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Supplement (1) to Oxford University Gazette No. 4788. Wednesday, 22 November 2006.
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Oxford University Gazette, 22 November 2006

New Statute VI (Concerning Council)

Report of proceedings in Congregation, 14 November 2006

The report of the debate in Congregation on 14 November on the Legislative Proposal on the new Statute VI, concerning Council (see Gazette, 9 November) is set out below.

At the close of the debate the amendment was approved on a division [For: 652; against: 507]

Vice-Chancellor

Good afternoon. The business before Congregation is voting on a Legislative Proposal. Might I ask you please to be seated.

The procedure for dealing with the Legislative Proposal will be as follows. One amendment to the proposal concerning the chair of Council will be debated and voted upon today. Three other amendments were published in the Gazette supplement of 9 November, but as the Registrar has since received notice from the movers and seconders of those amendments that they have decided they will not move their amendments, they will therefore not be voted upon.

I shall begin by asking the Registrar to read the final section of the preamble to the Legislative Proposal. I shall then invite Professor Womersley to move the proposal. I shall next call upon Professor Fraser to oppose the proposal. I shall then call upon Dr Walker to second the proposal, and I shall then call upon Professor Cooper to second the opposition to the proposal.

I have taken the advice of the Proctors, and have asked the mover and opposer of the proposal to speak for no more than eight minutes and their respective seconders to speak for no more than five minutes.

Next, I shall call upon the Provost of Oriel College and the Master of University College to move and second the amendment concerning the chair of Council. I have asked them to speak for no more than five minutes each.

After that the debate on the amendment will be open to the House. As usual, I would remind anyone present who is not a current member of Congregation that they may neither vote nor speak. I would ask all speakers to come forward and to speak into the microphone, first giving their name and college or department. Speakers from the floor of the House should please follow the usual convention of not speaking for more than five minutes.

In order for as many members as possible to be given the opportunity to speak it is important that all speakers keep carefully to time. I shall be giving attention to the duration of speeches and the Proctors have agreed to do the same. I do hope that it will not be necessary to call anyone to time.

May I ask speakers to take care not to introduce matters which are not relevant to the questions before the House, and to present their arguments in a courteous manner.

A number of members of Congregation have indicated a wish to speak for or against the amendment and I will endeavour to call them all but that cannot be guaranteed.

If it is possible to take any additional speakers I would ask them to come forward to speak only if they have new points to add which have not already been raised by other speakers. I should be grateful if any speaker who uses a written text would afterwards lend that text to Miss Noon, the officer who is collecting such speeches, as this will be of assistance in preparing the published record of the debate which will appear as a Gazette supplement as soon as possible—I hope in the issue published on 23 November. It will also appear on the University web site.

At the end of the debate on the amendment I shall ask the Provost of Oriel College whether he wishes to deal with any of the points raised in the speeches. He will have five minutes in which to do so. I remind the Provost that he should, at that stage, deal only with points raised during the course of the debate and should not introduce any new matters.

I shall then take a division on the amendment. This will be by written ballot for which members of Congregation will have been given voting papers. Any members who do not have voting papers will have an opportunity to collect them at the exits as they leave. Under Congregation Regulations 2 of 2002, a vote can only be taken at the close of the debate and I regret that any members who are unable to stay until I call the vote on the amendment will therefore not have an opportunity to register a vote. I should stress that this means that a member may not leave a completed voting paper with another member. The Proctors, Pro-Proctors and bedels, who will be collecting the papers at the close of the debate, will accept only each member's single, personal voting paper. I shall explain the detailed voting arrangements when the vote is to be taken.

If the amendment is carried, the regulations require that the amended Legislative Proposal is put to a second meeting. If the amendment is rejected, the meeting will continue with the debate and vote on the unamended Legislative Proposal, though if the time is late it may be necessary for an adjournment until another date to allow for full debate.

I now ask the Registrar to read the final section of the preamble.

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Registrar

Whereas it is expedient to repeal and replace existing Statute VI concerning Council, now the University of Oxford, in exercise of the powers in that behalf conferred upon it by the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge Act, 1923, and of all other powers enabling it, enacts the Legislative Proposal (sections 1–21 of the new Statute being subject to the approval of Her Majesty in Council) as set out in Gazette Supplement (1) to No. 4787.

1. Repeal existing Statute VI concerning Council (Supplement (1) to Gazette No. 4633, 9 October 2002, Vol. 133, p. 102, as amended with effect from 8 May 2003, Gazette, Vol. 133, p. 1335, 29 May 2003) and substitute with new Statute VI.

2. If Her Majesty in Council approves the new Statute, its sections shall take effect in accordance with a timetable to be laid down by the present Council of the University which will allow for the initial processes of election and nomination.

VICE-CHANCELLOR: I now call upon Professor Womersley to move the proposal. Professor Womersley.

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Professor D.J. Womersley (St Catherine's College)

Mr Vice-Chancellor, fellow members of Congregation, if it were not for the fear that it might be seized on as evidence of a desire on my part to trample on the traditional rights and privileges of Congregation I would be tempted to open my remarks this afternoon by saying that: 'We must stop meeting like this.' Not that it is not right that Congregation should meet, not that it is not pleasant to gather here in the Sheldonian. But simply because, now, we must decide. The question of the governance of the University has been debated amongst us for two years. This afternoon, we begin—we may even conclude—the constitutional process of resolving our governance.

How and why did we arrive at this point, with this Legislative Proposal before us? For any dispassionate observer would have to acknowledge that Oxford's achievements over the past twenty-five years have been extraordinary. With an endowment a fraction the size of those enjoyed by its major North American competitors, and operating under a financial regime in which it is paid below cost for almost everything it does, it has nevertheless managed to maintain—on some measures, indeed, enhance—its standing as one of the handful of truly great world universities.

So: does it follow then that all is well with Oxford?

Anyone who has served in the administration of the University since the implementation of the North Report will have registered two problems of increasing severity. In the first place, the Council of the University has been overburdened, and its membership has not contained the range and depth of expertise necessary if it is to discharge the responsibilities laid upon it by Statute. Secondly, the conjunction of the colleges and the University—at its best, one of the great and distinctive strengths of Oxford—creates a stubborn difficulty when it comes to academic decision-taking. As things stand, a proposal for academic change has to move up two parallel ladders of committees: a University ladder, and a college ladder. Should either of those ladders suddenly become a snake as a result of unexpected opposition, the whole proposal has to begin all over again. So Oxford's present governance has a double deficit: an expertise deficit, and a co-ordination deficit. The submissions which the Governance Working Party received when it began its work show that this diagnosis of where our internal arrangements ail is widely shared in the University.

The White Paper on Governance tackles this double deficit. In the first place, it addresses the co-ordination deficit by proposing the establishment of an Academic Board, on which the colleges and the University will be equally represented, to which all matters of academic substance will be delegated, and of which the membership will be made up solely of academics. This places matters of academic judgment squarely where they belong: in the hands of academics. But it also brings the colleges and the University together in a body which will be explicitly tasked with the responsibility to set and pursue the academic strategy of the Collegiate University as a whole. Let us be honest: it is, is it not, extraordinary that hitherto no such body has existed in Oxford.

The White Paper addresses the expertise deficit by trimming the responsibilities of Council, and by adjusting its membership. Because academic matters will have been handed over to the Academic Board, the new Council will take responsibility for the remainder of Council's current load: that is to say, it will be responsible for the management of endowment, determination of the financial envelope, audit and scrutiny, the management of risk, the oversight of estates and external relations. Given these redefined responsibilities, it is appropriate for the external or 'lay' membership of Council to be increased substantially. In the first five years, its membership will comprise seven internal members, seven external or 'lay' members (which in this context means simply someone who is not on the payroll of the University or any of the University's colleges), and the Chancellor, Lord Patten, as chairman. This reconfigured Council serves two purposes: it will, on an internal perspective, be well-adapted to discharge the new responsibilities laid upon it; and, on an external perspective, it will bring Oxford's governance close to the expectations—the legitimate expectations, be it noted—of the Privy Council and HEFCE.

You may have noticed that the proposals of the White Paper on Governance have not been universally welcomed. How might one characterise the criticisms they have attracted? The mildest word one could use is 'overdrawn'. A set of proposals which leaves untouched the sovereignty of Congregation has been misdescribed by its opponents as doing away with Oxford's tradition of self-government. A document which removes the Vice-Chancellor from the chairmanship of Council, which eliminates the present conflict of interest which has the Vice-Chancellor accountable in the first instance to a body of which he is also the chairman, and which would impose on him for the first time a precisely-described delegation of powers, has been misdescribed as a recipe for what is sniffily dismissed as 'managerialism'. A document which recognises the proper interest which a democratically elected government and its agencies have in a university which receives large amounts of public money, but which squares the circle of meeting those legitimate external expectations and at the same time serving the internal needs of the University, has been misdescribed as surrendering to improper external pressure.

In fact, the White Paper on Governance puts before the University a set of measured, reasonable proposals. These are proposals refined by lengthy consultation, and of which therefore Congregation is already partly the author. They preserve the essence of Oxford's self-government; they reinforce the University's counsels with additional experience and wisdom; and they adjust its internal arrangements to cope with the challenges that face us. The amendment to be debated in a moment is acceptable to (although not supported by) Council. It is not hostile to the spirit of the White Paper, but it addresses an aspect of the proposals which in some minds has caused concern. Council's stance towards the amendment shows that the eventual composition of Council after the initial period of five years is a matter on which Council are happy that Congregation should, at that point, decide.

I hope, Sir, that in closing I may be permitted a literary allusion. In The Leopard, Lampedusa's great novel about the political convulsions which overtook Italy in the late nineteenth century, Tancredi, the nephew of the Prince of Salina, tries to reconcile his uncle to the cause of reform by saying that, for everything to stay the same, everything must change.

I will confess, Sir, there have been moments when I played with the thought that the life of a late nineteenth-century Sicilian aristocrat might have been preferable even to that of an Oxford don.

However, this afternoon is not one of those moments. For, in order that we should preserve the essential core of our constitution—namely, the sovereignty of Congregation—it is not necessary that 'everything must change'. But it is necessary that some things do change. Those few but important and necessary changes have been carefully defined in the White Paper which lies before us today. For the White Paper on Governance, notwithstanding what in some quarters has been said about it, is not a revolution performed upon the constitution of the University. It is a revolution averted. It is by not making the measured adjustments proposed in the White Paper that our traditions of self-government and the perennial academic values we have inherited, are jeopardised. And it is by adopting the proposals of the White Paper that what we hold dear is best secured.

Sir, it is for that reason that the White Paper on Governance deserves the support of Congregation, and that it will, I trust, in due course receive that support.

Sir, I beg to move the Legislative Proposal.

VICE-CHANCELLOR: I now call upon Professor Fraser who will oppose the proposal. Professor Fraser.

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Professor D.G. Fraser (Worcester College)

Vice-Chancellor, members of Congregation.

In the words of my old colleague, James Campbell, 'It does seem like the thin end of Pandora's can of worms...'

How did we get here?

How is it that so much goodwill and trust in this University has been squandered?

The issue of governance is quite simple. It was summed up for me by a quietly-spoken colleague. He said there are two issues: (1) it is dangerous to concentrate too much power in the hands of too few individuals; (2) why should we give up something good, merely to conform to some sector norm?

He is right. The White Paper fails Oxford on both counts. It removes power from academics and places it firmly in the hands of an all-powerful University Executive, with no adequate system of checks and balances. And it does nothing to explain why we should conform to a sector norm.

It may surprise many that I am speaking against this White Paper. I have a strong record as a reformer and believe in the need to modernise the University. I chaired the Committee on the Future of Science in Oxford for the Physical Sciences Board. I was Managing Director of a successful company for ten years, and served as a non-executive director of an Oxford University spin-out. I truly welcome the input of external advisers. I am thus hardly, I think, a backwards man, nor could I be caricatured as typical of some mythical Old Oxford. Nevertheless, I have come to understand the enormous strengths of our University.

Only three years ago, Cambridge University rejected proposals similar to those now contained in the White Paper. It has retained its independence, excellence and vitality. HEFCE has made no move to persuade it to think again. In contrast, Oxford's Working Party now proposes to introduce an executive-led style of corporate governance and management of academics like that so comprehensively rejected by Cambridge. And two weeks ago similar proposals were also rejected by Switzerland's leading university, in Zurich.

This proposal is similar to the top-down management introduced into the National Health Service. And I am very glad that so many medical colleagues have chosen to attend today. They will know that managers now seek routinely to impose decisions on clinicians that are contrary to their best medical judgment. A YES vote today would force Oxford, unlike Cambridge, into line with 'sector norms' that were imposed on the former polytechnics when they became universities in 1992.

Despite the importance of this proposal, we have not been given a single evidence-based reason why the White Paper will benefit the University.

So, what is Oxford's success? Why do so many excellent academics choose to work in Oxford? Any of our colleagues here who are administrators, will immediately recognise that they have to deal with fairly large egos!—I am of course myself immune...

The success of the present governance of Oxford and Cambridge is that both allow plurality, so that an anomalously high concentration of very able, very ambitious, very creative academics can cohabit with goodwill and trust. It is governance that has successfully evolved and is responsible to all. In this it is avant-garde and forward-looking—engineers use evolutionary algorithms at the forefront of aerospace technology to push the boundaries of what is new and allow new solutions to emerge beyond what can be deduced analytically.

Evolutionary biologists will tell you that diverse communities tend to be healthy and long-lived. One of the key reasons why Oxford academics are so committed to the University is that they have real independence and a genuine personal stake in the system. Oxford is a democratic partnership, not a top-down, managerial structure.

The White Paper will destroy this.

Worse still, the business model which forms the basis of the new governance proposals is well past its sell-by date. It is a belated attempt to apply the ideas of Henry Ford and Frederick Taylor to learning, as though the University were a machine of bureaucracy where we are all disposable units of production in an integrated academic factory. And in which contract research staff can be used and replaced, without tenure. This is wrong. And the White Paper actually reduces their rights rather than strengthening them.

It would destroy the efficiency of plurality. It would destroy collegiality. It would impose a cousin of dumbed-down sector-norm governance. After all, as my daughter said to me, 'The fundamental problem is that this is the wrong model of governance for a university.' She said: 'Applying standard industrial management consultant's approaches to a creative academic institution is like going to the hairdresser when you are ill...!'

In the old days, I suppose they did.

How ironic that today's leading businesses are moving in the opposite direction from the failed 1970s policies of the White Paper. Dynamic knowledge-based businesses are moving away from large, centrally administered monoliths, towards small, self-organising entrepreneurial cells, flexibly connected and practically self determining—just look at the campus models of companies like 3M, Google and Apple. In fact, just like Oxford colleges. You want an example? Look at Gerry Rubin, Head of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. They have just set up a Hughes campus to look at Neuroscience there—it is called the Janelia Farm Research Campus; and the management structure? Small groups, collegiality, minimal management, trust in the past excellence of the people they employ. Contrast this with what is proposed here.

The opportunity cost of retaining our democratic system and adapting it to meet new challenges is thus much smaller than installing centralised line management and running the risk that the new system is not as efficient as promised. Have we not seen this already? Any responsible Board tasked with managing Risk must make this a central consideration. Members of Congregation, at present, we still are this Board.

We have heard that because some concessions have been made to criticism, Congregation should now support the White Paper. This position requires us to believe that just because the proposal is better than something extremely bad, it somehow becomes good! These are not good arguments FOR the White Paper.

But we can examine some of the effects objectively. An effect of the North Reforms is that they have concentrated power in a very small number of hands. We have a Vice-Chancellor; a Registrar; five executive Pro-Vice-Chancellors. Perhaps it is good? How has this worked in the last two years?

We had threatening letters to academic staff that have still not been withdrawn. We were told that we had to comply with Charities Law by having a Council of Externals. This assertion was untrue. We were told that we had to follow HEFCE guidelines. Now we know, from the chairman of HEFCE himself, that the statement about HEFCE is also incorrect. Colleges were misled over the financial settlement—the 'Quantum'—when a clearly reached agreement was broken—not once but twice; the head of an Oxford college was then threatened with legal action by an external member of Council unless he retracted his opinion.

We were warned that the Government would bring in a Royal Commission to force change. But when asked about this at the Labour Party conference, both Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, and Bill Rammell, the Higher Education Minister, expressed surprise. In fact the THES of 29 September reports Mr Johnson as saying 'I know that Oxford is having difficulties on this compared with Cambridge University, but I certainly had not considered a Commission.' So now we know. Wrong on Charities Law; wrong on HEFCE; and wrong on Royal Commission. Wrong on secrecy of the Agenda and Minutes of Council. Rich in assertion; and rejected by Cambridge.

Instead of evidence-based reasons, we now have 'policy-based evidence'. It is like how we got into Iraq. Perhaps these are weapons of mass deception...?

There are overwhelming reasons for Congregation to reject this scheme.

1. They surrender ultimate control to a Council with a majority of external representatives rather than to a body directly connected to our core academic activities.

2. The Academic Board will be dominated by the executive, who will have as many members as the whole of Congregation itself is allowed to elect. We must instead do away with the culture of secrecy that is still entrenched in the White Paper. As a start, the Agenda and Minutes of Council must be published. This is a fundamental principle of HEFCE good practice. Why does it not even figure in the White Paper? Why not?

Now—wisdom and good sense dictate that these proposals should be rejected for the good of the whole University. The University needs breathing space.

We need to support the Vice-Chancellor and his senior administrators in addressing problems of finance and management. We do not need to overturn the constitution of the University in favour of a centralised executive. Congregation must have the courage to reject the proposals contained in the White Paper as Cambridge already has.

My college was a Benedictine foundation. St Benedict believed that people could only be human if they learned to live for and not against each other. He believed in democracy—all the monks were responsible for electing their abbot, and the abbot was not to be one in love with power, but a listener and a reconciler. He believed in trusting people to get on with the job and not winding them up by carrot-and-stick micro-management. Perhaps we have something to learn.

Vice-Chancellor, modernisation must continue. We need to get on with building and important capital investment projects. Instead we have old Oxford in the form of Lord Butler and Sir Derek Morris—two very distinguished former civil servants—seeking cleverly, but in my view irresponsibly, to sidetrack this debate and delay decision; to waste yet more university time. Their amendment should be defeated as quickly as possible today so that we can all focus on the main issue.

Thank goodness that we still have a democratic Congregation. It is seldom needed. But that so many have come here today is a clear indication of how strongly colleagues feel about this question. We should not waste their time by asking the same working party to bring the matter back. Bad legislation is bad legislation. I believe passionately in Oxford's future as a world leading research and teaching University. I therefore ask Congregation to vote against Council's Proposal.

Once you vote democratically to give up democracy you will never get it back. You are asked to sign away control, to a Council controlled by businessmen and politicians, not as advisers as our amendment proposed—that amendment that the Vice-Chancellor prevented Congregation even from hearing here today—but with executive authority.

This proposal must be rejected—and if rejected, the walls will not come tumbling down. We shall move forward to work together, respect each other and evolve together. And it is good to remember that we shall express our views in a secret ballot.

VICE-CHANCELLOR: I now call on Dr Walker who will second the proposal.

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Dr R.C.S. Walker (Magdalen College)

Mr Vice-Chancellor, members of Congregation.

Since I agree with Professor Fraser on so many of the fundamental issues, it may seem surprising that I disagree with him so strongly on the issue before us today. One of the things he asked was that I should point to advantages that the White Paper showed. I hope to do that but I think David Womersley has done it already. I think also that carefully reading the White Paper does allow many of these advantages to show pretty clearly for themselves. It is after all six years since we introduced a new form of government within this University. Everybody knew at that time that the system might need revision. It does. It was essential to create the divisions; the General Board was becoming unable to handle all the business that came to it in an increasingly complex university. But it was wrong to abolish the General Board. We should instead have transformed it. We knew there was a need for a body that could resolve the inevitable disagreements between divisional boards, and between the various other key committees. We thought Council could do that. I at least should have foreseen that it would be unable to; for I was particularly well placed to do so at that time. I want to admit this to Congregation now. It was a serious mistake. Council cannot deal with these matters effectively because as Professor Womersley has said, it is not properly set up to do so. It can deal with high-level non-academic issues, like those to do with the University's financial base, but having myself been on it until three months ago I am acutely aware that it is not well suited to handle detailed academic matters on which divisions differ from one another, or from the Academic Services. It just does not have the depth of information needed to assess these things. Nor can it have, for its remit is too broad.

So we are in an unsatisfactory situation. If Council leaves issues unresolved, the resolution inevitably defaults to the executive. This is not how things should be run, not how they were intended to be run. Nor does the executive itself wish that they should be run in this way. Remedying that grave defect in the present system is what I see as the central element of the Legislative Proposal before us today: the creation of an Academic Board. This Board would in some respects be like the General Board. But it would have a manageable agenda, for much of the detailed work is now done by the divisional boards and other key committees; that structure would basically remain. The Academic Board would also be more representative of the University as a whole than the General Board was, bringing in the colleges more effectively. Most importantly, it would also be more powerful. It would have an effective control over academic affairs in a way that Council could not overset.

So in this respect the White Paper will certainly benefit the University.

It is important too that we should have external members on Council, for the external perspective that they provide has been of great value to us already, and will continue to be so. The external expertise likewise. We need this for our own sake, never mind what other people may say. The alarm in some quarters about the number of external members rests, I think, on a serious misunderstanding. It greatly overemphasises—I am sorry, it greatly over-estimates—the role that Council can play. In recent years, Council, whether Hebdomadal or otherwise, has not been very effective, because of its excessively wide remit. The proposed Statute leaves Council in a position of formal pre-eminence under Congregation, but it carefully circumscribes its powers, making very clear Congregation's right to block the decisions it makes if the need arises, and above all sharply limiting its rights in relation to the Academic Board. Council could, perhaps, decide that retrenchments must be made, but it certainly could not decide that they should fall on Physics or on Philosophy or on the Libraries. Such things, like all the academic business of the University, would be for the Academic Board—though subject, as always, to Congregation. In no serious sense could the envisaged Council 'manage' the University. So there is absolutely no question of an 'executive style of top-down corporate management'—I hope I am quoting Professor Fraser correctly. We do not want that or any business model, outdated or otherwise, and the White Paper is not proposing any such thing. The constraints on Council correspond to nothing in any standard picture.

As Don Fraser says again, we must not place too much power in the hands of too few individuals. I absolutely agree with that—I am sure we all do. But to ensure our democratic control we do need the Academic Board.

We need it urgently; six years has been too long. I beg to second the proposed Statute.

VICE-CHANCELLOR: I now call upon Professor Cooper who will second the opposition. Professor Cooper.

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Professor S. Cooper (St Catherine's College)

We are here today to consider replacing much of the new governance structure that was put in place in 2000. Our consumer society increasingly throws things away and buys new rather than make repairs. The grass appears greener on the other side of the fence—because from the side you cannot see the holes! We are responsible—as yet—for a great institution and should take more care than that with our decisions about its future. The proposal before us is unlike previous changes in Oxford's governance: we have no evidence that HEFCE and the Privy Council would force us to make these changes, but it would be foolish to think that they would let us reverse them later.

Taking our job seriously, we must ask what needs changing and how. The Governance Working Party may have reviewed our current system but they did not give us a report with evidence that we can consider ourselves. Instead they summarised a few problems and jumped to proposing an entirely new system. This information vacuum makes it crucial that we think before we vote.

The most controversial part of the 2000 reform was the introduction of divisions. Even in 2004 there were complaints that they were just an extra layer. But they were not discarded. Now they are starting to work and be more appreciated. A new system needs time and effort.

The Green and White Papers have focused attention on Council, attention that is needed and had been missing. What are the problems?

Some people say that the wrong sorts of people have been on Council. We do not have a procedure for nominating externals and we need one—another good step to improve our current structure. For internals, something must be done about publicising the call for nominations—we get the back pages of the Gazette, but glossy brochures are provided to 'guide' us through the White Paper. But more active internals are already getting onto Council and it makes a difference. It is at the insistence of internals, in Council and outside it, that a review has been conducted of the Osney Mead project, with the result that the flood protection will be raised by 1.6 metres!

We are told we do not have enough expertise within the University. Did not the people planning Osney Mead know the University has experts in geology and climate change? The 'bunker mentality' of the centre needs to be broken down so that we can all work together.

You are told that Council has an overloaded agenda and cannot cope, but you have never seen an agenda. Having been on Council for a year now, I can tell you that they were bad, but not irretrievably so. This summer Council discussed its procedures and decided to have fewer items for discussion and more time for strategic issues. You are right to ask why it took so long. I too would like to hear the answer.

Council needs to take a strong role in scrutinising the work of the Vice-Chancellor and his team. To do this it needs an independent chair. But creating a new Council with an external majority is a step too far and leads to a muddle. Those externals would not have enough knowledge of the University's main activities, so a separate Academic Board is needed. Independent scrutiny of academic affairs is lost, with the Vice-Chancellor as chair of that Board and his five Pro-Vice-Chancellors as voting members. The overlapping remits and the practical need for the supposedly separate committees to work together is a topological nightmare. To call this modern and streamlined is bizarre. The CUC guide on an external majority is copied from the corporate world without justification. We should think, and lead, not blindly follow.

Well-functioning committees are essential for any Council, but they do not get much attention in the White Paper. We need a procedure for appointing people to committees. The same small group of people seem to appear on more and more committees—they cannot possibly do a good job on all of them. The Educational Policy Committee and its subcommittees are where university–college contact is most needed, to prepare proposals jointly from the ground up. The Resource and Allocation Committee is absolutely key—controlling our finances—and needs review. Both sides want a stronger Finance Committee. The better way is to leave the current unified Council in control, but to give it better advice in this important area.

Our current system can work and is the best way to give Oxford a strategy in which institutional and academic aspects are balanced, under academic control, as they should be. I thank you.

VICE-CHANCELLOR: We now move to the question of the amendment. I should like to call upon the Provost of Oriel who will move the amendment concerning the chair of Council. Provost.

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Sir Derek Morris (Provost of Oriel College)

This amendment is proposed, I have to say, only after very wide consultation over several months. And it is based on two propositions. The first is that, as a result of a lengthy consultation period, in which Council has responded, I think, to much useful comment on the earlier Green Papers, we now have a Legislative Proposal in front of us, that, first, addresses critical weaknesses in our current governance arrangements—to do with the overload of Council; to do with the inadequacy of monitoring and scrutiny and accountability; and the lack of cohesion between college and University decision-taking. To say that no case for the White Paper has been made (as we have been told) is, in my view, simply false; and I for one simply do not recognise the characterisation that has been given by Professors Fraser and Cooper.

But second it has been done in a way which respects, though far from fully, the perceptions of those to whom we are in part accountable. And third, with one exception, I believe reflects, and, indeed, reinforces Oxford's unique structure and strengths.

The second proposition is that there is one significant exception to this, and it relates to the composition of Council or, more precisely, the provision for a majority of lay members of Council. And there is, I believe, widespread concern on this point, that, albeit in rare circumstances, this nonetheless ultimately can cede control of the University to the lay members of Council. This has emerged from countless discussions around the University in the last few months; it has been the dominant factor in the articles in the Oxford Magazine, that have opposed the White Paper, and indeed in letters to the Press. When my own college's governing body debated the White Paper it was virtually the only topic discussed; and I know that a number of other colleges have had the same experience.

There are, it is true, powerful safeguards in the White Paper. Congregation controls the election of lay members. And if eight lay members did unanimously group together to outvote the Academic Board and the unanimous group of internals on Council, it is just the sort of extreme circumstance in which Congregation would be justified in using its other safeguard, namely the power to override Council and dismiss it.

I concede those points. Nonetheless, I believe, like many others, that while the case for a substantial number of external members of Council has been made, the case for a majority has not. Creating an external majority is an irreversible step, and arguably, is therefore too large and unnecessary a risk for us to take. I believe these are powerful arguments and they should not be lightly dismissed.

And from those two propositions I infer, first, that we do need to enact governance reform—for internal effectiveness, and to retain external credibility and support from Government and from old members. But the case for a majority of lay members has not been made and we should not risk the White Paper being derailed by that issue.

The amendment therefore proposes that, in five years' time, when, in line with the White Paper, the Chancellor stands down from the chairmanship of Council, he is replaced through election by Congregation, by a lay member of Council (that is as currently proposed); but his or her replacement may be either a lay member or an internal member. It will then be entirely up to Congregation to decide if it wishes to have a majority of lay members or not. If by then we are legally required to do so, then we must of course comply. But if not, Congregation can decide, in the light of five years' experience of the new arrangements, and in the light of such internal considerations or external pressures as it wishes to take into account, whether it wishes to make the change or not. And even if it does, subject always to Charities legislation, it can switch back again in five years.

In short, the amendment does not preclude an external majority, but it does not require it either. It is, rather, I submit to you, a gradualist approach, allowing us to learn from experience; and it is reversible.

I conclude with one general point. If governance reform is defeated it will, in my view, unquestionably be very damaging to Oxford—for its ability to govern itself effectively in the coming years, and for our standing, and frankly our credibility in seeking to persuade others of our needs and our priorities. Even a slim majority for the White Paper as it stands would, in my view, not be much better, as we tried to implement such change in the face of what would be a large, and, I believe, a decisive split in our own ranks.

We have the chance to adopt another route. And frankly, to characterise this as a waste of time, as it has been, says much about the opposition to this amendment. With the amendment we have, I believe, a real opportunity to get a powerful majority to come together behind a balanced and a gradual approach, to make a clear and widely supported statement, I hope, of the governance arrangements that we believe Oxford, with its unique character, and its unique strengths, needs. And it would be a statement about which I hope most of us could actually have some pleasure and some pride—a real success for Oxford. I believe that it is within our grasp; and I think it is a prize well worth having. And I invite you to support the amendment.

VICE-CHANCELLOR: I now call upon the Master of University College who will second the amendment concerning the chair of Council. Master.

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Lord Butler of Brockwell (Master of University College)

Mr Vice-Chancellor, I can second Sir Derek Morris' amendment quite briefly, though I must start by saying that I regret that Professor Fraser tried to influence Congregation against this amendment by characterising Sir Derek and me as civil servants, and therefore no doubt as hugely cunning and manipulative. I may deserve that, but Sir Derek certainly does not.

As Sir Derek has explained, the purpose of this amendment is to allow Congregation to take a decision in five years' time whether the Council should be eight–seven in favour of internal over external members or the other way around.

The reason I support this amendment is quite simple. It is like Sir Derek: on the basis of discussions I have had, the issue that is most divisive within the University is the feeling that support for the White Paper would be an irreversible step towards majority external control. I do not believe that we need to tear ourselves apart on this issue now; and I believe also that it will be valuable to Oxford to make some of the other changes which are in the White Paper.

But having said that, since it has not been mentioned before, I think it is important not to conceal from Congregation the significance of the change in the University's charitable status which occurred last week.

When the Charities Act 2006 became law last Wednesday, the status of this and other universities as exempt charities ended. The University will now have to become registered under the Charities Act.

As others have pointed out, and it is quite correct, the Charities Act does not itself require us to have a majority of external trustees. It allows us, at any rate at this stage, our own distinctive way of meeting the obligations of a charity. The supremacy of Congregation, which these proposals preserve, is pretty distinctive. But Congregation, I think, would be unwise to suppose that we would be left to go on our own merry way entirely unfettered. However, if in order to satisfy the requirements of the external supervising authorities, ultimately a majority of external members of Council becomes a legal requirement, we do not need to argue about it. We will have to accept it. But I believe and hope I am right in saying that we do not have to accept it now. We can afford to wait and see how things develop in the next five years and also to get experience of the arrangements proposed in the White Paper and then this amendment will give Congregation the opportunity to take a decision in the light of that.

Now, there are those who say, 'Let us not take any steps until we are forced to. Our present structures have served us well. Let us not change.'

I believe that this really would be a great mistake as well as being an over-simplification. Nobody could read the report of the Henderson Working Group on Joint Planning and Decision-making in the Collegiate University and not agree that decision-making of the university and colleges does need to be better integrated. Nobody, I believe, with great respect, could say that the previous financial management of the University has been as good as it needs to be. And I believe that the structures in the White Paper will help in that respect. So I urge members of Congregation to support this amendment and then, with the comfort it provides there will be another opportunity in five years' time to decide whether there should be a majority of externals or internals on Council, in the light of that to support the White Paper.

VICE-CHANCELLOR: The debate on the amendment is now open to the House.

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Mr N. Bamforth (Queen's College)

Vice-Chancellor, members of Congregation. Those of us opposed to the Governance White Paper urge members of Congregation to vote 'no' to this amendment. Sir Derek Morris asks why opponents of the White Paper see this amendment as a waste of time. Let me tell you why we do. It is merely a symbolic tweaking that will do nothing if passed to stop the fundamental transfer of power to the University Executive that the White Paper, if approved, will involve.

Why is this amendment essentially window-dressing? To understand this, we need to grasp the workings of this proposed Statute VI before the House today. The Statute uses three techniques to entrench control of the University in the hands of the executive and at the expense of academics. First, Council will merely delegate power to the Academic Board and can overrule its recommendations as and when it chooses. Secondly (just in case that first technique is not enough) the Academic Board will contain an in-built majority for the executive. Apart from the Vice-Chancellor, there will be nine Pro-Vice-Chancellors and heads of divisions—executive members all—and ten nominees of the Conference of Colleges, who are overwhelmingly likely I fear—given the recent record of that body—to be natural supporters of the executive. Against these twenty people will be ranged only ten who are directly elected by ordinary members of Congregation, plus the Proctors and Assessor—making at most thirteen independent voices.

Thirdly, the Council will contain only five directly elected members. As experience shows at every other UK university bar Cambridge, the proposed external majority is overwhelmingly likely to vote the University executive's line. Under the Statute, two of the supposed 'internals' will be the Vice-Chancellor and the chair of the Conference of Colleges, whom one rather suspects are unlikely to question their own decisions. This will leave only five potentially independent voices out of a total of fifteen.

All the Morris/Butler amendment does is to increase that number to six—and once every five years at best—if, that is, enough Congregation members can find the time, amidst the overwhelming pressures of term, to get together and ask for this. One possible extra internal is the very most we would ever get. Some change! The amendment will do absolutely nothing, in practice, to check the fundamental shift of power involved in the Statute.

The real issue before this House today is how many elected, as opposed to unelected, executive-supporting members, there will be on Council at any one time. Viewed in real terms, the proposed Statute VI offers five members directly elected by Congregation and ten natural supporters of the executive (the externals plus the V-C and chairman of the Conference of Colleges); the Morris/Butler amendment offers a maximum of six elected members and nine natural supporters of the executive—if, that is, members of Congregation can find the time to press for it every five years. As I say, some change indeed!

As many of you will know, a group of us recently put forward a series of positive amendments designed to offer Congregation a meaningful choice today between competing models of University government. These amendments were advertised in the Gazette some three weeks ago. Unfortunately, when they were submitted, our two main amendments were ruled out of order because they were incompatible with the overriding policy goal of the proposed Statute VI, described by the Registrar in her letter to the proposers as being to bring the University into line with current 'external expectations' about governance—expectations we might deduce from some of the earlier speakers already require an external majority, although as earlier opponents of the White Paper have made clear that is a false assumption. To expedite the debate, those of us who oppose the White Paper therefore withdrew our third amendment. We did so because we want Congregation to get on to the real issues before the House today. The amendment is window-dressing. It does nothing to redress what we regard as wrong with the White Paper. It is a side-show. It retains an in-built executive majority on the all-powerful Council and so does nothing meaningful to improve the completely inadequate system of checks and balances in the proposed Statute. Do not be confused by false hopes of additional security. If you have even the slightest doubt about the proposed Statute you must vote 'no' to this amendment. In the interest of bringing the debate onto the real issue, I shall be the only speaker against the amendment today. As I say, we believe it is a side-show, let us get to the real issues before the House.

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Professor N.H. Gale (Nuffield College)

Mr Vice-Chancellor, members of Congregation. I feel myself in a false position, I announced myself as speaking in favour of the amendment before us. I am still tempted, marginally, to do so. I shall be brief, because the Provost of Oriel and the Master of University have already lucidly explained and commended their proposed amendment and spelt out most of what it would achieve. And Mr Bamforth has very lucidly explained the deficiencies of the amendment.

I might just mention very briefly two further effects of the amendment. In that the amendment does, of course, require a minimum of six lay members, I think that was mentioned by its proposer. It does also secure or require that the post of deputy chairman could be filled by either a lay or an internal person. What I am going to move on to is the effect of the preponderance of lay members of Council that the White Paper wishes to secure has already begun to cast its malign influence over the University, and this was referred to by, perhaps by the way, by Mr Bamforth. I find a difficulty about the totality of the amendments which have been proposed to the legislation before us today. An amendment was also proposed by Dr Thompson and Professor Smith which also sought, and only sought, to change the balance of lay and internal members of the new Council. Just like the amendment before us now. The Thompson/Smith amendment accepted that after five years when our Chancellor's term expired the new Council should have a lay chair—and even a lay deputy chair. The Thompson/Smith amendment affected only three sections of the forty-six sections of the new Statute VI; the Morris/Butler amendment now before us affects six sections—all are concerned only with the composition of Council. Neither amendment sought to change any other provision of Statute VI, yet the Vice-Chancellor accepted the Morris/Butler amendment, and rejected the Thompson/Smith amendment on the ground that it produced an alternative proposal for governance. It clearly did not.

This unequal treatment of two similar amendments is arguably a misinterpretation by the Vice-Chancellor of the Statutes and Regulations influenced by this preoccupation with a lay majority on Council. It has resulted in a curtailment of the power of Congregation today to receive and vote on amendments properly presented and constituted. Detailed cases that the regulations have been misinterpreted, and Congregation deprived of a perfectly proper amendment, have been submitted by two members of Congregation to the proper authorities. However, the arguments and points made have received no rebuttal either from the Vice-Chancellor or the Proctors.

I apologise. But I feel I have no alternative. I promised to be brief.

May I end by being somewhat uncertain now, whether to commend to the House acceptance of the amendment before us, because I have been perhaps swayed rather much by the arguments of Mr Bamforth. Thank you.

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Mr A.W. Dilnot (Principal of St Hugh's College)

Mr Vice-Chancellor, members of Congregation. There has been considerable discussion about the process by which decisions were taken on the admissibility of the amendments proposed by members of Congregation. A number of previous speakers have already alluded to this, Professor Fraser has asserted that the Vice-Chancellor prevented another amendment going through; Professor Gale has also referred to this, as has Mr Bamforth. There has been an e-mail circulating around much of the University in the last couple of days, co-authored, I am not sure who all of the authors were, but one of them I believe was Mr Bamforth. That e-mail says, among other things, 'Last week the Democratic Governance Group put three amendments on the Legislative Proposal which is to be put before Congregation on 14 November 2006. The first and third of these have been summarily ruled out by the Vice-Chancellor, on what can be most charitably described as dubious grounds.' I think Congregation will agree that on this we need to be very clear. The Proctors do not speak at these meetings: I do propose to speak about this.

There is a proper process in these matters defined in regulations, as I would expect those lawyers who are interested in such things to know well. They are, for those of us who are less well-versed in it, in particular Regulation 2.9(1)—'where an amendment is proposed the chairman in consultation with the Proctors shall decide: whether each amendment is a true amendment or in substance an alternative proposal;' and then Regulation 2.6—'The Vice-Chancellor shall report to Council all amendments which in his or her judgment are not inconsistent with or irrelevant to the principle of the proposal in question as stated in the preamble, and Council shall forward them to Congregation.' So the decision does indeed have to be taken by the Vice-Chancellor but in consultation with the Proctors according to criteria specified in the regulations. Now, as I am a member of Council I was therefore present at the meeting when these matters were dealt with, and I can assure all members of Congregation that the regulations were followed, and followed in full. At a meeting of Council last Tuesday, the Proctors described the care that they had taken before advising the Vice-Chancellor, in particular they had been careful to act impartially and to exclude any political considerations from their deliberations. The Vice-Chancellor accepted the advice they gave in full—that advice (which Professor Gale appears to disagree with)—quite reasonably. No challenge was made by any member of Council at that Council meeting as the process went forward as I have described.

Now I felt that the impression given by the e-mail which I quoted earlier on had been misleading, that the Vice-Chancellor had acted and summarily ruled these things out. I raised this with the Proctors and I explained that I intended to speak on this matter. I have spoken at length to both of them together, earlier today, and I have asked them quite explicitly the crucial question, 'were they in any way swayed in coming to their conclusions?' They have confirmed to me that they acted entirely independently in this matter. Indeed, first, each Proctor formed his or her own independent views, and only after having done so did they meet together for careful discussion between the two of them. When they had reached, and only when they had reached, their agreed position they advised the Vice-Chancellor of this. All this was, I believe, explained very clearly at the meeting of Council. So I think that Congregation can be assured that the process described was followed in full.

I would like to finish simply by saying that I am personally extremely grateful to the Proctors for all of their very careful work in this matter and I am entirely confident of their good faith and their impartiality, and I am sure that Congregation shares those feelings.

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Professor T.P. Softley (Merton College)

Mr Vice-Chancellor, members of Congregation. I speak as a member of Council elected by this body, Congregation. I will save my main arguments in favour of the proposals in the White Paper for the debate on the substantive motion following the vote on the amendment. But I will simply state at this point that I do not believe that the amendment interferes with the substance of my principal argument, which is that the new arrangements will create an Academic Board which will provide a much better means to bring crucial academic issues to the fore.

At this point, however, I would like to address a specific remark made by Professor Fraser in opening the opposition to the main debate but I think it important that everybody should understand this point at this time.

He referred to a letter from the Chief Executive of HEFCE, and he stated that this showed that the position in the White Paper concerning HEFCE was incorrect. This, I believe, was a letter sent—referred to a letter sent—to a member of Congregation in response to a letter dated 25 October 2006. The Chief Executive of HEFCE was, in the name of transparency and fairness, kind enough to send this copy of his response to the University. This was then circulated to members of Council. So, if I may have your permission, Mr Vice-Chancellor, I would like to breach the confidences of Council and share that letter from the Chief Executive of HEFCE with Congregation. I think perhaps it is appropriate that I should read the whole letter.

'Thank you for your letter of 25th October 2006.

'The HEFCE's policy on the governance of institutions is as follows. The Financial Memorandum (HEFCE 2003/54) requires as a condition of grant that institutions must have a sound system of risk management, control and governance. Our definition of a sound system of governance includes that the system meets the good practice standards as set out in the CUC Guide for Members of HE Governing Bodies (HEFCE 2004/40). The Guide stresses that the Council of a pre-1992 university is the executive governing body and that it is an important principle that the governing body has a lay majority, i.e. a majority of members who are external and independent. The HEFCE supported and worked with the CUC on its Guide and so we endorse this principle of an external majority on the executive governing body. Our institutional risk and assurance work, including our cyclical audits, uses the CUC Guide as the benchmark when assessing corporate governance arrangements: this can be confirmed by reference to our Assurance Service Annual Report, published at www.hefce.ac.uk.

'The specifics of the CUC Guide are not mandatory (although the HEFCE could make particular requirements conditions of grant if we chose to do so) but the standards are. In our view it is difficult to see how the standards for good governance can be met by any HEI without that body having an external majority on its executive governing body. Thus while we cannot impose a governance model (and our 2006 cyclical audit report does not try to do so), we cannot see how the University of Oxford can report favourably against the CUC Governance Code (HEFCE 2004/40a) or explain convincingly why the executive governing body does not have a majority of independent members, "defined as both external and independent of the institution".

'Our audit report would have made a strong recommendation (albeit that we cannot mandate) that the University should change its membership arrangements to accord with the latest CUC Guide and Code. But it refrained from doing so because at the time of the audit this measure was already emerging as a proposal within the University. We therefore elected to stand back, see how the governance changes at the University were enacted, and then make our final assessment in the light of the Vice-Chancellor, Audit Committee and Council's own assessments of governance in their various 2005/06 accountability returns to the HEFCE.'

The letter concludes by saying,

'We are aware that Oxford would still have unique aspects to its governance arrangements and that some of these would not compare exactly with the structures implied by the CUC Guide. We are content with this as it reflects the uniqueness and excellence of the University. However we feel strongly that the feature that should change is the external representation on the executive governing body.'

Thank you.

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The Revd Dr J.A. Shaw (New College)

Mr Vice-Chancellor, fellow members of Congregation, we have seen the press hovering and we know that they will say something about us tomorrow. Whatever we vote today in this meeting of Congregation, the newspaper headlines tomorrow will be about who is going to run Oxford. That is the issue that has touched a raw nerve in this debate. Will our cherished democracy remain? The answer is clearly yes, because however we vote today Congregation will remain sovereign. But one issue has caused many of us anxiety: why a majority of lay members on Council? Many of us welcome a reshaped Council with streamlined business. We applaud the proposed, and I would like to note, more inclusive Academic Board, and we might have a touch of nostalgia for the old General Board reminding us how much we need a body dedicated to academic matters only. We look forward to greater coordination between the University and the colleges, with the colleges retaining their autonomy. And we note the Vice-Chancellor and the executive will become more, not less, accountable. All of this we find in the White Paper. But we have one nagging doubt: why a majority of externals on Council in five years' time? Why that extra lay member? It makes us uncomfortable. However much we understand and support the need for external expertise amongst the Council members, it is one lay member too many. It makes us vulnerable to the charge that businessmen (yes, businessmen!) as Professor Fraser repeated today, will be running our University. How many times have we all heard that charge, or read it in a newspaper headline, as if the proposed nomination committee would be incapable of looking for talented Oxford alums and friends in the media, public service, higher education, and, yes, even possibly looking for one or two very talented businesswomen who will be able to help us with money.

For all those of us who welcome the reformed governance that the White Paper offers, who do indeed believe that to stay the same any great institution needs to change, but who have shied away from taking the package as a whole, precisely because of this nagging unease about 'one lay member too many' this amendment (far from being a side-show, as Mr Bamforth has suggested) offers us just the solution we have been hoping for. It would enable us, the dons who indeed govern this University, in a meeting of Congregation, to opt, if we wish, for a minority of lay members in five years' time, when the Chancellor stands down as the chair of Council. It would provide us with a moment, five years down the track, to pause and reflect on how things have been working in the newly formed Council. It would allow us to take stock of the new system, and to assess what our needs might be in the light of developments about higher education in the wider world. We do not know where we will be in that wider world in five years' time. The White Paper explicitly aimed to reconcile the broader public consensus about the involvement of lay members in University governance—the kinds of thing we have just heard in that letter from HEFCE—with Oxford's own institutional needs and our strong democratic tradition of self-government. This amendment, I believe, enables us to achieve that aim, while ensuring that we retain self-governance.

So, colleagues, I urge you to vote for this amendment.

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Dr M.J. Collins (University College)

Mr Vice-Chancellor, members of Congregation. I find it a pity that two quite different concepts have been laid before us in a single package—specifically, how this University is governed, but quite separately by whom.

The first is properly part of the consideration as to whether the current structures are fit for purpose, and I agree with those who say that they are not and that two bodies are required; the second has nothing to do with the structure of governance, and it is this amendment that gives us the opportunity, as the Provost of Oriel has so clearly stated, to examine that second constituent in isolation. Although, ostensibly, the proposed amendment is about the chairmanship of Council, in reality it is about the balance of membership of that new Council. Let me say, as I said in the past, that I am in favour of lay members; they have a valuable role to play by the expertise they bring to the table. And I would now add to that, to what tables they can bring the University—and this is the point that was made to me quite dramatically in America this past summer.

In the past we have been told that their role is necessarily diminished if they fail to enjoy a majority on Council. With that I cannot agree. Fortunately it has not been said today, but as again the Provost of Oriel has said, there is no need legally to have an external majority on Council. And if you listen very carefully to what Professor Softley said it sounded more like—at the most—a coercion from HEFCE: not a requirement, because they were not going to impose it. It is only CUC that thinks it is good practice. All the governance changes you see around the corporations of this country lead from one disaster to another.

This amendment gives Congregation the opportunity now to make the point in no uncertain terms that the crucial role of these lay members is their contribution, and that these contributions alone should be the consideration, not their number.

That Council accepts this amendment effectively concedes this point. But one should also ask whether it would have been proposed if it were thought that Congregation would actually favour a majority of lay membership. I suspect not, because otherwise the amendment would surely fail. Consequently, Congregation should use this opportunity to declare its preference that lay members not be in the majority. I myself would have favoured a scheme by which there were some balance of lay and internal members with a layer above that could provide a balance, but that was not to be.

Let us look at this amendment. It offers a bare morsel. An opportunity is presented to change the balance in five years' time. But that is actually the worst of all worlds since it will then be seen as a vote against the Council of the time, even if Congregation should wish simply to implement no more than its view today.

However, I shall explain why I believe this amendment should be supported, because it has exposed to us the fact that we are allowed to have the external members not in the majority. So I support it, if its implementation yields simply a choice between discarding opportunity to change and provoking a conflict if we try to make that change. Quite simply, an overwhelming show of support for the principle of this amendment, namely that there can be a position where the externals do not enjoy a majority should encourage the present Council to listen to the voice of Congregation and to accept that it is, frankly, a nonsense to hold out a carrot for the future. Rather Council should offer Congregation the opportunity to vote for that outcome now.

It is fifty years, Mr Vice-Chancellor, since Hugh Gaitskell made his famous 'Fight, fight and fight again' speech, and it took the Labour Party nearly thirty years to respond. We have two weeks, Mr Vice-Chancellor, and to Council I say, 'Think, think and think again'.

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Professor P.J. Donnelly (St Anne's College)

Mr Vice-Chancellor, colleagues. It is clear that within the University the governance debate has engendered a lot of anger, a lot of frustration, and no small degree of politics. I think much of that is understandable. What I would like to do is to go back to the substance of some of the issues and address the substantive matters before Congregation. The issue of how the University should structure its governance, not, much as it may have been hoped, a referendum on management styles.

We have heard a lot today, and it is a theme running through all of the speeches, pro or against, of the value of our democratic systems, the uniqueness of those, the primacy of those and I fully support them. I have heard other things which rather contradict that. On the one hand, we should value our democracy. On the other hand, we should not waste time debating an amendment which has been put. I hope Mr Bamforth will forgive me if I do spend a few minutes doing exactly that. This building is full, and it may not be clear to you but so are several others, with colleagues who care passionately about these issues. The suggestion that the amendment [makes] that Congregation has the right to decide in five years' time which direction it should go in is silly because no one will bother voting, is hard to sustain in this environment.

So let me turn to the substantive issue, the issue of external representation on Council. Earlier in my academic career I worked at five different institutions, for my sins, before this one. I have to say it comes at some cost to my friends' address books. I had always rather thought it was the reason I do not get as many Christmas cards as I would hope, and I hope that after today I will not get even fewer. Two of those were major universities in the US, three in the UK, and all of them had systems of governance with substantial external representation. I know many colleagues have been in similar situations. What is it like on a day-to-day basis? Very much like it is here. The university infrastructure tries hard to support one's teaching and one's research with varying degrees of success and muddle-headedness. What of the loftier values of the academy, values of scholarship, of learning, of teaching, and research? They are valued every bit as keenly in other institutions with external representation, not least by the externals, and certainly they are enjoyed with at least as much freedom as we have here. Those of us with colleagues at Harvard will perhaps look with some jealousy at the freedom of tenured members at that university in choices of what they do and how they do it. It is not something which necessarily changes with external representation.

We have heard arguments in favour of the external representation, in terms of transparency, of rigour, of links with the outside world and while I think they all have weight they are not for me the most compelling. The most compelling arguments are the ones to do with avoiding vested interests and bringing additional expertise. I may not be the only one here who has had difficulty sitting on committees either in college or University in working out how to go forward with major capital projects and feeling massively at sea. That is just one example, the same I suspect is true of our colleagues, who find themselves as heads of departments or heads of divisions. That is one example where external expertise would be helpful; it is not just solved by ringing up the Geology Department or School of Earth Sciences in our case regularly.

We all know to our cost the extent to which Oxford's endowment has not grown as much as the endowments of other major universities, particularly in the US. We have all lived through the crisis of Osiris and Isidore, and I cannot say they would definitely be different, but two things might have changed. In the case where a Vice-Chancellor and/or a Registrar have taken an unpopular decision and tend to pull up the shutters and stick to it—and that we might think applies to some recent changes—in those cases there are real advantages in having externals on Council who can question those decisions, who can probe, and who can do so much more easily than internal members.

As a more serious issue (and one that I know was a case at one of the institutions I worked at), when there are major problems with senior figures in the university—heaven forfend, Vice-Chancellors, Registrars and so on—(then again, at the University of Chicago is one example where this was valuable), having external members is a very successful way of addressing and tackling those problems. The perception of such people—not all businessmen and women, I hope, academics, some from the public sector and so on—the perception of them as automatons who come purely to support the executive seems rather naive. I see the amendment as a 'win-win' situation. It moves a proposal which has engendered frustration closer to the mainstream of the opinion in Congregation. Whether you support the main proposal or not, supporting the amendment gives Congregation the chance to do what we want it to do, it gives it the chance to vote on a proposal much closer to what many feel is appropriate. So I urge you to support the amendment.

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Professor Sir Adam Roberts (Balliol College)

Vice-Chancellor, members of Congregation, in asking you to support this amendment I will not go into detail on the terms of the amendment or the proposed Statute. Rather, I simply want to make four points, all of which relate to a single theme: this University needs urgently to move beyond the disastrous clash between, on the one hand, what is seen as an often far from brilliant administration and managerialism, and on the other, a view from the trenches that has become understandably, but also excessively, suspicious of proposals coming from above.

The first point to make is the simple one that this amendment emphatically recognises a crucial role for Congregation. I do not consider the proposed Statute, especially if amended, to represent quite the threat to Congregation that has been suggested by Nicholas Bamforth today and in his article in the Oxford Magazine. But I do concede of course it is possible that there is some official coolness towards Congregation. Indeed, it may seem a small example but if you look up 'structure of the University' on the Web site you will find there is only one body of the principal bodies of governance of the University that does not merit bold type! Guess which one it is?

Congregation is a body likened to Athenian democracy, which has this wonderful capacity to awaken from its often too-long slumbers and to apply a valuable corrective to what has been going on. We did that with the location of the Saïd Business School, we did it again in May of last year, with the first round of the long debate on governance, when what we had before us were proposals from a working party that were too dirigiste, and were insensitive to the tradition of self-regulation in this University. Frankly, in the past decade there have been other issues on which we could and should have summoned meetings of Congregation, and it is worth remembering and the critics of the resolution should remember and explicitly acknowledge, that any twenty members of Congregation can propose a resolution and call a meeting. These things are in our control.

Second, like many I am more concerned about problems of University governance beneath the stratospheric levels that are addressed in the White Paper and particularly beneath the level of Council. I have just finished three years as Director of Graduate Studies—the third stint I have done in that job—and it is one of the jobs in the University where the rubber hits the road. I note with wry amusement the statement in the White Paper that, I quote, 'an important benchmark of administrative effectiveness must be considerable reduction in the administrative burdens currently shouldered by the academic staff of this University.' Chance would be a fine thing! For most academics, the reform of administration would need to start with a recognition of the mistakes of the last five or ten years: the repeated pre-emptive capitulations to what are believed to be the requirements of legislation; the misconceived and time-wasting aspects of Isidore, the failures of central administration to respond to feedback and criticism and so on. The list is long, and it is continuing. It would have been better if more attention had been given to levels such as these in the various proposals but at least (a) the problem is recognised; and (b) the totality of the proposals before us including those in the White Paper will not, at least in my judgement, make these problems worse. Indeed, with the structure of governance behind us, the University needs to get on with improving its administrative performance but at the levels which actually affect our daily work.

Third, I am persuaded that the Statute before us contains significant changes from what we had a year ago and represents an improvement.

Fourth, we should have sufficient confidence in who we are, in what we do, in who we nominate and elect, and in the nominating and appointing powers of Congregation that we have got nothing to fear from the arrangements that are before us, especially with benefit of the amendment.

And finally, I urge you not to follow the dreadful logic of 'the worse the better'. Do not vote down the amendment in order to keep a proposal that is perceived as unreasonable in order the better to kill it. Vote for what you believe in. Thank you very much.

VICE-CHANCELLOR: I now call upon the Provost of Oriel College to respond.

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Sir Derek Morris (Provost of Oriel College)

Mr Vice-Chancellor, members of Congregation. It has been gratifying to hear a number of speeches in favour of the amendment, and I hope that will weigh heavily with Congregation. As for the points in opposition, I confess to being somewhat bemused.

We have been told that other amendments were improperly blocked, yet it is clear from what has been said in reply that this is quite false. A majority of externals was a tenet of the White Paper—that is not precluded by my amendment. It is precluded by the alternative amendments which therefore were under our rules inadmissible. Would the opposers of this amendment have us simply ignore our rules to suit them? I think not.

We have been told that the amendment will not make much difference, when clearly it does. The White Paper makes an external majority mandatory; the amendment leaves it to Congregation.

We have been told that some internals will act like externals, that the Conference of Colleges representatives will be, quote, 'natural supporters of the Vice-Chancellor'—hollow laugh about that. This is completely spurious. The notion that some people in the University must be dismissed from consideration because of who they are is wrong and, frankly, an arrogant presumption.

We have been told that remote businessmen will run the University, when many of the externals (in a minority) will be old members, a number could be academics from other universities, and all will be elected by Congregation anyway in the light of criteria determined by Congregation.

The Master of University College and I have been dismissed as civil servants. Let me tell you why I am here. I spent twenty-eight years as a CUF lecturer. You do not get any closer to the academic coalface than that; and I have seen and experienced, longer than most of the people in this room today, the problems and deprivations that come from poor governance, lack of resources and a lack of external support and understanding for what we try to do in this University. Now reform of governance is by no means the only factor necessary to change that, but it is a necessary part of that story.

I conclude with one last point, based on what we have heard today. We are clearly a large gathering with, no doubt, a whole spectrum of views. That is inevitable and it is healthy. But I believe that we have seen an important divide today. And it is between, in my view, on the one hand, those who, whatever their particular view on this or that part of the White Paper, recognise that no proposal will find universal support, and see it as important to strive towards a reasonable, one hopes widely supported way forward. On the other hand, I perceive there are those who, for one reason or another, are firmly attached to their own particular conception of how Oxford should be governed—and, even after all the consultation we have had over the last year and genuine responsiveness on important points by Council to the criticisms that were made, do not want to compromise either with the views of others here or with the views of others to whom we are accountable.

If this is correct, I do urge as many of you as possible, at this very critical point in the life of the University, to be part of the former group—that is to seek to avoid a hugely divisive split and to help to find a much more agreed way forward. The only way, I submit to you, that we can do that is by supporting this amendment. Thank you.

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Supplement (1) to Oxford University Gazette No. 4788. Wednesday, 22 November 2006.