Tuesday, 11 October 2005. A Discussion was held in the Senate-House of the following Reports:
Report of the General Board, dated 13 July 2005, on the re-establishment of a Professorship of Cognitive Neuroscience (p. 982).
No comments were made on this Report.
Report of the General Board, dated 13 July 2005, on the re-establishment of the Jim Joel Professorship of Equine Reproduction (p. 983).
No comments were made on this Report.
Report of the General Board, dated 13 July 2005, on senior academic promotions (2005-06) (p. 983).
No comments were made on this Report.
Tenth Report of the Board of Scrutiny, dated 18 July 2005 (p. 1059).
Professor J. R. SPENCER:
Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I ceased to be a member of the Board of Scrutiny on 1 October. But before that I was a member, and for the year in which the Board's Tenth Report was written I was its Chairman. For this reason, and because the new Board has not yet met to elect its new officers, I have been asked to introduce the Report.
In paragraph 4 of the Report we thank a range of people connected with the running of the University for their help and patience. An extra word of thanks is due here to the Registrary, who this year (as in previous years) was kind enough to drop everything in order to read our Report in draft and offer comments. In thanking him I do not wish to imply that he agrees with everything that is in our Report, because I know that there are parts of it he does not like. But we were glad to take account of a number of his comments, and thought carefully about all of them, including the ones with which we disagreed.
The main message in our Tenth Report is about money. In previous Reports, we have drawn attention to the deficit in the University's budget, sought to explain it, and called for urgent measures to bring it under control. In this Tenth Report, our position is that a grip has now been taken on the problem, and we express our support for the strategy that has been put in place to deal with it. We commend to the Regent House the efforts directed to this end by Pro-Vice-Chancellor Minson, the Director of Finance, and the Council. If a grip has been taken on the problem this does not mean, however, that the problem has been solved. The deficit continues to exist, and it is still both serious and worrying. We urge everyone in the University to co-operate in the attempt to put our finances back into the black.
In our Tenth Report, as in previous Reports, we also discuss matters relating to governance. We mention that, during the past year, some preliminary moves have taken place that might eventually lead to further proposals to reform the University's constitution, in particular by altering the position of the Regent House. As in previous Reports, we express the view that the reform of the University's constitution is a serious matter which should be examined by a special syndicate created for that purpose.
We are well aware that the developments we describe are at a preliminary stage, and there may be those who think for this reason we are exceeding our statutory remit, or at least speaking out of turn, in mentioning them in our annual Report.
We believe that it is proper to have done this, and make no apology for it.
The remit of the Board is set out Statutes and also in Ordinances; and section 2 of the Ordinance provides that in carrying out the duties specifically assigned to it, the Board has 'the right to examine the policies of the University and the arrangements made for the implementation of those policies, and to report thereon to the Regent House.'
In taking note of recent and further considerations about governance and commenting on them, the Board does not see it as any part of its role to make specific suggestions as to how the University should be governed, unless it should be invited to do so.
But the Board regards the procedures and policies under which further governance reform may be undertaken as an ongoing and legitimate concern of the Board: both through its remit in Ordinances, and in the context of its general mission, which it takes to be to act as the eyes and ears of the Regent House, and to draw to the attention of the Regent House any matters relating to the running of the University which it believes the Regent House should be made aware of.
Mr N. M. MACLAREN:
Deputy Vice-Chancellor, I have begged the Vice-Chancellor, Council, General Board, and central administration to listen to the Board of Scrutiny before, and can only do so again. Most of this Report describes serious problems and proposes constructive solutions. That is, after all, what the Board of Scrutiny is there for!
It may be useful if I update my breakdown of the types of staff referred to in paragraph 25. As before, my numbers are doubtless slightly wrong, but are:
| 1999-2000 | 2003-04 | 2004-05 | |
| COs in Departments | 70 | 77(+10%) | 74(- 4%) |
| COs in Computing Service | 53 | 63(+19%) | 64(+2%) |
| COs in Administration | 21 | 29(+38%) | 30(+3%) |
| Administrative Officers, etc. | 90 | 176(+96%) | 191(+9%) |
What I cannot tell is whether those new administrators are taking the workload off other members of University staff, or increasing it. It is regrettably common that administrative systems are set up to promote efficiency, but end up simply increasing the time that other staff need to spend servicing the demands of the bureaucracy. There are some very clear examples of this within the University, both in the central administration and elsewhere, but I shall not name names here. If the objective is to save money, rather than to provide employment for bureaucrats, the University needs to take active steps to monitor and minimize this effect, but there seems no evidence that this is even being considered.
Unusually, I find that I need to take the Report to task for being misleading. Paragraph 26 states that the computer bulk purchase scheme was a qualified success. However, if one factors in the time spent by other staff in both the evaluation and in resolving the technical problems where the choice failed to fulfil the requirements, did it actually save the University any money? In this context, one could mention the similar scheme for laser printer paper, where the chosen vendor charges considerably more than the going rate. The Board of Scrutiny may welcome the efforts of the purchasing office, but it would be much better if it could welcome its effectiveness in reducing costs.
Professor G. R. EVANS:
Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, (46 (v)) 'The University should not adopt the new Oxford model.' This is probably the most important sentence in this year's Report of the Board of Scrutiny, coming up for discussion here as it does a couple of weeks after the publication of Oxford's Governance Discussion Paper. That may be read online in the Gazette.
The future governance of the two ancient universities is no longer a matter either can afford to consider in isolation. We are the only two academic democracies left and we need to stand together to defend our ancient way of doing things. I do not mean by that that I think Oxford and Cambridge should govern themselves in the same way. But they should be conducting their separate consultations and 'discussions' and 'debates' in full mutual awareness, co-operatively and side by side. There is now a newsgroup: oxbridge.governance in which this can begin.
It was the Cambridge Audit Committee which rejected Oxford's proposals in these terms, not the Board of Scrutiny. The Board argues that it is not for the Audit Committee to set our Cambridge 'Governance Change' ball rolling again. But let us not quibble about that, for it will now begin to roll. Oxford's high-profile efforts will see to that. And this Report notes that the Cambridge Vice-Chancellor 'has created a small working group to advise on governance matters' (45).
In order to join the Committee of University Chairmen a university must have a Governing Body with a 'Chairman'. Oxford and Cambridge (alone) cannot join because their governing bodies include the whole academic community, several thousand, and they have no Chairman in a sense the CUC would recognize. The CUC has produced a 'good practice' guide for running a university (referred to in the Board of Scrutiny's Report at (46) with directions for finding it on the Web), of which the Higher Education Funding Council for England so strongly approves that it promises to allow any university following the code a 'light touch' in approaching its annual monitoring statement.
The good practice guide is partly about the principles of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, to which Cambridge is fully 'signed up'. But the guide also embodies assumptions which have come to prominence in the last decade or so which are incompatible with our constitution and that of Oxford, as we are governed at present: (1) that there should be a separation of the oversight of a university from the daily conduct of its affairs; and (2) that that oversight is best carried out by persons external to the university. The Vice-Chancellor is normally considered the Chief Executive, attending Governing Body meetings and running the university top-down. The Chairman of the Governing Body is non-Executive. Note the Audit Committee's recommendations that 'there should be a non-executive Chairman of the Council' (46 (iii)) and that 'the number of external members of the Council should be gradually increased to between four and six' (46 (iv)).
This manifestly pushes Cambridge's Council still further from the elected representative body we used to have, towards a reincarnation which would turn it into a small Governing Body of 25 or so with a Chairman who could join the CUC. Oxford's governance proposals of Spring 2005 made no bones about wanting to do that, when it proposed setting up a body of external Trustees to whom the oversight of the University would have been handed over. The new version, in the current Green Paper, envisages moving the Council into that slot, with a greatly increased external membership, 50-50, moving to a majority of externals. The dwindling non-external members of Oxford's new Council would then be 'elected' by Congregation, but by a method involving the sending in of nominations, the selection of their preferred names by the Nomination Committee, and the presentation of the Committee's choice to Congregation for approval. I am not sure I call that democratic election.
'The expertise of external members will allow them to question the executive and to hold it to account; their independence will mean that they can do so without fear or favour' (Green Paper (21)). That has not been the experience of the statutory higher education corporations which were set up on this model by the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, as a series of hearings before the Public Accounts Committee and the National Audit Office have lamentably demonstrated. It should also be noted that although in these institutions there is normally an 'Academic Committee', it has notoriously little power where there is a monarchically inclined Vice-Chancellor. Oxford demolished its General Board at the time of the North Reforms, a bare five years ago, while Cambridge has so far kept its General Board, though adding considerably to the overlap of membership with the Council. The body which it is proposed should take over 'academic' affairs in Oxford, as a Committee of the Council, is the new Academic Board (son of General Board?).
If the new Oxford Council is to be the Governing Body it cannot also be the Executive. This seems to move executive power formally and de facto into the hands of the Vice-Chancellor. As the Board of Scrutiny reminds us, Cambridge recently voted against making its Vice-Chancellor Chief Executive. In Oxford, the Vice-Chancellor is already 'in effect, the Chief Executive of the University. He or she has overall responsibility for the executive management of the institution and for its day-to-day direction.' (http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/councilsec/gov/ccg-3.shtml).
The Oxford Registrar is already to all intents and purposes Clerk to the Governing Body. Under the new proposals he (soon to be she, the Oxford Vice-Chancellor's former colleague from Auckland), is to be Secretary of Congregation (Draft Statute VI, 20 (1); Secretary of Council (Draft Statute VI, 11); Secretary of the Academic Board (Draft Statute VI, 32,4); Secretary of the Nominations Committee (Draft Statute VI, 27); custodian of the lists of current committees and their members (Draft Statute VI, 38). The Registrar attends all committees and may speak but not vote. And 'Under section 31 of Statute IX (ibid.) the Registrar acts as principal adviser on strategic policy to the Vice-Chancellor and to the Council, and will ensure effective co-ordination of advice from other officers to the Vice-Chancellor, Council, and other university bodies'. On the finely balanced questions of propriety and potential conflicts of interest, consult the CUC Code. Cambridge, compare.
The key question here, and it relates to the Board of Scrutiny's repeated recommendation that Cambridge should change its Statute K, 9 to allow delegation to a person as well as to a committee, is how far we think it safe to let the 'real power' move into the hands of one or two individuals like this. Oxford already lacks the inhibition of our present 'delegation' Statute.
With these currents running so strongly, it is of the first importance that it be clear who or what the Governing Body now is, so that if there is to be a transfer of powers it can be made by those currently holding the powers, in full awareness of what they are doing. In Cambridge it is unequivocal in the wording of Statute A,III,1. that 'The Regent House shall be the governing body of the University'. If it were to be proposed that this should cease to be the case and a Council increasingly loaded with external members take over, there would, to say the least, be an outcry. Oxford's Statutes unaccountably do not state that Congregation is the Governing Body, although the Oxford Personnel Handbook does so. Oxford's Statute VI, 1 (2) (new draft) leaves Congregation out of the hierarchy above the University's proposed new Council. 'Council shall be responsible under the statutes for the general control and management of the administration of the University and shall have all the powers necessary for it to discharge its responsibilities.'
In Oxford's Green Paper there is repeated slippage into the assumption that Council would be the Governing Body under the new proposals with a frank admission that the working party intends this, at the promise that 'the members of the new governing body will be elected by Congregation'. As further evidence that the new Oxford design is moving non-too-subtly towards the creation of an new CUC-type Governing Body with an external Chairman, see the curious proposal that 'For the first five years of the new arrangements, Council should … be chaired by Lord Patten in his personal capacity (Green Paper, 3. (i) Cf. 22(b) 3. (i)). 'He can also be regarded as to some extent external' ex officio, it is suggested, in a belt and braces spirit. But he is the Chancellor of the University, and (Statute IV, 5 (1)) at Encaenia each year you may watch the Chancellor in the 'chair', but giving the honorands their honorary higher doctorates on behalf of 'the University' in what is by ancient usage a representative capacity, quite different from the relationship in which a modern Chairman stands to a committee.
In Cambridge too, there is the Audit Committee suggestion mentioned in the Board of Scrutiny's Report that 'the role and position of the Council and its relationship to the Regent House should be clarified' (46 (i)). Here I respectfully disagree with the Board of Scrutiny on the subject of the clarity of the present position. I think the Audit Committee's quoted recommendations should be taken as a warning. Cambridge's present Statute A is not perfectly clear on who makes policy and where the decision-making authority ultimately lies. Though the Regent House is the Governing Body, Statute A says at IV, 1 (a), 'The Council shall be the principal executive and policy-making body of the University. The Council shall have general responsibility for the administration of the University, for the planning of its work, and for the management of its resources; it shall have power to take such action as is necessary for it to discharge these responsibilities.' So has all the first part been delegated by the Regent House, and if so, how far can the Regent House still exercise these 'powers' and 'responsibilities' directly?
A useful working example of the complexity of this question is before Oxford today, 11 October. It has been a puzzle to many why Oxford should have made such a huge inflated job of its Corporate Plan this year, publishing it with razzmatazz and inviting coverage in The Times. One reason is perhaps that it 'takes account' of the controversial Academic Strategy paper and is part of the much grander plan for Oxford, including the proposed major governance changes. The Gazette of 29 September gives the text of an Amendment designed to draw Congregation's attention to the fact that once the Corporate Plan is approved 'Council will then treat the various strategies as instructions to its committees and those responsible for their business' (para. 2). Paras 4-6 acknowledge that much policy in Oxford is still in a state of flux and uncertainty and the Amendment adds that 'the intent of para. 2 is understood to be further explained by paragraphs 4-6'. The Amendment was allowed by the Council, accepting that it should not have quite such a gung-ho 'go-ahead' (see Oxford Vice-Chancellor's Annual Oration).1
If you look at the present and proposed downward flow of delegated powers in Oxford you will see the importance of the question. For the delegation tends to include the delegation of powers to 'make' Regulations (the equivalent of Cambridge's Ordinances), not merely to recommend that Congregation 'grace' them. Congregation gets a chance to object to proposed Regulations, but it does not get a Report and a Discussion as we do in Cambridge when an Ordinance is in prospect. (Never undervalue our custom of publishing all speeches verbatim. Oxford's Debate of Congregation on 17 May is lost to history because the postal vote which would have got the speeches published was never held.)
'The strategy for the University should be restated' (46 (ii)). The Cambridge Audit Committee again. Cambridge's Corporate Plan (a mere four pages), submitted to HEFCE in July, has not even been published for the Regent House to read, let alone approve. So who is designing Cambridge's strategy? It does not appear to be the Regent House. It must be the Council.
Cambridge should be thankful that it has a Board of Scrutiny whose constitutional role is now well-established. Oxford's Working Party on Governance has rejected the idea of having a Scrutiny Committee (Green Paper 48). Why? 'This was envisaged as fulfilling some of the functions of [the Trustees] to enquire into and test the University's approach to various matters, including consideration of particular issues before decisions are finally made. The working party considers that, in so far as such a body would look back over decisions already taken, this is the function of the Audit Committee. In so far as it would consider issues in advance of the taking of decisions, such a committee would not be an appropriate substitute for a fully effective Council, on the lines proposed above, which is given responsibility for institutional governance and is competent to take that responsibility (including legal responsibility) by virtue of the interests [sic!] and expertise of its members. The existence of a Scrutiny Committee alongside the University's governing body would mean that the location of responsibility and accountability was unclear, and the working party does not therefore wish to propose the establishment of such a committee.' I invite members of the Regent House, having re-read the constitution of our own Board of Scrutiny and its ten annual Reports, to 'think on that'. Hard.
Professor A. W. F. EDWARDS:
Mr Deputy Vice-Chancellor, on 5 November I shall be retired from the Regent House on the grounds of age, a practice which will presumably soon have to cease under European legislation. I should like to take this opportunity to make some remarks on the section of this Report devoted to 'Governance matters'.
The Board of Scrutiny is expected 'to examine the policies of the University' and it is excellent that it informs us about the Audit Committee's incursion into matters of governance. That Committee's remit, also in Ordinances, is almost entirely financial, and the only mention of governance is 'the duty to consider, in consultation with the external auditors, any statement provided by the Council on the governance of the University'. Has the Board seen this statement?
Reading the Board's account, we find a pattern that is all too familiar. An external body ill-informed about Oxford and Cambridge, or even, as in this case of the Committee of University Chairman, a body which is constitutionally irrelevant to them, advances some views which are seized upon by another body that has no real business in the area concerned, in this case the Audit Committee. Thus unchallenged the views acquire a patina of desirability, even inevitability, without proper consideration by those with a knowledge of the subject. They are reified by the epithet 'best practice' on the premise that one coat fits all.
I first encountered the phenomenon when I was Proctor in 1978-79. The Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals had issued a report on 'industrial democracy' in universities prepared by a committee of six non-Oxbridge Vice-Chancellors and the Principal of a London college. It stressed 'the importance of a university retaining a majority of lay members on the Court and Council so as properly to discharge its functions of management and accountability'. In the Discussion which the Proctors called (Reporter, 1978-79, p. 377) I commented 'A principle so obviously repugnant to the traditions of self-government of Oxford and Cambridge should have been qualified by a statement to that effect'.
The next example was the 1985 Jarratt Report on Efficiency Studies. 'Virtually all the Councils have majorities of lay members. Indeed the Privy Council in approving Charters and Statutes now insists that this be so'. There was no mention that Oxford and Cambridge have their own constitutions and a different relationship to the Privy Council (a point to which I will return shortly).
Then there was the Dearing Report in 1997 stating, as the Board of Scrutiny has noted, 'Effective governing bodies will have a majority of lay members'. This is grist to the mill of a body like the Committee of University Chairmen, who embody it in a 'Governance Code of Practice' and have the impertinence to send it, I expect, to Oxford and Cambridge. Perhaps this was the statement the Council asked the Audit Committee to consider. If so, it would have been better to return it to CUC with the observation that CUC had no standing with respect to Cambridge and that its Governance Code of Practice did not, and could not, apply to either Oxford or Cambridge or their Colleges.
2003 saw the Lambert Review of Business-University Collaboration and yet another ill-informed incursion into Oxbridge governance. We may expect many more.
In the past few years we have entered turbulent waters. Quick to recognize the financial dangers, both University and Colleges have failed to react boldly to the political ones. The Blackstone Act of 1998 nationalized the Colleges by turning fees into block grants, a disastrous development I had been warning my own College about since 1977. The forthcoming Charities Act is a thinly veiled attack on the public schools which conveniently embraces the Oxbridge Colleges at the same time.
Emanating originally from the Policy Unit in the Cabinet Office it denies the concept of a charity that benefits its members. It will require charities to demonstrate 'public benefit', that is, benefit beyond the aims for which the charity was established and endowment sought. Thus contributing to an educated population is no longer enough: you must be seen to open up your playing fields (the local authority having built over theirs) or to provide extra teaching for the neighbouring state school. Potential benefactors will be quick to notice this new tax.
The redefinition of public benefit leads neatly into the idea that a charity established for the benefit of its members must no longer be allowed to govern itself. The rubric which has long prefaced our Statutes will have to go: 'The University is a common law corporation, being a corporation by prescription consisting of a Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars who from time out of mind have had the government of their members and enjoyed the privileges of such a corporation'. What price the 1571 Act now?
So we come back to the question of external members on Councils and in particular to proposal (iii) of the Audit Committee: 'There should be a non-executive Chairman of the Council'. Well, we have a very good one already.
The Vice-Chancellor is the chairman of the University and always has been. (I assume I may without offence leave aside the office of Chancellor.) The Registrary is the secretary and the principal executive officer of the University, and there are many other executive officers in their own spheres, such as the Librarian. The great respect and influence, both internal and external, enjoyed by the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge derives not from the executive nature of the office but from the role of chairman, not only of the University and hence of the Senate and the Regent House but also of the Council, the General Board, and all major Syndicates, though it is of course customary to choose deputies for the last-named. This is in itself an influential power.
Other universities may have executive Vice-Chancellors, but Cambridge should never be shy of explaining that ours is the senior Vice-Chancellorship, the 'type specimen'. I make no apology for quoting from the original Statutes (1250 AD), for if we are going to forget our past there is no point in celebrating our octocentenary: if the Chancellor is absent 'he may only appoint as his deputy someone approved by the Regents'. By 1276 we had coined vicecancelarius and by the fifteenth century the Chancellor generally was absent and the Vice-Chancellorship became an established office. The list of holders in the Historical Register starts in 1412.
The point is of extreme importance for the Colleges too, because all the arguments for the Council to have an external chairman are arguments for removing Heads of Houses from the chairmanships of their governing bodies.
As to external members of Councils generally, Oxford's new Governance Discussion Paper is replete with all the thin arguments to which I have already referred. It also reveals a continuing lack of understanding of the role of the Privy Council. An accompanying Opinion by Mr Derek Wood QC and Ms Judith Bryant reveals that the Privy Council 'has consistently taken the view that [Oxford's Council] should include more lay members'. It even quotes from a letter to the University dated 12 June 2002: 'Ideally [the Privy Council's] advisers would of course like Oxford to work towards having a lay majority on the Council'.
The authors of the Opinion have not distinguished between the power of the Privy Council acting under the Royal prerogative, which includes the power to require alterations to the Charters and Statutes of chartered universities, and the power of that Council with respect to the statutes of Oxford and Cambridge under the Oxford and Cambridge Act of 1923, which admits of no such power over Oxbridge statutes.
Oxford should have firmly reminded the Clerk to the Privy Council that it was improper of him to convey this view of the Council's so-called 'advisers'. The point has been repeatedly, almost wilfully, ignored. I was present when it was first put by Mr Glazebrook in a Discussion in this House in 1976. I recall it well, for he spoke most effectively from one of the window embrasures rather than the lectern. Allowing some trifling omissions, Mr Glazebrook concluded his remarks as follows:
'This is, Madam Vice-Chancellor [Vice-Chancellors always then chaired Discussions], neither the time nor the place for a detailed lecture from me on the proper interpretation of the 1923 Act. I would this afternoon simply wish to say this: that if the University values its freedom as an independent and self-governing corporation and, in particular, if it values those rights which our predecessors secured for us by the provisions of the 1923 Act, it will frame such Statutes as it thinks fit, and it will refuse, as one College has already successfully refused, to allow itself to be dictated to by an unholy alliance of the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals, a former generation of the National Union of Students, and the Lord President of the Council' (Reporter, 1975-76, p. 777). For 'CV-CP' now read CUC, and for the 'former generation of the NUS' now read the Audit Committee.
Mr Glazebrook's view has not, to my knowledge, been disputed. But almost as important as his legal point is the reminder that the 1923 Act and the Statutes that have flowed from it are fundamental to our ability to resist the unwelcome pressures from external forces that recognize neither our professional academic skills nor our responsibility for our own University. A recent Vice-Chancellor is reported to have once remarked in jest that he wanted to burn the Statutes. I prefer Mr Glazebrook's wise counsel.
Let me close with some positive recommendations. First, that we should fully support the Vice-Chancellor in her role as the University's chairman and as chairman of the Council and of many other bodies, either in person or by deputy. In return I think it is reasonable to expect her to resume the chair at Discussions, unwisely vacated by post-Wass Vice-Chancellors with mixed consequences. Secondly, we should firmly rebut any suggestion contained in Codes of Practice, Financial Memoranda, Conditions of Grant, Charity Regulator's Codes and similar tendentious documents that our Vice-Chancellor is a chief executive, by pointing out that our arrangements are governed by the 1923 Oxford and Cambridge Act and subsequent Statutes. Thirdly, I add my voice to the Board's recommendations 7 and 8. And by all means have external members on the Occasional Syndicate, as on the Wass Syndicate, but this time the phrase 'independent of the Council' should mean not only that the membership is independent, but that the secretariat is too.
It has been an unfortunate aspect of the arguments about the University's governance that the self-styled 'modernizers' have often shown scant regard for the sensitivities of the so-called 'conservatives' which arise from the latter's deep understanding of the existing constitutional provisions. Sir Alec Broers, when Vice-Chancellor, went so far as to refer, in the Education Guardian, to 'well-meaning, if rather dogmatic, senior academics, who will fight to the last to keep the University in intellectual aspic'. His error, and he was not alone, was to suppose that those who have thoroughly immersed themselves in constitutional questions and who have repeatedly expressed concern at departures from proper procedure are conservatives.
For myself I can only say that I have spoken up out of a respect for lawful government, no more no less. There is no reason to infer that those of us prepared to live with the description of 'rather dogmatic, senior academics' want 'to keep the University in intellectual aspic'. On the contrary, my experience of thirty years in University politics, both on the central bodies and off them, is that the right way forward is first to persuade the so-called conservatives that change is needed (which is not difficult if you have a good case, because they are not stupid), and then to get them to oversee the changes because they are the only people who understand enough to do it properly.
When the reverse order is used and the modernizers put forward proposals, much aggravation is caused not only because those with a deep understanding are enraged but because the modernisers do not even understand why they are enraged. It has proved a recipe for disaster.
The Act of 1571, the first relevant Act printed in the current Statutes in Force, grants to us, the Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars, the name of the University of Cambridge in perpetuity, and to no one else. We should keep it that way.
Dr S. J. COWLEY:
Deputy Vice-Chancellor, friends and colleagues who know me best would not let me organize the proverbial sherry party in the SCR. Hence in some respects I was an ideal member for a toothless watchdog like the Board of Scrutiny, from which I have just retired after four years.
In the light of this experience I would like to reflect on the governance of the University, especially since, as at Oxford, this hoary topic seems to be about to raise its head again (even if just because the three years of grace granted in the Lambert report are coming to an end). However, first I would like to thank those who have endured my requests and questions over the last four years. In very many cases, if not all, responses have been prompt, helpful, and informative. Where I have had the wrong end of the stick, I have often been politely set straight, and I have been struck by the dedication (and sometimes candour) of many at all levels of the University's administration.
Since the Board's tenth Report was written, the Vice-Chancellor's small working group on governance has reported to Council at their away-day (although strolls down King's Parade have as yet to reveal details). However, much as I might individually admire those on the working party, it wasn't exactly well balanced. A group consisting of a Head of House and former civil servant, a former Government minister and captain of industry, a Head of House who as a Council member proposed the last ill-fated reforms, and an academic who apparently admires the way red-brick universities are run, is unlikely to naturally favour the status quo of a self-governing body of scholars. The choice of working party reminds me more of the politics of Mayor Daley, Chicago, and the Midwest, rather than that of the East Coast.
I think this is a shame since further reforms to the University's governance and administration are probably in order. However, those of us who are predisposed to the status quo are less likely to warm to the deliberations of a skewed, if not packed, committee. One of the last things the University needs is another acrimonious public debate over governance (although I note that Oxford does not seem to have learnt the lesson from our experience).
The Oxford proposals, however, cover some matters that will have to be debated here, e.g. over the impact of the Charities Bill that is currently making its way through Parliament. I would hope that the University would not view the Charities Bill as a fait accompli, and would be lobbying the government concerning its effect on the University. The public quite rightly needs to be reassured that the University does not abuse its charitable status, and that internal members of the Council employed by the University are not lining their own pockets. However, to my mind it does not necessarily follow that there has to be a majority of external members on Council.
Certainly, the University needs to ensure that those on Council have the required array of skill, knowledge, and experience to ensure that the University is well run. The late Roger Needham convinced me prior to the last round of reforms that some external members on Council were desirable, e.g. given the extent of the University's estate, a property magnate might bring welcome expertise. But externals should help us run the University, not tell us how to run the University.
Even so, I am not convinced that externals are any more effective than internals. The Audit Committee has had external members for a number of years. However it was not the Audit Committee that warned of CAPSA before go-live, it was not the Audit Committee that, years before the University accounts failed to be judged 'true and fair', argued that the accounts of UCLES and CUP should be consolidated with those of the University, and it was not the Audit Committee that publicly warned of the need for a significant injection into the Assistant Staff pension fund nearly a year before a top-up of over £10m recurrent was necessary (and while Council viewed such warnings as alarmist). You will be unsurprised to learn that it was the Board of Scrutiny, which has no externals but, might I suggest, independent-thinking internals who are, to a greater extent than externals, in touch with the day-to-day functioning of the University.
Further, months before their April 2005 meeting to discuss governance, the Audit Committee accepted that the recommendations of the CAPSA reports had been implemented. To the best of my knowledge not all of them have. One of the key recommendations was that the University had a clear 'statement of levels or hierarchies of accountability', a recommendation echoed in recent annual Reports of the Board of Scrutiny. There is a need for such a statement, even if just to clarify the role of the Pro-Vice-Chancellors who, if rumours are to be believed, seem to some extent to be in no-man's land. But there are other places where such a statement is needed.
It seems to me that good governance has less to do with internals and externals, and more to do with ensuring that members of Council take their responsibility seriously, are willing to speak their minds (and are listened to), are in regular personal touch with what is happening in the University at all levels and, crucially, are properly briefed and informed by the administrative service. Indeed, the Board of Scrutiny has repeatedly called for the organization and paperwork of Council and other committees to be streamlined. While some such progress has been made, there still seems some way to go. If basic procedures and structures are not in place, and if papers are written to skate over key difficulties rather than to highlight them, the precise composition of Council may be of little relevance.
My last point concerns attitude. As I have mentioned in this place before, when I moved from Imperial to Cambridge in 1990 one of the stark differences was that whereas the administration and academics at Imperial were at war, that was not the case here. It was refreshingly pleasant, and there was an atmosphere of working together towards a common purpose. In this spirit the Oxford governance proposals pay lip service to better communication through the University, and to providing 'a means of informing more members of the University about items of academic business and of engaging them in it'. This is one of the few places where I agree with the Oxford proposals. Fortunately in Cambridge we have Graces and the Regent House. What we need to do is to ensure that we keep Regents informed.
I have been repeatedly told over the past few years that the reason why important matters of business seem to crop up in the long vacation, or over Christmas, is just chance, and that the University cannot close down over the summer/Christmas. The trouble with this is that it's not true. I could prove (in the sense of I would know who to call in a court of law), that some controversial business is specifically arranged to occur in the long vacation or similar, in the hope that it will receive a smoother ride. Telling people otherwise just makes them sceptical and suspicious.
The Regent House has played a key role in improving the reforms of governance, IPR, and pay and grading. Rather than adopting the view that legislation is something that needs to be sneaked past Regent House in the long vacation, what about a reform on governance that takes seriously the need to inform more members of the University about items of business and of engaging them in it? No structural changes would be needed for this reform, just a change of attitude.