in hand is in my view a serious abuse. It is regrettable because it inevitably brings Discussions into disrepute.

Professor D. E. NEWLAND, FROM THE CHAIR:

Members of the Regent House will understand that currently there are no procedural rules which require contributors to confine themselves to the topic under discussion. I intend to recommend to Council that the introduction of an appropriate rule should be explored.

The Report of the General Board, dated 30 October 2001, on the title of the Professorship of History and Philosophy of Science (Reporter, p. 242).

No comments were made on this Report.

The Report of the Faculty Board of Economics and Politics, dated 8 October 2001, on amendments to the regulations for the Economics Tripos (Reporter, p. 243).

Dr A. W. A. PETERSON:

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, unfortunately the Chairman of the Faculty Board of Economics is unable to be present today, so I speak as Chairman of the Faculty's Teaching Committee. The proposals before the University for changes to the Economics Tripos, which are set out in detail in the Report under discussion, are the outcome of an extensive process of discussion within the Faculty. They are not intended as a signal of any fundamental change in the aims of the Tripos, or in the philosophy which underlies it. Instead the proposals aim to modify some important aspects of the examination process in a way which reflects changes in the material which most Economics students have studied before arriving in Cambridge, and in the skills which they will need after they have graduated. The Faculty Board has expressed its unanimous support for the proposals, and we hope that the new arrangements will provide a well-structured framework for undergraduate teaching in Economics for many years.

Dr G. R. EVANS:

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I do now precisely what Professor Grant did, our new Pro-Vice-Chancellor, a few weeks ago. The awkward exchange which just took place between Professor Spencer and me was made necessary solely because the Vice-Chancellor had said last week that no responses were to be allowed within the CAPSA debate. That is where he and I should have been allowed to do what we could have done in the 1890s, and that was to rise up and say 'Mr Vice-Chancellor I cannot allow what Professor so and so has just said to pass without comment'.

I tried to keep Professor Spencer to the issues before the High Court because the reason he was looking at Statute K, 5 was because the High Court would insist that Statute was seen to have been exhausted before it would look at the matter before it.

I was anxious that the Vice-Chancellor should not brief Professor Spencer because in a previous invocation of Statute K, 5 (which I fear Professor Newland took on, and on which the Vice-Chancellor's briefing was subsequently disclosed to me), a very heavy hint was given to the Vice-Chancellor's deputy about which way he should find.

I am concerned that Professor Spencer as an experienced lawyer should have thought it right to go and look at documents which were not in the case, which were not in the bundles, and which I have still not had identified to me as documents upon which he relied in arriving at his decision. I should say that I had no great trouble with his decision and that he did, as may well be recollected, very usefully make it clear that the promotions procedures and other procedures in the University are in fact Ordinances, and may therefore be challenged under Statute K, 5 when it seems that they have been broken.

Continuation of the Discussion of the Report to the Audit Committee and the Board of Scrutiny, dated 2 November 2001, on CAPSA and its implementation (Reporter, p. 153).1

1 CORRECTION: In the published remarks of the Treasurer at the Discussion on 27 November, the final words of paragraph 3, second column (Reporter, p. 348) were omitted. The final sentence should read: 'Properly qualified individuals, recruited against clear job descriptions and competence requirements and at realistic salaries can then be given clear jobs with the responsibility for carrying them out and the authority to do so.'

Professor R. A. LEIGH:

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I am the Head of the Department of Plant Sciences but speak in a personal capacity on this occasion. I have spoken in a Discussion only once before, and that on a matter of parochial concern to my Department. I think that today it is important that the Regent House hears voices it does not usually hear, because the reports we are discussing affect every aspect of the University.

I take it for granted that the Council will look urgently at the detailed recommendations made by Professors Shattock and Finkelstein. However, the recommendations listed by Professor Shattock are prefaced by three paragraphs (10.2 to 10.4) describing some aspects of the culture of the University. They call attention to the poor relationship between the Central Administration and Departments; to the preference for the amateur approach above the professional; and to the need to retain academic governance without, in Professor Shattock's words, 'lapsing into cosiness'. Professor Shattock does not make any recommendations directly addressing these points, but, if his report is to have impact it is vital that we do address them. A few of my comments echo some of those made by the Registrary and Dr Secher and may reinforce them because they are made by an academic member of the University rather than by a member of the Central Administration.

The increased transparency and accountability inherent in the Council's proposals for restructuring the Unified Administrative Service may help to make the Central Administration more visible - and hence more accountable - to Departments. Increased attention and resource is also now being directed at staff development. In time, that will help to substitute professional skills for comfortable amateurism in both academic and administrative staff. However, these developments are not in themselves sufficient to meet Professor Shattock's broad criticisms.

I therefore wish briefly to air three concepts which might be of use when we come to build on these reports and to develop new ways of working.

First, the independence of the Central Administration. One of the episodes of the 'Yes, Minister' TV programmes tells of a hospital which has won awards for cleanliness, and for the efficiency of its administration. On closer inspection it turns out not to have any clinical staff nor has it admitted any patients yet. The civil servants argued that patients, doctors, and nurses were unnecessary and that the quality and effectiveness of the hospital's administration was the result of not having to be concerned with them, and was a sufficient end in itself. Similarly, I get the impression that some in our Central Administration feel that they could continue to function whether or not there were any Faculties or Departments. Much lip-service is paid to the notion that the administration supports the academic work of the Faculties and Departments, and many of the staff are very helpful, but I do not believe this holds up across the UAS. On occasions, I have invited senior officers of the Old Schools to my Department: often they come, and often they are pleased to do so, but often they preface our meeting by saying that they have not seen the Downing Site before. This lack of familiarity with the rest of the University is not acceptable if the Central Administration is really to understand how Departments and Faculties work, and how it can assist them. It should be part of the induction process for all central officers to see in some detail a Faculty or Department in each of the five Schools, so that they know what teaching and research look like, and how approaches to them vary in different disciplines. Similarly, the links between Departmental Administrators and the centre should be stronger if there are to be effective lines of communication. Many Departmental Administrators are members of the UAS; but many are not. Why not? I suspect that, in part, it results from the suspicion in Departments that Administrators who are members of the UAS cannot work independently of the Old Schools in a way that has the best interests of the Departments at heart. As a Head of Department who has an Administrator who is a member of the UAS, I can refute this suggestion, but I have found it hard to convince other Heads of Departments of this.

Secondly, the importance of professional administration. Academic governance and professional administration are not incompatible. One of the reasons why our administration is criticized in these reports for not being professional is that the Regent House seems to have been uncertain that a professional administration is what it wanted. If it were possible to have the place entirely administered by untrained academics, then, for too long, there have been many in the University who would choose that 'cosy' option. It seems to me that as an academic community we almost have a fear of the professional administrator. The concern seems to be that if administrators are allowed any input to policy, or allowed to pursue certain aims in an independent way, then this will undermine, in some way, the University's teaching and research objectives. This doesn't seem to me to be self-evident. If we have a robust system of governance in which the teaching and research policies of the University are led by academic needs, as defined by academics, then we should welcome the input of professional administrators whose job it is to help us reach these targets. The Central Administration, properly structured, staffed, and managed, should be seen as an instrument of achieving our academic goals, not the impediment that many academics like to imagine must necessarily be the case.

Thirdly, the parameters within which our administrators are allowed to operate. If we are to recruit and retain competent administrative staff, then their jobs need to be constructed in such a way that they are attractive. If an officer of a Committee is required to seek the authority of that Committee for every minor change, then he or she will soon learn not to have any ideas, or will become frustrated at being required simultaneously to be intelligent and to be a drone. It does not increase the institution's respect for its administrators, or the morale of those administrators, if they are not empowered to blow their nose without the approval of the Pocket-Handkerchief Syndicate, and then are criticized for using the wrong coloured cloth. Provided the administrators are accountable, in a structured way, to committees setting academic priorities, then I would support their having discretion to develop processes and policies. It is clear from these reports how our habit of loading committees with academics ill-equipped for the task and with no clear guidelines can easily lead to disaster. I, for one, am content to have appropriately constituted committees and syndicates set the aims and broad parameters, and give professional administrators the leeway to take matters forward, with appropriate accountability. In return, I would expect administrators and their Principal Officers to accept responsibility when their actions lead to unsatisfactory outcomes.

In summary, it is painfully clear from these reports that the administration bears a great responsibility for the unleashing of the CAPSA disaster: but it is equally important to note that the academic community does not escape blame. Therefore, to move forward, we should re-think the role of the UAS in relation to academic departments, give appropriately-trained administrators their head, and provide oversight from a system of committees composed of the most qualified people for the job, rather than always attempting to be representative, if this leads to amateurism.

Dr J. P. DOUGHERTY:

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I am grateful to the Vice-Chancellor for adjourning last week's Discussion, so enabling those of us who did not speak then to offer our remarks today. I have taken the opportunity to amend my comments in the light of earlier contributions.

This is such a serious and major affair that only the provision of an authoritative and detailed report, by external assessors, can bring order and discipline to our deliberations. Fortunately, we have just such a report. We should therefore credit the Council for agreeing to commission it, with such well chosen authors. And we should record our deep thanks to the authors for their swift and thorough work. The report is so extensive that I wish to comment only selectively.

As Professor Finkelstein notes in Part A, the University has had three computerized accounts systems. What I will call the COBOL system operated from 1966 to 1993. Based on 1960s main-frame methods, it might seem very primitive nowadays. Yet much credit should be accorded to Mr John Bray for having charge of it for the whole time and running it so professionally. However, the pace of technological change was relatively slow until around the mid 1980s, at which point it steeply accelerated, both in hardware and software, making decision-taking difficult. The replacement of the COBOL system, by what the report refers to as the Legacy system, illustrates the difficulties. An Oracle system was chosen for in-house development. Whatever the undoubted merits of Oracle, ease of programming seems not to be one of them. Members will recall that for several years there was a temporary hut in the court of the Old Schools where a team worked on the project. It took longer than anticipated, and when, belatedly, Legacy went live in 1993 it seemed already out of date. (The Treasurer so remarked in her contribution.) The report records that within a mere two years wide-ranging enhancements were already being sought.

At this point, it should, I think, have been concluded that such in-house development was not the right policy. Technology was evolving rapidly, and people who can do this sort of development generally work together in private companies where they earn salaries well ahead of those offered in universities. This was, in my opinion, the first major error: the lessons of Legacy were not learnt. I know one could respond that it's all very well to say that with hindsight, but it ought to have been recognized at the time. Professional advice would, I am sure, have so recommended.

So the project continued, referred to as Local in the report. This resulted in the crucial loss of two and a half years (early 1996 to mid 1998). It had finally to be abandoned. I regard this as a major failure of management.

The blow-by-blow events of the next two years speak for themselves; many of the problems were the consequences of having, belatedly, to start again from scratch when there was insufficient time. This finally led to the second major mistake. A big and complicated new system went live when testing was not complete, and the old system was abruptly disabled. The report is not fully forthcoming as to how this happened: more information should be provided. This second mistake was inexcusable: contingency arrangements should have been set in place months earlier to run the old system for another year. That would have avoided the massive grief that has occurred, avoided the need for this enquiry and Discussion, and the public ridicule we now suffer. Instead, there would have been disappointment at the delay and the cost overrun. Those are serious points, but somewhat mitigated as being par for the course in this type of operation. (I gave examples in my remarks at the first Discussion.)

This line of thought (the two main mistakes) suggests to me that it is incorrect to try to lay the primary blame on our governance arrangements. The problem was officer error. Of course, there were several factors noted in the report: chronic underfunding and understaffing, bugs in the software, retirements and resignations, move to ill-equipped accommodation. But those are mitigation only. Equally, I do not feel it right to blame Dr Gillian Evans. The first mistake occurred before she was involved in central administration. I doubt whether she was consulted in the second mistake, or whether it could be accounted for by the distraction resulting from her enquiries. It was a yes/no matter to which any professional would have answered 'no'.

Nevertheless, the affair does reveal shortcomings in our management and governance, the improvement in which might reduce the opportunities for such a thing to happen. So we are fortunate to have Part B, by Professor Shattock. This offers the University a great deal of help by analysing the managerial and structural weaknesses revealed by CAPSA, and recommending remedies.

Its timing is, however, a little awkward for us. The University, through the Council, has in the last four years devoted a lot of consideration to our structures, creating the Unified Administrative Service. It is likely that the first tranch of this is on the point of being approved, but there remain important aspects on which we are awaiting proposals. After reading Part B, one naturally reflects on what we have been doing and whether some of the Council's proposals, both past and still under consideration, need reconsideration.

In particular, there has been a shift of emphasis to line management rather than having officers answerable to committees, including the abolition of some of the committees. Line management confers real responsibility on the manager, both for his/her personal actions and for those of people reporting to the manager. If the most senior officers want more of this, they should be ready to practise what they preach.

President Truman had a plaque on display in the Oval Office, that said 'The buck stops here'. I suggest that our senior officers in the University might emulate this! Or again, the Royal Navy takes line management very seriously. If a ship sinks, the Captain (if still alive) is automatically court-martialled. The CAPSA ship did sink!

On other governance issues, I support the comments of the Board of Scrutiny, and, excepting his comment as to Dr Evans's role, those of Professor Lamb.

Professor Shattock includes a passage on the Regent House (§8.7-8.8) which deserves comment. I fully support his criticism of personal attacks, which ought to have no place in our Discussions. As I participated in both the Discussions he cites I very much hope he was not referring to me! Professor Shattock also complains about the Council's responses. I can see merit in his call for immediate reactions, but I think it is often the case that a considered reply is advisable. All too often, the replies come over as high-handed. I have learnt that you have to serve the Council with a non-placet or amendments to have any hope of making an impact. I would be happy with the suggestions made in this passage of the report. And I suggest that the notion, which surfaces from time to time, that Discussions be discontinued, be now dropped. The Regent House is very unlikely, in my estimation, to agree.

Here are some more specific points: of the numerous universities in the UK, we hear that several, if not many, have been in the same position as ourselves in the matter of accountancy systems. We also hear that there is only a narrow choice. As all the universities have very similar requirements in respect of the Research Grants section of the accounts it seems to me the some collaboration among those using Oracle Financials should have been undertaken to save time and money. Maybe Universities UK should promote that sort of thing. Perhaps it is not too late to go down that line. At less priority, the same might be said of Inventory.

Both parts of the report recommend the merging of MISD and the Computing Service. One can see the point about pooling expertise, but I am not convinced that is the best way to secure that objective. In day-to-day matters, academic computing and administrative computing are quite distinct disciplines, with differences of approach and training. The essence of the difficulties that have arisen in the present affair lies in the matter of selecting and purchasing well for a big project. This is in fact a specialist and large field of its own. Analysing the needs, preparing the specification, appraising the tenders, making the contracts, and so on is where top-level expertise is needed. So I suggest the University sets up something like an internal IT Procurement Agency, with members from the Administration, Computer Science section, and Departments. Projects exceeding some threshold budget would be referred to it and be handled by it, but it would not involve itself with routine matters (which would be dealt with as now).

I would like to comment on the under-resourcing of the Administration referred to in the report, and also described to us graphically by the Treasurer. I am sure that the Regent House will have some sympathy with the view that our professionals in the Old Schools should be supported by adequate resources, and if budget increases are required, so be it. What the Regent House does not like is empire-building.

Ms D. LOWTHER:

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I wish to draw attention to paragraph 10.3 of Professor Shattock's report, which refers to the issue of 'lack of respect for the professional and a preference for the amateur approach'. Professor Shattock explains that this is 'very much contrary to modern trends' and has contributed to 'the climate in which the kinds of problems that CAPSA threw up could flourish'. He rightly points out that this kind of issue does not readily lead to formal recommendations, and that what is required is a change of culture.

I would like to highlight three cultural presumptions which I have encountered in this University and which I believe the Council must now be prepared to challenge.

These are, first, the presumption that an academic community has nothing to learn from professional bodies. No doubt much of what is described as 'best practice' could be better, especially if it had been invented in Cambridge. I know that academics resent paying for professional advice, often regarding it as money for old rope. But this is a complex world in which the University cannot afford to start every project from first principles. An institution which values academic excellence so highly can also, surely, understand that this cannot be achieved with systems of governance, management, and administration which are anything less than excellent. Excellence in the support functions will only be achieved when the University can bring itself to recognize the value of professional qualifications alongside academic ones, and of professional disciplines alongside academic disciplines.

Secondly, there is the presumption that committees can manage projects. As CAPSA has shown, committees cannot manage projects, and they cannot even steer them in the absence of fully resourced professional management teams to do the work on the ground. Committees need professional support to enable them to take the right decisions, and they need professional support if their decisions are to be implemented. I am a member of the Finance Committee. It has an important job to do, but its papers largely consist of an unmanageable quantity of the undigested minutes of other committees' meetings. The Finance Committee would be considerably more effective, and certainly more efficient, if the Finance Division had enough staff in place to produce a clear analysis of the matters about which decisions need to be taken, and reduce the number of papers which need to be read before the meeting to a realistic level.

Finally, there is the cultural presumption that investment in administration diverts resources from academic endeavour. The Treasurer referred last week to the assumption that every pound spent on administration is a pound not spent on research. For some reason, it never occurs to anyone to ask how much our endless committees cost us. Even at academic pay rates, I estimate that the opportunity cost of a meeting of the Finance Committee is about £1,000. The opportunity cost of reading the papers is, depending on how more or less conscientious my colleagues are, at least another £1,000. It is clear that a more efficient allocation of resources could be achieved by paying for the professional staff necessary to service the Committee properly. In the absence of adequate professional support, committee members spend inordinate amounts of time in preparation for and in meetings. This is clearly false economy. A pound not spent on administration is also a pound not spent on research.

Dr D. R. J. LAMING (read by Professor A. W. F. EDWARDS):

Mr Deputy-Vice-Chancellor, since I am a member of the Council, I must emphasize that the remarks that follow are made entirely in a personal capacity.

The two reviews by Professors Anthony Finkelstein and Michael Shattock present an alarming picture of mismanagement over a considerable period of time. Many of the mistakes they report are consequential on earlier failings, so that there is considerable room for debate over what is primary, and needs to be attended to directly, and what is merely secondary, and will sort itself out once the fundamentals are corrected. As a contribution to that debate I wish to emphasize one aspect that seems to me crucial, but an aspect that neither of our reviewers sufficiently emphasized.

Professor Shattock says (§2.11):

There was no one in the centre of the University who had the background and experience to undertake the installation of a new financial system: … The University needed a KPMG management team because it was itself inadequately staffed for the CAPSA project, but it was also inadequately staffed to interface effectively with KPMG or with Oracle. The University thus became far too reliant on KPMG and Oracle with serious consequences for the success of the project.

If you ask how and why the University got into that state, it was because there was no one at the top who had the depth of understanding, not to oversee the project her (or him) self, but to appreciate the technical nature of what was proposed and to ensure that the University was adequately staffed to exercise that oversight. In the absence of that understanding

(i) many messages from the Internal and External Auditors, the Audit Committee and the CAPSA Steering Committee went effectively unanswered. The messages were received, of course, but their importance and urgency were not appreciated.
(ii) The Board of Scrutiny alerted the University in June 2000 in its annual report of its concerns about CAPSA, but without effect.
(iii) Because the University did not itself have the staff that were needed, the management of CAPSA was turned over to a consultant; but there was no one to ensure that the consultant was adequate to the task or to look after the University's interests in the matter.
(iv) So, when the project began to fail, all that could be done was to replace the consultant.

While, in retrospect, many people will ask 'How can the University authorities have been so stupid?', the truth of the matter is rather simple. If there is no one at the top who has sufficient experience to respond to the technical nature of the enterprise, messages from subordinates and subcommittees are simply not understood. Since it is by no means obvious that lack of experience on the part of top management is critical, I will illustrate the point with a story.

About 7 a.m. on the morning of 8 June 1982 the landing ship Sir Galahad dropped anchor off Fitzroy in East Falkland with two companies of the Welsh Guards on board. Sir Galahad was within easy sight of an Argentine observation post on Mount Harriet, which, in turn, was in radio communication with the Argentine air force on the mainland. When Major Ewen Southby-Tailyour, in command of the landing craft at Fitzroy, discovered the Welsh Guards on Sir Galahad, he immediately commandeered two landing craft to take the men off. But their commanding officer would have none of it. The Welsh Guards actually wanted to go to Bluff Cove, only three miles away by sea, but twelve miles by land. At ten minutes past one the Argentine air force arrived. They destroyed Sir Galahad and many of the Welsh Guards with her.

This was a simple case of military incompetence and it has an equally simple explanation. Major Southby-Tailyour had been present at the initial landings in San Carlos Water and had seen first-hand what the Argentine air force could do. But the Welsh Guards had, at that time, been safely out of harm's way on board Queen Elizabeth II off South Georgia. So, while Southby-Tailyour could tell the commanding officer of the Welsh Guards of the fact of the risk of air attack, there was no way in which he could communicate the magnitude of that risk. The commanding officer of the Welsh Guards simply lacked the specific experience needed to understand. And, according to her own testimony, the Treasurer likewise lacked the experience necessary to understand the complexities of installing a modern financial system.

But do not heap all the blame on the Treasurer. We have a culture of appointing the face that fits in preference to someone who has the qualifications for the job. Professor Shattock (§10.3) spoke of a 'lack of respect for the professional and the preference for the amateur approach in both governance and management.' This culture is well illustrated in the statement that the Treasurer prepared for the occasion when this report came before the Council (and I quote from that statement with the Treasurer's foreknowledge and consent).

In 1993 the Financial Board under the then Vice-Chancellor Sir David Williams had the opportunity, presented by the resignation of Dr Halstead, to review the position of Treasurer. They could at that stage have attempted to recruit from outside the University a senior qualified and experienced accountant to take responsibility for the University's financial management. They did not do so. Instead, they reverted to tradition and appointed a generalist, whose professional qualifications were as a lawyer. The Treasurer, with statutory responsibility for advising the Council on financial matters, as their principal financial officer, and with a duty to prepare accounts and estimates for the Council and its Finance Committee, had no financial or IT qualifications and no experience of complex accounting systems.

If an administrative task imposes no technical demands, lack of specific competence on the part of the person appointed to oversee it will not be noticed. But CAPSA has been different; the failure has been apparent to everyone.

This is a cultural failing. In her statement the Treasurer went on to say

I realized quite soon after I was appointed that they [the present day Finance Division] desperately needed management accounting skills, which were totally lacking. Due to the way in which New Needs were funded and implemented it took about fifteen months to get one relatively junior person appointed into an unestablished post for two years in the first instance.

And Melvyn Keen, Interim Director of Finance, said that 'on arrival it took him three months to get approval for vacancies to be filled and six months to get approval for new posts.' (Shattock, §7.4).

In the light of these and other similar complaints from within the administration, the Council recently proposed that administrative appointments at the level of Assistant Registrary and below should be made by the Registrary, without recourse to an (academic) Standing Appointments Committee (Reporter, 2000-01, p. 829). That proposal attracted an amendment to reinstate the academic involvement in appointments throughout the Unified Administrative Service (Reporter, 2000-01, p. 906). It is difficult to see what an academic involvement can add to a professional assessment of applicants from within the Unified Administrative Service, except delay. The defect is cultural. It has led to a 'sustained under investment in professionally qualified administrative staff.' (Shattock, §6.2). We need a change of culture.

The Board of Scrutiny, in its initial comment on this report, stated, quite correctly, 'that a series of fatal mistakes were not picked up by the University's Council, or the structure of Committees that underpin it' and asked 'how the Council and Committees composed of busy academics can be enabled to exercise effective control over weighty and often highly technical matters when, because of their other responsibilities, their members can only give the work of these bodies a limited amount of time.' But that 'limited amount of time' is not the real problem. The principal difficulty facing members of the Council and others with responsibility is not being put in the picture.

Because of the great volume and diversity of its responsibilities, most business comes before the Council in the form of reports from subcommittees or (in matters of lesser importance) as drafts prepared by the administrative service. The Council can only deliberate on the basis of the information before it, and that information is already selected and shaped by the subcommittee. Thereafter, the ordinary member of the Council can do little more than propose minor changes to the wording. A member of the Council who attempts to reopen the debate on the basis of her (or his) own enquiries is not welcomed, for three reasons. First, there is simply not time in a full session of the Council to revisit arguments already explored in subcommittee. Second, such a reopening of arguments would require other members of the Council to have conducted their own independent enquiries, and there is much too much business for that to be practicable. But the third reason requires more detailed explanation.

While members of the Council are elected, members of Council subcommittees are appointed - by the Council, but on the recommendation of a Committee on Committees. Committees generally recommend people who, it is thought, will carry out the tasks in question as members of the recommending committee would themselves. Of course, those recommended are always the best qualified for the work in hand; I am merely pointing out what 'best qualified' means in practice. Power and influence in University government lies within the subcommittees, not with the Council, and the Committee on Committees in particular is a self-perpetuating subgroup of great influence within the Council. So the member of the Council who seeks to reopen a debate that has already taken place within a subcommittee is effectively taking issue with the establishment - or, at least, with a subcommittee appointment by the establishment. Such an initiative in the Council is additionally unwelcome for that third reason.

In the report the CAPSA affair is presented as a failure of both management and governance. But those failures are, I submit, secondary to a failure of leadership. Leadership in being alert to the technical requirements of the installation of CAPSA and responding quickly when the project begins to go astray. Leadership in ensuring that sufficient competence is in place to ensure success. Leadership in ensuring that the installation is adequately monitored, and that the Council and its subcommittees are kept well informed about progress. As I have already said, committees can only deliberate on the information put before them; but, when the CAPSA storm broke, I, personally, found it very difficult to get reliable information about what had gone wrong.

Although under our Statutes the Council has the ultimate responsibility for the administration of the University, in practice power and influence is, for the most part, exercised by a smaller group of people. That smaller group works, of course, within our governance structures, and Professor Shattock makes 17 recommendations about those structures. But, frankly, tinkering with our governance structures, while leaving that smaller group of people in place to function as before, leaves our self-government under the same leadership as it is now. It runs the risk of a repeat performance when we attempt to modernize our Student Records Information System.

Professor A. W. F. EDWARDS:

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I know nothing about commitment accounting and have no personal experience of the CAPSA problems, but as I survey the ashes of the Cambridge constitution it does not surprise me to learn that the difficulties encountered in implementing a complex and expensive programme have been exacerbated by procedural failings.

I would like to comment on Professor Shattock's part of the report, though with reference also to Professor Finkelstein's final recommendation about improving relations within the University. I shall concentrate on what the Terms of Reference called 'the influence of the University's governance arrangements on the CAPSA project'.

I spent a dozen man-years on the Council and General Board, and a year attending the Council as Senior Proctor, during which I formed and expressed definite views on what I saw as the bad practices which were even then destroying the harmonious government that earlier generations had enjoyed. In recent years I have frequently elaborated these views at Discussions, usually in connection with some particular malpractice that I have noticed.

This is not the moment to rehearse them again. It is sufficient to say that I do not wish to withdraw any part of the remarks on this subject that the Council's ill-judged Report on Discussions provoked me into making eighteen months ago (Reporter, 1999-2000, p. 901). Any attempt to use recent difficulties as an excuse further to emasculate the University's constitution is likely to provoke some even more robust remarks from me, and very probably from others too.

Professor Shattock makes a number of wise and thoughtful observations and recommendations, particularly about the Council and their response to Discussions, but, like the Wass Syndicate before him, he has not sufficiently grasped the essence of Cambridge government to be able to make a satisfactory diagnosis of its ills or to suggest a blueprint for its recovery. In the language of political theory, Cambridge is, by Act of Parliament as well as long tradition, a participatory democracy, whereas recent chartered universities, like Warwick, are representative democracies, and these are very different political and legal animals.

This is a harsh comment to make about one who has so generously given of his time, but Professor Shattock is a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Higher Education Studies at the Institute of Education of the University of London and I am sure the usual terms of academic debate are not foreign to him. So I need to substantiate my criticism.

Professor Shattock has reviewed 'governance issues' without mentioning the key to the whole problem. It is as if he had discussed reform of the House of Lords without mentioning Acts of Parliament. The missing concept, his missing word, is 'Ordinance'.

An ordinance, according to The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, is an 'Authoritative decree or command; a public injunction or rule of less constitutional character than a statute'. In Cambridge the University has the power, conferred by Statute A, II, 'for ... the management of its affairs, to enact Ordinances and to issue Orders'. By Statute A, III this power is exercised by the Regent House (save for the regrettable 'General Board Ordinances' invented by the Wass Syndicate). By the same Statute this Regent House is designated the governing body of the University.

Thus when Professor Shattock reminds us that 'The Vice-Chancellor is, by decision of the Regent House, the 'designated officer' (Accounting Officer) under the terms of the HEFCE's Financial Memorandum' what he means is that the University has enacted an Ordinance to that effect. (When it was proposed I considered pointing out that under the Cambridge Statutes it is as plain as a pikestaff that the Treasurer should be the 'designated officer', but the uselessness of arguing kept me quiet. No doubt the Treasurer is now grateful for my silence.)

So what on earth did the Council think they were doing when they appointed a Director of Finance and a Director of a so-called Management Information Services Division without the authority of the University conferred through the standard procedure of an Ordinance? How were these senior individuals expected to function properly when in consequence they did not even exist in the instruments by which the University is governed? Professor Shattock says that 'In her letter of resignation the first Director of Finance set out a number of reasons for her departure of which the first was the ambiguity of her reporting responsibilities'. She might have been wise to have asked on what page the Ordinance governing her post was to be found.

It takes just two working weeks for the Council to submit a draft Ordinance to the Regent House in the form of a Grace and for the Regent House to approve it. Rejection is unlikely, and the discipline of drafting, explaining, publishing, and obeying an Ordinance is an indispensible component of good government. '... untune that string, / And hark! what discord follows; each thing meets / In mere oppugnancy'.

I have come to regard the reluctance of the Council and General Board to bring forward appropriate new or revised Ordinances (and indeed Statutes) as quite pathological. It is at the bottom of many of our discontents and hence of the poor relations with the administration; it is thoroughly bad management, let alone irregular government, leading to arbitrary decisions by unauthorized people. It has the inevitable consequence that the Ordinances as a whole are decaying, with all that means for muddle and uncertainty in the future. One only has to look at the state of Statute F and the associated Chapter XIII of the Ordinances. Are they sufficient for today's financial operations and a proper 'job description' for the Treasurer? No. Is Statue G, II an accurate reflection of 'Financial Relations between the University and Colleges'? No.

Proceeding without Ordinances is like Ministers of the Crown laying down the law without parliamentary approval or even so much as a Statutory Instrument, but at least the concerned subject can then challenge the legality of any decision by means of judicial review. In the University, by contrast, if a Statute or Ordinance has been broken by 'any person or body having power to act under the Statutes' a complaint may be made to the Vice-Chancellor under Statute K, 5, but that does not cover the case of an act which ought to have been an Ordinance but was not, nor acts by persons not 'having power to act under the Statutes'. Like the Director of Finance.

There exists a Working Party on Governance, though, as Professor Lamb observed, even that seems to be hidden from the governing body. I hope it is seized of the seriousness of the position and of the need to invite evidence from members of the Regent House. One cannot run a great complex university like Cambridge without reference to an agreed set of up-to-date regulations formally approved by the governing body according to principles and procedures that rest ultimately on parliamentary authority. The sooner the truth of this proposition is acknowledged by everyone the better prepared will the University be for the next set of problems.

Some speakers have tried to lay the blame for CAPSA at the door of the Council, quoting the Wass invention of a Council as 'the principal executive and policy-making body of the University' and then blaming a particular member for stopping it functioning properly. That attractive hypothesis will not stand scrutiny. The Council of the Senate had not functioned properly since it allowed itself to be treated with disdain, even contempt sometimes, by a generation of Principal Administrative Officers. The Wass Syndicate's attempt to give it a role for which it was neither suited not equipped was never likely to succeed. Wass's other invention, the Board of Scrutiny, has shown just how effective a body which thinks for itself can be. I have explained the extent to which I blame the Council, for not promoting the required legislation; but I rather suspect that on that question the minority of one will have been in the right.

Dr S. J. COWLEY:

Deputy Vice-Chancellor and members of the Regent House, I am a member of the Board of Scrutiny, but I speak on my own behalf.

As one rereads the reports their impact wears off. They no longer shock me, but that was not always the case. My initial reaction was one of amazement and depression. One could not but be forced to the conclusions that our administration and governance are a 'mess'.

We certainly need to fix something, but it must be the right thing. To do this we need the correct analysis, to face up to what went wrong, and to ascertain what or who was to blame. We then need to get the correct balance between changes in structure, personnel, and, possibly most importantly, culture. What do Council think? According to their Statement:

[the] lack of clarity about responsibilities within the administration and lack of effectiveness in accountability ... raises wider issues of governance than those covered in the CAPSA reports

and

the Council will also bring forward proposals recommending some wider changes to the constitution. These will be designed to assign to officers and bodies more clearly than at present their respective duties, responsibilities and the necessary authority to act, combined with better procedures for openness and accountability.

At first sight there is apparently nothing too controversial there, but then there were the subsequent reports in the press.

In last Wednesday's Times one reads that the Vice-Chancellor is understood to believe that the powers of ten members of the Regent House to ask for a Discussion or force a vote on a Grace, 'limit the efficiency of the decision making process'.

In last Wednesday's Financial Times it is stated that 'Sir Alec Broers announced plans to modernize the university's top law making body, the 3,000-strong Regents [sic] House'.

One wonders where these ideas came from, because I cannot find them in last week's statements nor, with the exception on the comments on Discussions, in the Vice-Chancellor's address of 1 October. I note that the quotations echo the report in the 26 October issue of the THES where it was suggested that the Vice-Chancellor is 'ready to sweep away [our] ancient democratic structures and traditions in a modernizing drive' and that he 'will have ammunition in the form of the hard-hitting report by Mike Shattock', although I should add that Sir Alec has assured the Board of Scrutiny that he had no contact with the THES over that article.

Is there ammunition for such sweeping actions in the CAPSA reports? Are Discussions and votes on Graces responsible for the CAPSA debacle? What does Professor Shattock think? Paragraph 8.8: 'the existence of a forum [i.e. Discussions], where individual views can be expressed about university matters ... is valuable'. Moreover according to a report in the THES of 2 November Professor Shattock has a concept of 'shared governance' meaning 'that governing bodies must encourage dialogue between themselves and the academic community rather than accepting automatically the interpretation of academic communities' views by the chief executive'.

So why is there this apparent assault on our democratic structures? Are those like myself, who have forced two votes on Graces in the last year, limiting the efficiency of the decision making process? Let's take a case study: the amendment of the regulations for the Unified Administrative Service. The advertisement for the Director of Management Information Services appeared on 3 June 1998. Two and a half years later, on 21 March 2001, the Council reported on the Unified Administrative Service with the aim of establishing this Directorship on 1 October 2001. Amendments were proposed in June of this year, which Council have in essence accepted in full, and as a result, if the vote is won, the Office will be established from 1 January 2002. Our democratic structures will have caused a delay of three months, while Council took three years to act.

Maybe the answer to the assault is to be found in the pages of the THES of 23 November in an article on Lord Browne, CEO of BP and (if rumour is to be believed) a possible candidate for the next Vice-Chancellor. There we read that Lord Browne 'is acting as an informal and influential adviser on higher education' to 10 Downing Street, and that 'it is understood, but unconfirmed, that Lord Browne holds strong views on the inefficiency of university governance, especially at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge'. So it appears that the Government might be worried about our governance, and indeed might be interested in taking away our 'democratic toys' (a quote it has been suggested that I do not attribute).

I suppose that it is no surprise that this Government wishes to sweep away democratic structures. However, such forces should be resisted, particularly when our democratic structures, when correctly implemented, do not cause inefficiency and when they are an important buttress of accountability ... or at least they are if you believe in Statutes and Ordinances. Therein lies a problem. As the Council noted last week 'the piecemeal introduction of change over recent years has led to a crippling discrepancy between provisions in the University's Statutes and the operational position on the ground.' But let us not forget that it is the Council who is responsible for this piecemeal introduction of change, not our wider democratic structures, ... or do Council believe that myself and others should have been running round to obtain fifty signatures in order to propose Graces? It is Council who has devalued Statutes and Ordinances. It was Council who decided that you can reform the UAS first and then worry about Statutes and Ordinances later. It was Council who allowed appointments to unestablished posts at the level of Professor and Reader which were in contradiction to the University's Statutes. I presume that it was Council who approved the procedure whereby the Secretary General does not act as Secretary to the General Board. Moreover I have heard it suggested that there are contracts of employment which are inconsistent with Statutes and Ordinances; were these approved by Council? In the light of this, is it surprising that a culture seems to have developed where the rules can say one thing and you can do another, and/or where decisions of committees, including Council, are not acted upon (for instance over whether the press or the Regent House should see the CAPSA reports first)?

Statutes and Ordinances state that the duty of the Treasurer is (a) to act as the Council's principal financial officer and adviser on financial affairs, thence (b) to (g). Is that not a job description? Statutes and Ordinances state that the duty of the Registrary is to act as the principal administrative officer of the University, and as the head of the University's administrative staff. Does that not give him sufficient responsibility, authority, and accountability for the actions of members of the University's administrative staff, for instance over the decision to go-live on 1 August 2000? If you are the guard of a train heading straight for the buffers, and the passengers are yelling 'stop', it is foolhardy to believe a driver who says 'everything is all right'. You pull the emergency brake, especially if, as a result of earlier warnings, you ought to be taking an active interest in the actions of the driver. I could elaborate in detail, with chapter and verse (e.g. Finkelstein 7.31, Shattock 5.5, 5.12, and 5.15), but I hope the analogy is clear.

I believe that it is arguable that many of the root causes of lapses in administration and governance lie in the attitude of Council and others to Statutes and Ordinances. It is not acceptable to ignore Statutes and Ordinances because it is 'now established practice' to ignore them, which seems to be essence of the Council's recent response to the Board of Scrutiny's concerns over the frequency of General Board meetings. Is a disastrous accounting system with an unsupported operating system now established practice?

There has been a catastrophic failure in our culture of governance. There may be a need to further reorganize the administrative service, there is no doubt a need to ensure that our committee structure works more efficiently and listens to expert advice, there is no doubt a need to ensure that the administrative service believes it is accountable, but there is an overwhelming need for a change of culture on Council. It is not our governance structures per se that are the problem, it is their implementation.

Prior to the Council's Statement I believed that the responsibility for CAPSA and the associated 'mess' was shared. That belief under-pinned the Board of Scrutiny's Statement of 21 November. However I now learn that Council 'accepts responsibility for the problems that have been encountered', indeed Council repeated 'its view that it is ultimately responsible for the mistakes that have been made'. So it is Council that is responsible for the lack of a 'serious attempt to calculate the cost', for the 'wholly speculative savings of £11m', for not ensuring that proper tendering practices were followed, for the failure to heed the warnings of the internal auditors, the external auditors, and the Board of Scrutiny, for not acting on the influential and indeed expert voices external to the project who called into question the viability of the August 2000 go-live, for the severe disruption and distress caused by go-live, for the strained relationships within Cambridge and a loss of morale amongst long-standing and loyal members of staff, for the belief that established practice is more important than Statutes and Ordinances, and for the crippling discrepancy between provisions in the University's Statutes and the operational position on the ground. I could go on.

Moreover the Council now asks the Regent House to trust them to bring forward proposals recommending some wider changes to the constitution.

I believe that some on Council think that business has something to teach us as regards governance. Would the Chairman, CEO, CFO, and Board of a business still be in place if the above failures of governance had occurred on their shift? Half would have gone immediately, with the rest to follow a year later. Fortunately for the Vice-Chancellor, Council, and Principal Officers I do not believe we should be governed like a business; from the inaction of the aforementioned apparently neither do they (or if they do they do not have the courage of their convictions).

I believe that we should be governed democratically. The advantage of democracy is that candidates can state both their qualifications (as has happened often in the past), and their intentions (which, regrettably, has happened less often). When presented with my voting papers how I wish I had known which candidates believed that we are governed 'very badly' with the implicit suggestion that our governance and management should be permitted to be less effective because we are outstandingly successful academically (a paraphrase of Shattock 1.3). I would also have liked to have known whether any of the candidates believed that we should sweep away our ancient democratic structures, with the implicit suggestion that the University is a train which is to be made to run on time. I would hope that there are those in the University, and on Council, who believe in bottom up governance, who believe that decisions can be made by Committee, and who wish to see an effective, accountable, and properly funded administration to implement those decisions.

Last week Council took responsibility en bloc, I believe that this week the elected members of Council should consider resigning en bloc. Those with the inclination could then stand for re-election making it clear in election statements their views on administration and governance, and so obtain a clear mandate. Moreover, I would hope that in such circumstances we would have a real election with real choices, as opposed to the farces we have had in recent years.

Mr D. R. HOWARTH (read by Dr S. J. COWLEY):

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, since I am both on leave and not even physically present it might be thought impertinent for me to intervene today, especially as my only status in the debate is as last year's Chair of the Board of Scrutiny, a status akin to that of yesterday's crisp packet.

I would not be doing so except for some remarks I saw reported in the press about the conclusions some in the University were drawing about the University's system of governance in the light of the CAPSA reports.

Press reports suggested that it was being argued that the Shattock and Finkelstein papers justified dismantling the University's democratic structures, specifically Discussions and Ballots, and replacing them with something more managerial and 'modern'. I have to say that such an interpretation of the CAPSA reports would be perverse. What the CAPSA reports describe is a serious managerial failure which was permitted to happen because of a serious failure in the system of accountability. The system of accountability needs to be strengthened, not swept away.

The Shattock report makes two criticisms of Discussions. First, Shattock says that they have become too personal and that we should adopt self-denying ordinances to impose on ourselves an obligation to be more civil to one another.

But the reason Shattock makes that recommendation is because of his second, more important, criticism, which is that Discussions are no longer real discussions because Council members do not take part. They do not make any response to the debate at the time of the Discussion. They give the impression that the only function of Discussions is to allow members of the Regent House to let off steam while others get on with the real business.

Shattock is not calling for the end of Discussions but for the restoration of their function of allowing the Regent House to hold the Council (and, perhaps, senior officials) to account.

There has also been some speculation in the press about restricting the use of the Ballot. Behind that speculation lie two legitimate concerns - that officials need more delegated authority because it is absurd to expect the Regent House to micro-manage the University, and that one of the reasons the Council is so ineffective is that the Grace procedure allows it to imagine that it has passed on responsibility for its decisions to the Regent House as a whole, which means that it acts even more irresponsibly.

Although there is force in both of these points, they do not follow from the CAPSA reports. Indeed the CAPSA reports will make most readers think that delegating more authority to the very officials and Council members who produced the CAPSA debacle would a very peculiar action indeed to take at this point.

The Board of Scrutiny's Sixth Report put forward the view that the underlying problem is lack of trust. Members of the Regent House are reluctant to give up their formal decision-making powers to officials and to the Council because they distrust both groups. The origins of that distrust are, of course, complex, and perhaps to some extent such distrust is inevitable. But one important aspect of the problem is the fear that officials and Council members are working to undisclosed agendas which are at odds with the interests of ordinary members of the Regent House. The suggestion that, as a result of the CAPSA debacle, administrative pay should be increased, but that academic pay should remain suppressed, is precisely the kind of event which breeds the suspicion that those with access to important decision-makers and to important decisions can turn every opportunity to their own advantage and that they should therefore be held on a very short leash.

The University needs to find new mechanisms of accountability for senior officials and for Council members before it can contemplate delegating more authority to them. In the case of officials, the Board of Scrutiny has already suggested the use of performance indicators designed to further the interests of the average member of the Regent House. For the Council, the Board has suggested the obvious first step of the publication of its minutes. I personally would go further. There needs to be a culture of individual responsibility on the Council. Collective responsibility only works for party government, and we do not have a democracy based on acknowledged parties. Council members should have publicly known portfolios for which they are individually responsible and on which they should report as part of the Council's Annual Report. In addition, all votes on the Council, including votes on amendments which fail, should be recorded and made public. Council members are elected representatives and should behave as such.

Professor D. N. DUMVILLE:

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, this Discussion got off to a good start, with Dr Lintott's fine speech, but in due course it descended into a choreographed low farce. It seems that we are invited to avert our gaze from the issues before us and to blame Dr Gillian Evans for the CAPSA debacle. One searches these two reports in vain for the remotest hint of such an explanation: our investigators, who have captured only too accurately the condition of this University, know nothing of her responsibility. Rather, it has taken the rapier-like wit of a Professor of Law to identify this cause of our systems failure. Let us put aside such an egregiously preposterous finding. Our Council, long supine and craven in face of the General Board, may at last be coming back to life. When its operations have been reviewed and audited (Report B.10.5[13]: Reporter, p. 203) and its members have been given training (B.8.1: p. 200), perhaps it will be ready to accept its ultimate statutory responsibility. We should remember Professor Shattock's noting that Dr Evans was right to point out (and, we may add, to act on) that legal fact (B.6.2: p. 196).

Responsibility has also been assigned to the Treasurer (A.8.3: p. 168): 'The Treasurer failed to exercise adequate management control or oversight…'. I should have thought that from the moment of publication of those words, the Treasurer's position was untenable. After her speech in this Discussion, which suggests that she has failed to understand these reports, her situation must be terminal. As a political columnist might say, resignations are out of fashion these days: we may suspect that, even if hers occurs, a Callaghan-like instant resurrection will be on the cards.

These reports constitute a damning indictment of the way in which the University conducts business: Dr Lintott alone, I think, has put the matter in sufficiently stark tones. All the issues have been raised in Discussions at one time or another in the last few years. Let us look at a consolidated list: absence of due process in appointments (A.8.5: p. 168, B.2.9 and 11: pp. 182-3, and B.4.6: p. 191); belief rather than thought, in this case by the Audit Committee (B.5.16: p. 195); conflicts of interest not addressed (B.2.11: p. 183); cosiness and inactivity (B.10.4: p. 202); expensive cosmetic actions - even to the point of 'high farce' - 'with the sole purpose of providing support for a decision already taken' (B.2.13: p. 183); fear of discomfiting higher authority (B.5.14-17: pp. 194-5); lack of accountability (B.2.25: p. 187, B.5.12: p. 193, and B.9.1: p. 202); 'mechanisms to put right issues which have been reported over a long period of time' seem to be absent (B.6.1: p. 196); out-of-control subsidiaries (cf. B.7.8: p. 199 - the point could be refocused); unlawful action (B.2.12: p. 183); an unwillingness to think the unthinkable - to defy the house-culture (A.7.58: p. 165, A.7.68: p. 166, and B.3.7: p. 189). It is almost as if a Soviet-style system were being described - but there was no underpinning ideology. It is simply an oligarchy. Concerning our committees we learn of the 'limp response' and other failures of the Audit Committee (B.2.21: p. 186 and B.5.14-17: pp. 194-5), of dereliction of duty by the Planning and Resources Committee (B.8.2: p. 200), and how 'Consciously or unconsciously, committees chose not to ask questions or to initiate action to remedy the problems' (B.6.1: p. 195).

If these are the collective failures of our system and what it does to those who serve in it, what then are our needs? The phrase which followed me as I travelled back and forth through these reports was 'an often uncomfortable bedfellow' (B.8.4: p. 200): Professor Shattock wants the Audit Committee to be that; but in truth we need one in every part of our governmental structure - it is an irony that it is a university which should be found so lacking in such discomfort. In the same paragraph, Professor Shattock reported 'a natural tendency in Cambridge to seek to rebuff criticism and to be reluctant to take on board doubts and warnings expressed from outside': probably he meant 'from outside the University', but what he might have said was from outside the power-structure. We shall not get this very necessary institutionalized discomfort if the same old names stay in residence within that structure. Reform of structures and membership, more rigorous and self-critical attitudes (B.10.4: p. 202), a good deal of free-thinking: these are the prescriptions. Decent channels of communication are wanting (B.8.8: p. 201) and such channels as there are are at risk of further deterioration (B.2.5: p. 181). Training is necessary for committee-members, to the highest levels of authority in our government (A.9[x]: p. 170); and let us hope that this will include those operating the promotions procedures. We need open advertising and appointment to jobs (and why not include committee-membership in this?): certainly we do not need recycling of old hands into new jobs. Ambiguity is to be avoided about the relationship of the principal administrative officers, for it is a recipe for future confusion, misunderstanding, and risk (B.7.5-6: pp. 198-9). The Regent House should be engaged within a mature fashion (B.8.8: p. 201).

A theme which runs through both these reports is of bad relations and mutual suspicion between academics and administrators. It is true that I have heard one colleague, a computer scientist, suggest to me that the University Council should outsource the Administration and then consider cancelling the contract. Matters are not so simple. Professor Shattock has stated (B.7.1: p. 197) that 'Cambridge, to an extent that exceeds any other UK university, is sensitive to the growth of central executive or bureaucratic power bases'. This may be the instinct, but it does not describe the reality of the exercise of power within this University. We have only, for example, to look at the fiefdom created by successive Secretaries General and the General Board and at the way in which that penetrates every Faculty in the University. Complaints have long been made about the arrogant, oppressive tendencies of the General Board and the remoteness of its members. I have heard the Vice-Chancellor wonder out loud why colleagues should view them thus. We might wonder what roles General Board members played before their elevation to the centre: how did they behave when they were (for example) Secretaries of their Faculty Boards? How are they remembered in their own localities?

In those localities the General Board has its own agents. I do not suppose that the situation is, or has had a history, of the same sort everywhere around the University. I remember observing what seemed to me to be a cultural change in the 1980s, when the attitude of some General Board administrators situated within the Peripheral Bodies became overbearing, when knowledge of systems was now power. My sense is that this has had - at least in parts of the University - profound consequences. An over-mighty Central Body with tentacles of power at the margins is what builds up a culture of suspicion, even hostility.

What is needed, as these reports show, is nothing less than a revolution in the governmental culture of the University. The problem is not administrators (or indeed the Administration) in general, but oligarchic attitudes. If the average UTO feels that he or she has either to fight or to be subservient to the local General Board administrator, sees no chance of influencing the development of issues of interest or concern, observes the local politicians turning into the central ones and becoming part of an exclusive circle of self-congratulation, then that culture of instinctive suspicion and hostility will prevail.

We have now, thanks to these reports manifesting the clear-sightedness of their authors, a real opportunity to change the way in which the University runs. Shall we have such a transformation? Much will depend on who has learnt what from these reports. A great deal will turn on the character of the hypothetical Fifth Pro-Vice-Chancellor. The omens are perhaps not good. But who could have imagined a few months ago that we should have reports of this calibre to urge us forward? Sustained pressure for change will be necessary.

Mr R. J. STIBBS (read by Mr R. STRATFORD):

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, it is rather surprising that Professor Finkelstein's first and Professor Shattock's third recommendations mention a merger of MISD with the University Computing Service without the latter having featured in the main body of either report. The only case argued is from the positive experience of such a merger in one other smaller university.

The University Computing Service has over the last thirty years under the leadership of Drs Hartley and Sayers provided world-class services to the University including major long term IT projects such as Project Granta which were managed within budget and on time, and it therefore might be expected that sharing this expertise with MISD might strengthen both organizations. However, the cultural background of the two organizations is very different. One of the major reasons for the success of the Computing Service is that a majority of the Computer Officers in the Service have a background as academics; in the case of the senior management of the Service this has been at post-graduate level in Cambridge. The organization has therefore been able to react to needs of the academic community from direct experience of those needs. It is precisely because of this background that it is difficult to see how such experience can be applicable to the needs of the users of MISD where what is required is experience in the implementation and running of large data-centric, time-critical management information and financial systems. The realization of such systems needs people experienced in IT in accountancy, human resources, and large-scale transactional databases; such experience is nearly totally absent in the Computing Service.

In an earlier speech Mr Matheson has spoken about the support from the Departmental Computer Officers for such a merger but it is worth noting that the meeting of Computer Officers to which he referred did not have the benefit of discussion with the greater number of Computer Officers in the University, as those from the Computing Service, MISD, and the Colleges were not present at the meeting. Their presence may have provided a wider perspective and a different conclusion. So what is the way ahead? I believe that closer and better liaison between a better resourced MISD and the other IT interests in the University is needed. The Computing Service has led the way in the past and could do in the future; it was, for example, at Computing Service organized meetings for the Departmental Computer Officers, also attended by representatives from MISD, that many of the concerns mentioned by Professor Finkelstein had their first public discussions. My colleagues from Institution Liaison organize such meetings with the Colleges, Schools, Faculties, Departments, MISD, and the Library, and are therefore in a very good position to develop closer relationships. The Computing Service could also if necessary provide facilities management for MISD. We have many years of experience running net-working and distributed personal computing across the University and the Colleges and it may be that that expertise should be harnessed.

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I now wish to turn to the wider governance issues. Dr Evans was kind enough to speak with approbation about the Proctors' Report (Reporter, 21 November 2001, http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/reporter/2001-02/weekly/5865/25.html/) and for that, my fellow Deputy Proctor, Frank King, and I thank her. However, if she would care to to compare it with the corresponding Oxford Senior Proctor's Oration (Oxford University Gazette, 22 March 2001, http://www.ox.ac.uk/gazette/2000-l/weekly/220301/oration.htm/), and I am sure she already has, she will have found it a much weightier affair with many references to governance issues, thus adding to informed debate in Oxford. The reason for the disparity is clear, the Oxford Proctors and Assessor are given a sabbatical year in which they have a duty to attend the majority of major syndicates and committees in addition to ceremonial duties. They therefore have an independent and University-wide perspective on which to base their comments and recommendations. I do not raise this point to argue for such a change for the Cambridge Proctors but to note that Oxford demonstrates that it is prepared to give to academics enough time to fulfil their governance duties. There have been comments in earlier speeches about the paralysis of the Council while the CAPSA debacle was unfolding, because of the presence of one individual, but my experience observing Council meetings, with and without that individual, is that a more fundamental problem is the sheer lack of time that Council members have both before and during Council meetings to give proper scrutiny to the business.

I hope therefore that in any reform of the Council, members may be relieved of other duties in recognition of the time needed to fulfil their Council duties. The better democratic scrutiny thus engendered would lead the Officers to be more fully informed of the wishes of the Regent House through the Council and therefore to retain the continuing support they need from the University.

Dr D. M. THOMPSON (read by Mrs S. BOWRING):

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I would like to comment on some of the analysis and recommendations in the excellent report before us in the light of my experience as Chairman of the Audit Committee from 1995 to 2000 and as a member of the Council for the same period. I do not seek to justify what happened, even though the Audit Committee expressed its concerns over the development of the CAPSA project several times. But it is important to see whether the recommendations made would avoid a similar set of mistakes.

My first point is that CAPSA should have been identified from the outset as a major capital project with a project management team. The need for this is seen in Part A, §7, which shows that the CAPSA Management Committee was not formed until the middle of 1998. Even then, as Professor Shattock's section on 'Who was in charge of the CAPSA project?' (Part B, §3), makes clear, different assumptions were made about where ultimate responsibility lay. The main reason for the problem seems to be that the intended scope of the project broadened as it developed. The project management approach which is now used by Estate Management in relation to the construction of new buildings involves an identified project manager; and other major capital projects require the same treatment. Thus the crucial lesson here is to identify those matters in the life of the University which require a 'project-management' approach, and to ensure that they are then properly overseen by a (preferably single) responsible body, with an identified project manager. The Audit Committee expects to receive a review of all major capital procurement projects as a matter of routine. This is one reason why in September 2000 I was more concerned that every effort be put into making CAPSA work than that we should immediately have an enquiry, though I was happy to co-operate with the Chairman of the Board of Scrutiny in setting the terms of reference of an independent enquiry after the Discussion of 10 October 2000. But although I strongly support Recommendation 2 in §10.5, I am more hesitant than some to conclude that the mishandling of a particular capital project illustrates a more general problem in the University's governance.

My second point concerns criticisms of and recommendations in relation to the Audit Committee. The Audit Committee was one of the chief pressures behind the introduction of CAPSA in the first place, and we were disappointed when the original target date of implementation in 1999 was not met. Soon after I joined the Committee it became clear that, although we had no reason to doubt the veracity of the University's accounts, neither we nor the Finance Division were in a position to monitor them to the standards now required by the HEFCE. Hence we offered qualified views in our annual reports and made the development of a new management information system a priority.

However, the Audit Committee's job is to inspect and to question, but it is not an alternative management structure for the University. Thus I was keenly aware as the CAPSA story developed that although the Committee could (and did) ask questions, it was not its job to plan and oversee the new system. In fact, I worried somewhat that I was acting too much on hearsay in asking for reports on its progress, and that this implied criticism. The briefing received in December 1998 (Part A, §5.15) was provided because of the Committee's concerns over the project, though this is not clear from the report. (It also came at a time when the Internal Audit arrangements were in a state of transition.)

Those concerns continued right up to July 2000. In my memory the members of the Committee did ask sharp questions about the CAPSA Project, and there was little difference in the sharpness from those inside the University and those outside. It is a mark of the different world in which we were moving before 1 August 2000 that our principal concerns were whether small Departments would have staff who were able to cope with the demands of the new system and whether the University's specifications for the project were being met, particularly in relation to its being usable on PC and Macintosh systems. Yes, we were reassured by what we were told on 5 July 2000 (§2.21); but this was because responses to key concerns about the quality of training, the provision of additional support staff after 1 August, and the resolution of software problems were given at the meeting. In our judgement they met the concerns raised by the Internal Auditors. We were wrong. What became apparent when we reviewed what had happened in October 2000 was how much had never been disclosed, not only to members of the Audit Committee, but even to the former Director of Finance (cf §2.19). We were then told that the single most important factor in the failure of CAPSA was the high number of interfaces in the system, which on some estimates was two or three times as many as in ordinary commercial systems. Professor Finkelstein's report seems to support this view (Part A, §7.76). Inevitably in the light of subsequent information our response might be considered 'limp'. But the critical question is on what grounds one declines to believe the assurances one is given.

Reconstitution of the Audit Committee will not necessarily answer that question. In my experience non-University people are not inherently more sceptical than academics. There may be advantages in having a lay Chairman and a majority of lay members. During my time on the Audit Committee my main concern in relation to membership was to increase the representation of members with experience of running a large academic Department. I had a very useful meeting with the Chairman of the Oxford University Audit Committee two years ago. He is a layman; and we discussed the relative advantages of our two positions. Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, he saw the advantages of having a greater knowledge from the inside of how the University worked; I reflected on the advantages of an external view. But although we are rightly concerned at the moment with the implications of the CAPSA project, it is worth remembering that most of the Audit Committee's business is much more mundane; and it is related to those matters where an understanding of how the University's Faculties, Departments, and other institutions work is much more important. The vital thing is to be able to ask the right questions.

Ironically, in the autumn of 1998 we were spending time bringing the constitution of the Committee into line with the latest HEFCE recommendations, and considering the Guide provided by the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy. My own view is that the Committee is tending to become too large to be effective - the Institute of Chartered Accountants recommend a relatively small committee, but that is in the context of commercial Boards of Directors which tend to be smaller than our central bodies. We accepted the recommendation that the Registrary should be Secretary, though in practice the Assistant Secretary does most of the secretarial work. I think that there are issues to be considered here in relation to the Registrary's role as Head of the Unified Administrative Service. However, the Committee has made specific provision for meetings (and, upon request, individual items on an agenda) at which the Principal Officers are not present.

My third main point concerns the wider context. The Audit Committee noted at an early stage the need for more staff with accountancy qualifications in the Old Schools, and indeed more staff with financial understanding in Faculties and Departments. The University's first Internal Auditor found that she and her staff were often asked to do the accounts of some Departments for them, and at first it was not easy to explain that the Internal Audit function was to check what had been done, not to do it. Thus we indicated that we regarded the low level of University expenditure on administration as a problem rather than a virtue.

Nor should we forget the reduction in University funding in real terms that was happening in the later 1990s. That was one reason for the Early Retirement Scheme, which decimated the Finance Division. This was symptomatic of a further problem, which I have drawn to the attention of the MP for Cambridge more than once. The unrealistically low level of academic pay relative to other comparable professions, and the consequently low level of academic-related pay, meant that recruitment in this particular area of expertise became increasingly difficult. This was a significant factor in the decision to outsource the Internal Audit service in 1999, but it illustrates the fact that the failure of successive governments to act on University Teachers' pay has wider consequences at the points where the University intersects with the non-University world.

We also need to acknowledge the way in which the atmosphere of University decision-making has been soured in recent years, with consequences which have gone far beyond the particular issue concerned. In my experience the dynamics of the Council in the period 1997-2000 did not aid full discussion; certainly it was not as frank as it was in the period 1995-96. Professor Shattock states in §5.17 that 'the Audit Committee did not provide the rigorous, independent view of the University's affairs that the University needed', but he also notes that the reports received by the Council, the Finance Committee, etc. 'gave the University full and explicit warnings of the fundamental problems that underlay the CAPSA project, but they did not prompt effective action from the bodies statutorily charged to receive them'. So far as I can recall, I made clear to the Council the Audit Committee's concerns when speaking to the Committee's minutes at Council meetings; but I was surprised at the lack of discussion they prompted. In such circumstances with the pressure of other business it is hardly surprising that the Chairman moves on. I certainly support the recommendation that standing orders should be established 'which encourage the discussion of issues and processes but protect individual University officers from personal abuse', and argued for this on the Council for several years. In this context, §10.1-4 are some of the most important paragraphs in the report. Once trust breaks down there is always a tendency for all the players to retreat into mutually defensive holes. Systematic and repeated attacks on individuals sour personal relations and damage the effective functioning of the institution. This not only affects administrative staff; it also affects senior members of the University who serve on the central bodies.

Finally, notwithstanding the changes brought about by the Wass Report, I think that there is scope for further development. The old Financial Board became formally the Council's Finance Committee. Nevertheless the relationship between that Committee and the Planning and Resources Committee (which was an amalgamation of the Council's Allocations Committee and the General Board's Needs Committee, on both of which I have served) remained obscure - not least because of the difficulty in bringing together decisions about expenditure and information about income. There has been for some years an underlying frustration with the way the system works, felt not least by the Treasurer. The fact that the Principal Officers attend the three central bodies actually obscures the systemic issue, which might be crystallized in the question: if the Finance Committee is the Council's Finance Committee, where is the General Board's Finance Committee? This question increases in importance when one recollects how much higher a proportion of University expenditure is incurred by General Board institutions than Council institutions. I am aware of proposals to delegate decisions in certain areas to the Councils of the Schools, and I know that great faith is being placed in the new Resource Allocation Model. However, I still think that there are significant issues of financial management to be addressed and I warmly support Recommendations 1, 4-5, and 7-11 in §10.5.

Professor C. J. HUMPHREYS (read by Mrs S. BOWRING):

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I am the Chairman of the Faculty Board of Physics and Chemistry, although I am speaking here in a personal capacity. I believe the University should be congratulated on having the courage to commission the reports on CAPSA by Professor Finkelstein and Professor Shattock. The reports reveal an astonishing degree of incompetence by some parts of our central administration. However, these reports, together with the excellent interim statement by the Board of Scrutiny, provide the University with the opportunity to make the major changes needed to reform its administrative structure, and obtain a high quality central administration.

In moving forward I would urge a balanced approach. First, it is essential that our University has able, high quality senior administrators, who are selected with great care. We should be targeting and seeking to attract the best administrators from elsewhere, just as we target and seek to attract the best academics. It is widely perceived outside of Cambridge that our administration is not of the highest quality. As the Board of Scrutiny correctly says, the Council must now assess whether or not our University administration has the right people in the right jobs.

Second, I believe it is essential to ensure that the democratic voice of members of our University can still be heard, despite the reforms that need to be made in its structure. We should never forget that many warnings to our senior administrators about CAPSA went unheeded until a Discussion was called, at which the strength of feeling of members of the University was expressed. Whatever reforms are made to Discussions and other structures, I believe the CAPSA affair demonstrates the necessity of ensuring that members of our University have a formal opportunity to question the decisions of those in charge.

Dr M. D. MACLEOD (read by Mrs S. BOWRING):

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I welcome the reports from Professors Shattock and Finkelstein. Their statement of the history of the CAPSA project accords with my observations of it, and their analysis of both that project and the University's governance is perceptive. I hope that we adopt most of their recommendations, although I fear that we will dilute and diffuse them, and if we do that we will deserve the consequences.

Our present committee-based structure of governance is very poor at managing anything which changes rapidly. In the University Council, there might be enough time to take important decisions if we spent our time concentrating on them. But the typical business of the Council consists of considering discursive papers or minutes from other bodies which, like the Council, are largely staffed by academics. Even when these papers contain well written analyses of a problem, their recommendations are often in the form of possibilities, or matters requiring further discussion. Each level of committee rediscusses detail which has already been discussed by the one below it, and our view of the wood is well and truly obscured by the trees. We do not know how to delegate properly. Even when we think we have finished we are, as one of the reports so correctly says, not always sure when a decision has been taken, so that it can at last be acted upon.

If the Council were used to receiving papers containing clear analyses and recommendations, from qualified individuals who were responsible and accountable for managing aspects of the University's business, then I believe the Council would do the job the University expects of it. I hope we move towards that position.

It is true, as others have commented, that the Council's effectiveness was further hampered by one member in particular raising so many points additional to the business under discussion. It is also true that personal attacks had a significant, destructive, influence on some of the discussion which did take place. But the University must not believe, complacently, that that was the main problem. We must read what these reports tell us about our governance and recognize that we must act, this time, or remain incompetent at governing ourselves.

Professor J. R. WILLIS (read by Mrs S. BOWRING):

Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, from the reports by Professors Finkelstein and Shattock it seems that a major factor in the CAPSA affair was the uncertain lines of responsibility within the higher levels of the University government and administration. It is therefore welcome to learn from the Council and from the Vice-Chancellor's statements that plans are afoot to produce changes to the constitution of the University that 'will be designed to assign to officers and bodies more clearly than at present their respective duties, responsibilities and the necessary authority to act, combined with better procedures for openness and accountability'. I say this, however, subject to two words of caution.

The first is that members of the Regent House should remember that, whatever the faults in the University's existing procedures for openness and accountability, it was these procedures - namely the right of members of the Regent House to call for a Discussion - that eventually brought the CAPSA affair out into the open. I hope that the 'better procedures' we are promised will not also be designed to take some of these essential safeguards away.

The second also concerns how the existing arrangements for openness and accountability seem to be working at the moment.

In its statement the Council was at pains to say that it has confidence in its Principal Officers, with the implication that it does not propose to ask any further questions about their role in the debacle.

I suspect that I may not be alone in thinking that the Council's expression of confidence in its Principal Officers would have carried greater weight if it had been made after hearing and considering what the Regent House has had to say at this Discussion, rather than in advance of it.


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Cambridge University Reporter 12 December 2001
Copyright © 2001 The Chancellor, Masters and Scholars of the University of Cambridge.