New Statute VI (Concerning Council)

• Contributions to the discussion were made by the following:
  • Vice-Chancellor
  • Professor P. Slack (Principal of Linacre College)
  • Mr N. Bamforth (Queen's College)
  • Mr D.A. Wood (University College and St Hugh's College)
  • Dr B.T. Huffman (Lady Margaret Hall)
  • Professor J. Welsh (Somerville College)
  • Mr L.A. Whitehead (Nuffield College)
  • Dr J.F. Wheater (University College)
  • Professor G.D.W. Smith (Trinity College)
  • Dr S.E. Clark (Merton College and University College)
  • Professor A.J. Ryan (Warden of New College)
  • Dr J. Robertson (St Hugh's College)
  • Dr J. Tseng (St Edmund Hall)
  • Professor I.S. McLean (Nuffield College)
  • Dr F. Pirie (Wolfson College)
  • Dr M.J. Spence (St Catherine's College)
  • Mr R. Briggs (All Souls College)
  • Professor R.A. McCabe (Merton College)
  • Mr G.P. Williams (St Peter's College)
  • Mr A. Strickland (President of the Oxford University Student Union)
  • Professor B. Leftow (Oriel College)
  • Mr A. Dilnot (Principal of St Hugh's College)
  • Dr M. Broers (Lady Margaret Hall)
  • Professor R. Peto (Green College)
  • Dr J.G. Deutsch (St Cross College)
  • Sir Michael Scholar (President of St John's College)
  • Dr A.D. Lunn (Worcester College)
  • Professor D.G. Fraser (Worcester College)
  • Sir Derek Morris (Provost of Oriel College)

The report of the debate in Congregation on 28 November on the amended Legislative Proposal on the new Statute VI concerning Council (see Gazette, 23 November) is set out below.

At the close of the debate the amended Legislative Proposal was rejected on a division [For: 456; against: 730]. As over fifty members of Congregation have requisitioned a postal vote, the rejection is not confirmed. Voting papers will be sent to members of Congregation, and Mr Vice-Chancellor has determined that the latest time and date for the return of voting papers shall be 4 p.m. on 18 December 2006.

Vice-Chancellor

Good afternoon. The business before Congregation is voting on an amended Legislative Proposal. Please be seated.

The procedure for dealing with the amended Legislative Proposal will be as follows. One amendment to the proposal concerning the Chair of Council was approved at the meeting of Congregation on the November. The amended Legislative Proposal showing the changes approved by Congregation has been republished in Supplement (2) to Gazette No. 4788.

In accordance with the regulations governing the conduct of business in Congregation the meeting of Congregation today represents further proceedings on the matter before the House on 14 November, and Congregation will be asked to vote on the amended Legislative Proposal resulting from the approval of the amendment at that meeting of Congregation.

[The Vice-Chancellor then set out the procedure to be followed in the meeting.]

VICE-CHANCELLOR: The debate is now open to the House. Might I call upon the Principal of Linacre, who will speak in support of the proposal. Principal.

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Professor P. Slack (Principal of Linacre College)

Vice-chancellor, members of Congregation. I speak in support of the amended Legislative Proposal and I do so because it revises our structures to fit our current circumstances, and will deliver benefits which protect the University's core purposes and the academic freedom of all its members. It creates a new Council and a new Academic Board, with clear and separate powers and responsibilities. the Council has a balanced membership, and gives proper recognition to the public interest—a legitimate interest—in how we govern ourselves. the Academic Board incorporates the interests of all parts of the collegiate university, including those of the colleges themselves, while respecting their individual autonomy. Congregation remains sovereign, with its powers clarified, and in no way reduced; rather they are made more effective, not least through a Nominations Committee and an Audit and Scrutiny Committee which in important respects are Congregation's agents. the White Paper is correct when it says that the Legislative Proposal successfully reconciles public expectations about the governance of charitable institutions on the one hand with our own 'strong democratic traditions of academic self government.'

Later speakers will no doubt comment on some of these elements and the principles behind them. In the time remaining, I want to try to set out three broader considerations which persuade me that we must approve this balanced proposal now, and move on.

First, it is important to recall how far things have moved since the first Green Paper from the Governance Working Party, in March 2005. Since then there have been two rounds of consultation and a Congregation debate, and the original proposals have been substantially modified. There remain details which I myself am dubious about; that must be true of all of us. But government, and especially self-government, is about consultation, building consensus, and in the end making compromises. I am aware that one person's compromise is another person's woeful desertion of principle. I am conscious also that compromise is antipathetic to the qualities which we rightly value in our teaching and research—independence of mind, criticism, controversy. That is one of the tensions which make academic politics so intriguing, in every sense. But I cannot myself see fundamental principles which have been sacrificed, and not carefully safeguarded here; as Andrew Graham has pointed out, the Working Party has met all the essential points made against its early proposals. The Legislative Proposal now before us is coherent, it meets our needs, and it deserves to command a consensus.

My second point has to do with the need for self-governing institutions to amend their structures from time to time, as circumstances change. The difficulty, of course, is to decide when the time is right. Ten years ago I was Chairman of the General Board, and like Dr Walker a fortnight ago, I naturally looked back with nostalgia to that golden age when a small group of working academics essentially ran the internal affairs of the University, under a benign Council content—by and large—to be the dignified part of the constitution. In so far as that was not a myth—and it was never entirely a myth—it could not last. Among other things, the growth of the University's research activity and research staff made devolution of decision-making and hence the changes following the North Report essential. We are now at a similar moment. It is not just that external expectations and pressures have changed, and need to be acknowledged, though that is the case. Internally, we need to join up the various elements in our corporate body more effectively, and particularly to deal with the unfinished business of properly linking the colleges into it, which is what the Academic Board is designed to do.

My third and final point is that statutes and structures, however necessary and coherent, are skeletons rather than straitjackets. In self-governing institutions especially, they are only as good as the people who populate them and who cooperate to make them work, through free debate and corporate decision-making. In this respect the University has on the whole been fortunate in recent times; and there is no reason why, given goodwill, it should not continue to be so. In all large complex organisations of course there are suspicions of oligarchy and supposedly power-hungry 'Executives'; that is understandable. I have to say, however, that the changing cast of characters who were Pro-Vice-Chancellors and Heads of Division when I was one of them were far from being single-minded, in pursuit of managerial control or in pursuit of anything else. Life might have been a great deal easier if they had been, but it would not have properly reflected, as it did, the diverse interests within this University which have somehow to be reconciled by the people at the centre. To my mind the challenge ahead of us is to make the Academic Board work as effectively for us as the General Board did for the post-Franks generation. The Academic Board is larger than the old General Board, because it is more representative. It will need corporate effort and collective goodwill if it is to do what is it designed to do, and we need to get on with putting all that in place absolutely as soon as we can.

Mr Vice-Chancellor, members, governance has been on our agenda now for the best part of two years. The initial proposals of the Working Party have been significantly modified, and vastly improved. The amended Legislative Proposal gives us a structure we can work with, and one that protects our academic interests and fundamental purposes. I very much hope that Congregation will approve it today. Thank you.

VICE-CHANCELLOR: I now call upon Mr Bamforth who will speak against the proposal. Mr Bamforth.

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Mr N. Bamforth (Queen's College)

Vice-Chancellor, members of Congregation. We are all here today because we want the best for our University. We are proud to work at Oxford, and we want this University to function in the most effective way possible. the question this House must consider, coolly and rationally, is whether the proposed Statute Vi offers us the right way forward. Since any major change to the University's constitution needs to be supported by a clear majority—if it is to work—it should be obvious that any root-and-branch decision needs—if it is to work—to be one that the clear majority is convinced is best. It goes without saying that whatever our decision today, we must all be prepared to work together for the sake of the University—including, Vice-chancellor, in supporting the University executive—once our decision has been taken.

I want to argue that this House should reject the proposed Statue VI, as marginally amended two weeks ago, and that it should do so for two main reasons. First, the Statute will simply not achieve what its supporters claim that it will. And secondly, in so far as it is possible to make logical sense of the content of the Statute, it offers a step back—not a step forward—for Oxford.

The Statute will fail to achieve its stated goals for a variety of reasons. First, it claims to preserve Congregation's sovereignty. Let us test this. In practice, Congregation's ability to exercise its sovereignty is nowadays exercised mainly via its ability to elect representatives to the University Council. There are currently ten elected members, plus the Proctors and Assessor, out of a total of twenty-six. The proposed Statute, however, will reduce the number of directly elected members on key decision-making bodies to a grand total of fifteen plus the Proctors and Assessor, out of an overall total of fifty members on the Council and the Academic Board. Congregation's sovereignty will be diluted.

A second aim of the Statute is that the decision-making be made 'more effectively and timely' or more 'coherent and better informed', involving 'greater transparency and accountability.' As things already stand, it seems likely that Council will make its unreserved agenda and minutes available to members of Congregation; a thoroughly welcome step, but this is something that may occur regardless of the proposed Statute. What the Statute will not do, however, is to install an effective system of checks and balances. The executive will have an in-built majority on the Academic Board; and on the Council, the external members—however hard-working and committed—will by definition not be as closely connected to the life of this University as our elected internal members who can in consequence offer much more rigorous scrutiny.

The Statute is also a recipe for confusion. We are told that the Academic Board will have jurisdiction over 'academic' matters. But the Board will draw its authority from a new, all-encompassing Council, and its decisions can be over-ridden at any time, save in the single and ill-defined area of 'academic merit', which appears to mean appointments, promotions and rather little else. The Statute envisages that the Council will have control of the financial and strategic direction of the University. But which academic matters, including 'academic merit', lack a financial dimension? I cannot think of many.

A third aim of the Statute is to make our constitution consistent with 'external expectations'. But it is far from clear it will do this. As amended at the last debate, the Statute now veers—according to the circumstances—between supposedly 'internal' and supposedly 'external' majorities. A still more important point though is what supposed external 'expectations' are. Every public statement made by HEFCE demonstrates that that institution's real regime—like that of the Charity Commission—is one of comply or explain. Thus far, bizarrely, the University really has not attempted to explain to either body why a democratic structure might place us, as it does, close to the top of the world's league table for universities, and certainly why such a structure makes Oxford and Cambridge the UK's only two really internationally competitive universities. Many colleagues were present, as I was, at a Conference of Colleges' seminar on charity law, presided over by Lord Butler a few weeks ago, at which the London solicitors brought in made clear—time and time again—that the sensible path for colleges under the new charities law is to explain their workings coherently to the Charity Commission: comply or explain—and explanation is something we are rather good at. As Terence Kealey, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham, recently made clear in public, the UK's leading universities hold HEFCE's fate in their hands, politically—not vice versa. Pre-emptive capitulation to the expectations of regulators does not offer a solid foundation for the constitution of our University. Do not be afraid of scare-stories.

The proposed Statute will also leave us worse off. Oxford thrives as it does precisely because it is a diverse, decentralised academic community. The central University executive acts, of course, in good faith, and we need a strong central executive. Such problems as we have experienced in recent years really are best resolved by administrative reform—not by the wholesale ripping up of our present constitution. The Statute tells us nothing about how to make people feel more included within the University committee structures, thus making those structures [work] more effectively, or how to make things work more smoothly between the different layers—divisions, faculties and departments. Indeed, the prospect of the Academic Board—open to being over-ridden at any moment by the Council—merely becoming a further, higher-than-divisional, level of bureaucracy is enormous.

If we are to solve our current problems, the sensible way to do it is not to go over the top and rip up the existing constitution. Think about this in terms of your own academic work: if something does not seem to operate successfully, the logical solution is to search for the first, most local difficulty, and to work outwards in trying to solve the problem; it is not immediately to overturn every parameter of the work you are doing. The Statute will undermine academic democracy without bringing any concomitant benefits—if, that is, democracy could ever be traded on a cost–benefit basis.

As a University, we need to promote solutions that clearly focus on the administrative problems that we currently face. These will involve rationalising the Council committee structure, encouraging Council to become a more robust scrutineer of proposals made by the University executive, drawing more effectively upon external advice (for example by establishing an advisory Council), and improving communications within the University. Proposals in all of these areas can immediately be brought forward if the White Paper is defeated today.

We are, then, faced today with a choice between two ways forward for this University. I have tried to show how the one model, offered in the White Paper, falls short of meeting its goals and is likely to produce yet more bureaucracy, with inadequate checks and balances. The other model, put forward by those of us who oppose the White Paper, is of a democratic and cutting-edge university, an efficient partnership in which decisions are taken with proper advice and after proper consultation, but in such a way as to enhance Oxford's world-leading position. We are the guardians of this University for our successors. It is up to us to treat it with the respect that it deserves. Today, we must—after rational, cool evaluation—reject the defective White Paper and afterwards join together to work for our collective future, in a University of which we will remain rightly proud.

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Mr D.A. Wood (University College and St Hugh's College)

Mr Vice-Chancellor, members of Congregation. I do not wish to comment on the merit or lack of merit of the Legislative Proposal which is before Congregation today. But I am concerned about statements which have been made about the effect which the new Statute VI would have, if it came to force. As the draftsman of the University's current code of Statutes, and, rightly or wrongly, of the proposed Statute VI itself, I would like to make some short remarks about Congregation; the proposed new Council; the election of members of the new Council; and the Academic Board.

First, Congregation. The relationship between Congregation and Council, and between the equivalent bodies of Cambridge, is unique within the universities of the United Kingdom and, I suspect, cannot be found in other places in the world. In the North Commission's Report Congregation was described as a 'sovereign' governing body of the University. This description is picked up in this year's White Paper, and both Professor Slack and Mr Bamforth have used the expression this afternoon. The adjective 'sovereign' is not, in the present context, a term of art, and you will not see it in the Statutes. Instead, in Statute IV, you will find set out, in a long list, the formidable legislative and decision-making powers which Congregation possesses. I personally do not underestimate them. They include the power to accept or reject proposals to change the Statutes, and the power to make decisions binding on the whole University, including Council. Congregation may indeed order Council to bring forward proposals to change the Statutes, even if Council do not support them. This over-riding power is picked up in the present Statute VI, which establishes our present Council. Section 2 states that the Council is bound by all resolutions passed and decisions made by Congregation and it is under a duty to carry them out.

The new Statute VI, upon which we will be voting today, does nothing to alter that relationship. It is word for word the same. Analogies with other forms of government, such as government of the state, are not in my view helpful. We should focus on the actual language of our own Statutes.

Secondly, the new Council. There are four obvious differences between it and the present Council. It is smaller: fifteen down from twenty-five. Secondly, the balance between the lay and internal members changes significantly. In the present Council there are four lay members. The effect of the amendment which Congregation passed on 14 November is slightly complex and takes a little to digest. It is, I think, as follows: within the new Council, for the first five years seven lay members will be balanced against five internal members, plus the Chair of the Conference of Colleges and the Vice-Chancellor, under the presidency of Lord Patten. After that, the Chair of Council will be one of the lay members, and the lay members overall will be in a majority of one, or a minority of one, as you—Congregation—may decide in the light of experience. Thirdly, the new Council will not have the extensive control which the current Council exercises over the academic work of the University. The whole of that is passed to the Academic Board—consisting entirely of internal members of the University—the new Council having a severely restricted supervisory role, to be exercised only in closely defined circumstances. With the greatest respect to Mr Bamforth, I do not agree with his very restrictive interpretation of the expression 'academic merit'. To my mind, according to my understanding of the new Statute VI, the whole of the academic programme—choice of subjects, syllabus, matters which are examined upon, matters which are researched—will be ring-fenced and remain within the remit of the Academic Board. It is not correct, I would say with respect, to say that it is confined solely to questions of academic promotion, with which the new Council will not in any way be concerned. Fourthly, the new Council, unlike the present, is overwhelmingly a body elected by Congregation.

This leads to my third topic, the election of members of Council. Apart from the Chair of the Conference of Colleges, the Vice-Chancellor, and (for five years) Lord Patten, all the members of the Council will be elected by yourselves. I have read some spine-chilling stories in the Oxford Magazine about the type of person who will end up as a lay member of Council. Favourite stage villains include directors of failed public companies such as Railtrack, lawyers on the make, and individuals who hold strong views on what ought and ought not to be studied in a university. The experience of universities in other parts of the world, some of those universities not world-class, has been held up as an example. To get onto the new Council which is proposed for Oxford, our lay members will have to survive a double scrutiny. They must be put up for election by the Nominations Committee, and elected by Congregation.

And finally I have mentioned the fact that the Academic Board is exclusively concerned with academic matters, subject only to a very limited scrutiny by Council. Mr Vice-Chancellor, I do not believe that if this Statute VI is passed, the new regime will vest the governance of Oxford in a remote and unaccountable group of strangers. Thank you.

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Dr B.T. Huffman (Lady Margaret Hall)

Vice-Chancellor, members of Congregation. Nick Bamforth has described the main problems with the proposal, but there is another pervasive theme that has emerged today and over the last month: a theme of fear. There is fear of Government intervention. There is fear of what people outside Oxford might think of us. And there is fear about our ultimate direction as a University.

The fear I find most disturbing though has been expressed to me and some of my friends by some of our younger colleagues, and that is a fear to speak their minds ... and a fear to voice their opinions.

Clearly, in a high-quality teaching and research institution such as ours, fear is not the way forward.

Fortunately today we can vote by secret ballot.

So after we have, hopefully, voted down the White Paper, what is the way forward?

The way forward to me means working for changes that are focused on specific problems we have with our current governance. Some of this is already happening and I think it should simply continue. A radical overthrow of our core democratic principles is not required. Major changes to governance every five to ten years simply cannot be right.

One such evolutionary change has already taken place. The Audit and Scrutiny Committee now exists. It has three newly elected members of Congregation. The reports of this committee are open and available to Congregation, which means these reports will be difficult to ignore. We did not have to alter any part of our direct representation on any university body to accomplish this reform.

Though the core of the White Paper is flawed regarding its Council and Academic Board, it does have some good ideas round the edges. There certainly is an important role to be played by lay membership in Oxford's governance. Indeed, it strikes me that having lay members on the Finance Committee could provide us with the kind of financial oversight that we require. After defeating the package as a whole we should implement the good aspects of the White Paper and move on. We learned two weeks ago from Professor Cooper that Council has recently reviewed its procedures. Surely a similar review of all committees of Council should take place. After all, Council must rely on its committees to scrutinise proposals in detail, and much of the problems seem to lie there. A close look at whether Council committees are functioning in the ways they are needed is in order.

The White Paper's proposal for an elected Nominating Committee to select lay members on Council, subject to the approval of Congregation, is a good one. It should be applied to our current Council, which I understand has no real procedure for selecting lay members.

The CUC guidelines recommend that a ruling Council should have a lay Chair. This seems very reasonable and might improve the Council's ability to scrutinise the work of the executive. This could be enacted once the Nominating Committee has gained the confidence of Congregation. I think we need reforms of this type, so that Congregation does not need to meet like this very often.

My primary point here is the following: I am not against change, but I want change for the better. The White Paper package as a whole does not offer something better, but parts of it can be used to work for us and work well.

Consequently, I ask Congregation to vote down this White Paper, so that we can begin to work together toward a better system than we currently have, and a far better system than exists in the White Paper. Thank you.

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Professor J. Welsh (Somerville College)

Mr Vice-Chancellor, members of Congregation. I have watched the debate on governance at a distance for some time now, and I must confess that some of the intricate points of it have made my eyes glaze over. But it has become abundantly clear to me how important it is for academics who are still relatively new to this institution, and have potentially another two decades of working here, to support the changes that are being proposed in the White Paper as a first step towards bringing reform to the University of Oxford.

And the first point I want to stress is this: that while it is important for Oxford to respond to the accountability expectations outside—and it is entirely right those expectations exist—the main argument for the White Paper, in my view, does not rest there. We should all want these improvements and be driving them ourselves—in order to make this community even stronger, and build on its tradition of democratic self-government.

Like many of you here today, I have taught in other institutions. I have a global network from my research. I sit on the board of a foundation in Canada—I understand the role that lay members can play. Like many of you, I also have options as to where I could teach and research. And so the question for me is, What keeps me here? What makes me appreciate Oxford? And, specifically, how is it that the White Paper actually improves on the things that matter to me as a University Lecturer—someone who is supposed to flit effortlessly between the college and the department, but who, in reality, often faces frustrating administrative anomalies, sub-optimal decision-making, and a surprising level of tolerance for conflicts of interest and inequities? And with respect to the previous speaker, I do not think these things can be improved upon through incrementalism.

I was struck in the last debate by one speaker, who claimed that the new governance structure was proposing some kind of centralised, executive-driven model—at a time in the world of business and management, the trend was just the opposite: towards decentralisation. He cited Google and Microsoft as examples of these innovative, creative organisational pods who were now capturing the imagination of management gurus. And he claimed that Oxford's colleges bear a striking resemblance to such 'pods'.

Now, let me stress—not least because my Principal is sitting right behind me—that I am hugely grateful for my college environment and ethos. It is one of the things that keeps me here. But with all due respect to the speaker I referred to, this ain't no Pala Alto! When I find myself trying work at the interface of the college and the University, I do not think, 'Gee, this is just like working in Google'.

No, ladies and gentlemen, there is an urgent need for Oxford to improve upon its research environment for all of us. And there is a vital role for lay advisers in helping us to do just that. It is a mystery to me why some imagine that Congregation could fail to find seven people from this lay community—from our vast network of alumni—who possess the acumen required of Council members and who would loyally serve in Oxford's best interests. If we could not, we would have no one to blame but ourselves. To hold out the prospect of the University under the proposals before us, becoming what has been described in the newspaper on the weekend as being some sort of 'tame quango of government run by businessmen' is in my mind a very sweeping insult to anyone inside or outside Oxford who wishes us well.

So before I close, let me just give you two quick examples of how I think the White Paper gets Oxford closer to solving some of the problems that would actually affect my day-to-day existence as a University Lecturer.

First, the newly configured Council. All academics have a direct interest in the professionalism of the University's central administration. On a daily basis the inefficiencies of the University impinge upon our academic lives. The White Paper actually introduces expertise on Council and much stronger scrutiny, and, in that sense, by upping the members—the number of independent Council members—it is far from conformist: it is actually quite radical. And moreover, the Vice-Chancellor is no longer the Chair of that Council—he, or perhaps she one day, will be forced to account to Council for the performance of the central administration. This is a very important shift and it will 'raise the game' of Oxford's central administration.

One final point. In reading the White Paper, it is hard to come away thinking that Congregation is losing its power. We can do a numbers game of how many votes, but I think when you read it closely you will see that actually its power—but more importantly, its authority—is actually being enhanced when you look at how the proposed bodies work together. There is less chance of us shirking from our responsibilities, and so all of us are actually being called upon to take our duties of self-government more seriously than we were. If you do not care or if you do not want to, then do not vote for this motion. But if you do, and if you want Oxford to continue to be a first-class environment for teaching and research, then I urge you to support this motion and the White Paper. Thank you.

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Mr L.A. Whitehead (Nuffield College)

Mr Vice-Chancellor, members of Congregation. There are at least a few of us who wish to contribute to this debate, but who are most reluctant to take sides. I put myself down as an opponent of the amended Statute because the issue is not one that I can side-step by abstaining. But I want a better system of governance—one that would incorporate many features of the proposal before us—and I want us to reunite and to move on from this unhappy period of division. We need a way forward that generates trust and cooperation within our ranks, and that inspires the watching world with confidence in our judgement, and in our accountability to legitimate external concerns.

Unfortunately there is no straightforward route from here to there. The supporters of the amended Statute will say that if they can just edge past the know-nothing opposition today—or if necessary on a later postal ballot—the deed will be done. All the current turmoil can be put behind us, the Government and the press will look elsewhere, and the new structure will be quickly put to work. If these reforms do prove a little defective—as after all previous North reforms did prove—those who support the Statute might add that the new structure can then be patched or amended incrementally without yet another grand debate. Unfortunately, this kind of forecast does not inspire me with much confidence. Will HEFCE and the Treasury really leave us alone, having secured our reluctant obeisance? Or will they be emboldened to demand still further compliance, particularly if it seems that Congregation might still use the power remaining to it to counteract continuing pressures from external sources? Does the amended Statute really allow us to move on, or does it contain so many unresolved contradictions and ambiguities that we will have to return time and time again to further debates about the alternative interpretations of its meaning? Am I alone, for example, in worrying over the provision that could pit Congregation directly against the decision of a Council chaired by our highest—and hitherto most unifying ' authority: our Chancellor? Above all, will this new governance structure, if set in place, inspire the trust and confidence of those many dissenters who have turned out to support our venerable traditions of self-government? For all these reasons I fear a narrow and partisan victory for the proponents of this drastic reform.

But there are also good grounds to fear the possible consequences of its defeat. One respected colleague has warned that we could lose all HEFCE funding—and would then need to raise an additional £4bn in endowment merely to stay where we are—in addition to which we would still be subject to the perhaps pitiless demands of the new Charities Act. Another—not completely frivolous—scare-story is that we could face a Commission of Inquiry and the rewriting of the Oxford and Cambridge Act of 1923. These are the 'nuclear options' to which, it is said, by some, that we must defer. But if the UK Government is really set on using such a blunderbuss against the country's two most successful universities, then the responsibility for our future lies outside this body. In that extreme event, perhaps we have no choice but to stand by our achievements, and—if the sovereign power so dictates—take our punishment. But much more likely, we would need to explain that an ancient and collegiate university is a conglomeration of educational charities, each with its own Statutes, objectives and separate regulators. HEFCE and the Charity Commission would not be properly discharging their responsibilities to the public if they disregarded the specific implications for the governance of such a distinctive structure. Therefore the consequences of voting no today that most concern me are more local, and more within our control. Do we really wish to reject so much that is thoughtful and constructive in the deliberations of the Working Party? If rejecting the Statute means relapsing into an unreformed state, is that not even worse than accepting it? So, I am in a quandary.

On balance, however, I shall vote against the Statute, in the hope that if it fails we can all come together and try again.

But if it passes, we should also all come together and make the best of it.

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Dr J.F. Wheater (University College)

I was Senior Proctor from 2004 to 2005, and as a consequence of that a member of the Governance Working Party. Mr Vice-Chancellor, members of Congregation: this is a great University, living in complex times. As the sovereign body of this institution we have a duty to ensure that the governance system is one in which everyone working here and everyone dealing with the institution can have confidence. Stewardship for the future lies in our hands.

A Council chaired by the Vice-Chancellor, as is currently the case, cannot rigorously perform the function of calling the executive to account. So the proposal separates the roles of Vice-Chancellor and Chairman of Council. By requiring that the Chairman not be an employee of the wider University we can be assured that there is indeed complete separation of these two roles.

Our present financial arrangement, whereby the annual budget is essentially approved by those who drew it up, is dangerous. Under the Legislative Proposal the Academic Board would draw up the budget and the Council would approve it. With the disinterest afforded by a substantial number of external members Council would be able to discharge this responsibility with complete probity and ensure that the long term financial health of the University is not jeopardised by short-term manoeuvrings.

The external members of Council must, of course, be the right people. The Nomination Committee, on which elected members of Congregation will have a substantial majority, has two roles. Firstly to identify, and obtain Congregation's approval for, the criteria for external members. And secondly, to demonstrate that those who are put forward to Congregation to vote upon, satisfy the criteria and have the talents, the sympathies, the energy and the commitment to serve the University well. This is not selling out to big business, poodling to the Government, or kow-towing to HEFCE or any other kind of loss of academic control; it is simply Congregation ensuring that Council has the tools for the job.

The Academic Board will consist entirely of internal members and be responsible for matters of academic policy, including planning and the annual budget. Clause 37 lays out very clearly the relationship between the Board and Council. Council may not instigate academic policy or interfere in academic judgements.

In particular Council may not dictate to the Board how any budgetary constraint is to be met. So it is the Board which must weigh up the merits of a new building against refurbishing an old one; or decide the relative funding between academic services and the divisions.

The colleges undeniably play a substantial part in our academic activity and to do so they must receive a share of the income which comes to the University. It is a matter of principle that such a major constituent of the institution should be properly represented on the body responsible for academic policy at the highest level and that this representation should be explicit. So there will be ten members of the Academic Board with a hinterland of experience of, and respect within, the colleges. They will be elected by a mechanism which is one of the topics of the current wide consultation by the Conference of Colleges. This is not a threat to college independence; it is representation, not subjugation.

Yes, the Academic Board is, at thirty-four members, quite large, but no more so than the average college governing body. The very fact that the membership of the Board will have comprehensive knowledge of the academic business of the University is the best possible guarantee that its decisions will not be based on a partial understanding or narrow agenda.

Will the Academic Board manage or restrict you and me, is it an assault upon our academic freedom? No, of course it is not. We are free to pursue whatever lines of enquiry we judge fit. But we grow old, as you can see, particularly members of the Governance Working Party, and we move on—some 150 members of Congregation leave every year; our laboratories become obsolete; our libraries fill up (with books we hope rather than water). We are not replaced with carbon copies of ourselves because we ourselves have moved the frontiers of knowledge on. The University is in a constant state of renewal and regeneration. It is precisely the current absence of a body able to take an informed and comprehensive overview that poses a threat to our future academic pre-eminence and the academic freedom of those yet to come.

The Legislative Proposal is the result of three rounds of consultation and a great deal of thought and hard work by many people. It offers a governance system which is fair to all parts of the University and robust to whatever the future may hold. I urge you to support it.

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Professor G.D.W. Smith (Trinity College)

Vice-Chancellor, members of Congregation. Like every other speaker today on both sides of the debate I want this University to move forward. I want change. But in the immortal words of British Rail, I believe that the proposal before us today represents the wrong kind of change.

There are two key questions. The first concerns a principle. Do we wish to see a fundamental change to our existing system of governance? The second question is more practical. Even if we accepted the principle of governance change, would these proposals do the job that we need done? My answer to each of these questions is 'no'.

First let me deal with the issue of principle. The proposals before us involve a radical and irrevocable change in the way the University is run. The concept of a self-governing community of scholars would be fatally undermined, in my view. The amendment which was passed two weeks ago really does not help at all in this respect. It takes us to the very edge of a precipice, and it leaves us hanging there, holding on to our democratic principles by our fingernails. As an engineer I find this a rather unstable position to be in. I believe it is the worst of all possible worlds that is now before us. Paradoxically, at the same time that we expose ourselves to greatly increased external influence on policy-making, we would also be handing over a lot more power on routine matters to our Central Executive. Simply, a Council that meets only once every two months cannot possibly run the day-to-day business of the University: the Executive would end up doing it by proxy.

Have we really reached the end of the road for self-government? Are we going to throw in the towel so easily, purely on the basis of vague fears of what might (improbably) happen if we do not? We are one of the very best universities in the world. Are we no longer capable of running our own affairs in a satisfactory manner? I do not accept this hypothesis. I believe we should continue with vigorous efforts to reform and modernise our existing systems, rather than risk the precious freedoms which have stood us in such good stead for so long.

Now to the more down-to-earth question. Would these reforms work in practice? The more I read the White Paper, the less I believe they would. The document is poor in its logic, and it lacks any proper evidence base for its conclusions. The proposals put before us are simply not good enough to accept. On accountability, for example, the paper fails to show that the replacement of a majority of knowledgeable and experienced internal Council members by external, part-time members would improve accountability in any way at all. Another main issue is the difficulty caused by the present system of dual governance. The White Paper openly admits, in paragraph 53—which is a key paragraph and I recommend you have another look at this—paragraph 53 says that there is nothing that the University centrally can do about the dual governance system. By Statute, the colleges are autonomous bodies, and will remain so. Neither the proposed new Council, nor the new Academic Board, would have the powers needed to address this particular issue. The will to reform has got to come from within, and no amount of rearranging the administrative furniture will change this. I am also concerned, as previous speakers were, about the subordination of the Academic Board to the new Council. Despite the gloss put on it by its original draftsman, the distinguished Principal of Lady Margaret Hall [should read the former Principal of St Hugh's], I am afraid we have to go by what is actually written down. What is written in this Statute about the Academic Board is that its field of autonomy is only in 'matters which involve an assessment of academic merit'. Now how do we interpret this? It is rather an opaque phrase, but unfortunately we have recent evidence coming from a certain Antipodean university which is just in the process of closing down a major department, and is not allowing its Academic Board to discuss this. It has deemed the closure of a major department to be a financial matter, rather than an academic matter. So, I believe that what is written down about the terms of reference of the limited autonomy of the Academic Board is a hostage to fortune, and a dangerous one.

Now, as far as governance is concerned, I do have some modest external experience of corporate governance. I have been the non-executive Chairman of a UK public company. I fully recognise the valuable role of non- executive directors, not just in finance but in audit, in personnel, in remuneration, in scrutiny, in policy development. Yes, by all means let us have more external involvement—and not just what it says in the White Paper, externals on Council—let us have them on main committees. Particularly, there is a wealth of external financial advice that we could draw on, and I would like to see that strengthened. Let us boost the Educational Policy and Standards Committee and involve the colleges directly in that. Let us have that committee discussing educational policy for a change instead of nit-picking over the details of exam regulations. There are many, many things we can do to improve the existing governance. Let us do it. Let us not go down this road of turning over what we have.

Oxford and Cambridge are distinctive. Long may they remain so. I believe Council must think again. Thank you.

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Dr S.E. Clark (Merton College and University College)

Mr Vice-Chancellor, fellow members of Congregation. I wish to speak in favour of the White Paper.

Let me begin with my own personal perspective of Oxford. I feel enormously privileged to work in an institution that is as intellectually vibrant as Oxford. As a member of college, I work in the company of leading scholars across all disciplines; in my faculty (Music), I work with excellent teachers, who are world-class researchers, renowned composers, and internationally acclaimed performers. Working with people of this calibre is truly inspirational.

But let us also remind ourselves of the typical conditions in which we carry out our teaching and research. Our teaching facilities are often inadequate, our financial resources for research are under constant strain, and our ability to attract the best graduate students is often compromised by a lack of internal funding (especially, in my opinion, for UK students), and our administrative commitment at both the University and our respective colleges is inherently greater than at non-collegiate universities. The pressures on the Oxford academic are, to say the least, incredible. And still, Oxford is known for delivering research and teaching at a world-class level.

Now, the objectives of the governance reform are laid out on page 2 of the White Paper. And the first stated objective is, and I quote, 'To strengthen Council's capacity to foster the best possible conditions for teaching and research.' Now that caught my attention. And it is with that in mind that I read and scrutinised the rest of the White Paper.

It is my opinion that the White Paper proposes a well-designed structure of governance to meet this objective. I can see this, for example, in the design of the Academic Board, which will consist of representatives from the numerous ways in which academics can be part of Oxford: therefore its members will come from divisions, colleges, students, contract research staff and other members of Congregation, who are again balanced across the divisions. For someone such as myself—who is at once an employee of the University and at two different colleges—it seems right that when the Academic Board meets, it will think about academic issues from the multiple perspectives of 'being me' or 'being us' at Oxford.

Finally, I would like to address the issue of the composition of Council.

Now, I take seriously the concerns of those who feel that Council might be filled with external businessmen—or women—who have no understanding of what we do, who might threaten our academic freedom, and who will have little time to devote to matters before Council. But we are not looking for people like that. Indeed, the White Paper gives Congregation the responsibility of electing external members to Council, and we have three opportunities to get our selection right.

So first, as the White Paper says on page 47, the Nominations Committee will comprise eleven members, of which either seven or eight will be elected from Congregation. So clearly, it is important that we elect members of Congregation onto the Nominations Committee who will champion those external members who will best champion us. Second, on page 25 of the White Paper it says, and I quote, 'The Nominations Committee will invite members of Congregation as well as college governing bodies to suggest possible candidates for lay membership of Council.' Again, it is imperative that we, Congregation, exercise our right to put forward suitable external candidates. Third, when the Nominations Committee actually nominates a candidate it is Congregation who has the vote on whether or not to endorse it.

So, if you have been wondering who these external members are likely to be, the answer is: it is up to us to decide.

In short, the mechanisms are in place in the White Paper so that we can find the right external members, who value what we do and who will join the internal members, in meeting the objective to, and I quote again, 'Strengthen Council's capacity to foster the best possible conditions for teaching and research.

I urge you to vote in favour of the White Paper. Thank you.

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Professor A.J. Ryan (Warden of New College)

The message is simple. Say thank you very much to the Working Party: and send what we have back for a bit more work. Council needs two vital tweaks, and the Academic Board needs a rethink. When they have rethought they should bring it back in instalments, because we can get it right if we do it in bits, and we can get enough support to make it work. That is the message—in five minutes I will see how far I can get in explaining it.

Both sides have oversold the legislation: it is not the death of democracy, and it will not do much good. It does not eliminate (this is quite serious actually—I mean insofar as running universities can be—it is) the cluttered committee system, which is the real horror of Oxford; it will not improve coordination, because the device proposed is clumsy and it just will not work; what it can do is improve transparency and accountability. The people who have the best reason to vote no this afternoon and send it back are the supporters. This University has one of the best politics departments in the world—sometimes it does not show. If it is improved, it will be approved overwhelmingly and it will work; if it squeaks through in its present state, it will not be accepted and it will not work, and the last two years of the Vice-Chancellor's time here will be as acrimonious as the first two.

So, why does it need tweaking? The point of Council is essentially to hold the executive to account; having the Vice-Chancellor appearing without the payroll vote in front of Council is a good thing. It needs two tweaks. First, it must operate in broad daylight. This is not the Wellington Square mode where even the lavatory paper is stamped 'strictly private and confidential'; secondly, the Chancellor must not chair it. He is supposed to be the executive's friend, and what you have to have is a Chairman who sets the agenda that the Vice-Chancellor cannot control. As several speakers have said, the rest is up to us, the electorate. HEFCE is an irrelevance. What is going to happen if it gets through is still spectacularly non-compliant with HEFCE notions of best practice. What they want is the appearances. More than the appearances means a fight and they do not want it.

The present system, which is what you are comparing it with, has no claims on our loyalty. Council watched for four years, after 2000, while the Finance Division self-destructed; it did not lift a finger. It has never held the Vice-Chancellor to account for anything. It allowed Audit Committee reports to go undiscussed. Something better is needed. There are, of course, other ways than what is on offer, but we need something and this is good enough so long as we have published agendas, real minutes, and an energetic Audit Committee. So, vote against the legislation on Council until transparency is guaranteed; then vote for it. If we have to send it back and make the Working Party unhappy, I am terribly sorry, but getting these things right takes time.

The Academic Board, to my eye, will not do at all. Ralph Walker is quite right that we were wrong to ditch the General Board. Council should have worked, but it has not and we need to revive something like the General Board. The new version does not do it. Stuffing it with the executive turns it into a device for transmitting the Vice-Chancellor's orders to all and sundry; and as Alison Richard and Richard Sykes have lately been saying—though I cannot imagine why—giving orders does not work. You need a board where people bring an understanding of academic life to the table and try to reach an agreement on how to run a complicated institution. Much though I love my fellow Heads of House, I think adding ten seats for the Conference of Colleges is plain dotty. Lord Butler calls it integrated decision-making, but that goes back to Gosplan; the truth will be bickering over small change. We need coordination, not integration; coordination needs a dozen non- hysterical persons to do strategy, and a less daft version of the JRAM to share out the public funding; that is it. Then we can do our job. Clogging the Academic Board will not work.

Forget Utopia. Focus on making the management visible and accountable. Send it back and vote yes when it comes back better.

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Dr J. Robertson (St Hugh's College)

Mr Vice-Chancellor, members of Congregation, colleagues. I wish to speak for the amended governance reform proposal; but I would like to make it clear at the outset I do so on the premise indicated recently by your predecessor, Sir Colin Lucas (and put in slightly different terms by the Principal of Linacre): that there is no 'right' form of governance.

At an earlier stage in the consultation on governance reform, it is said that Social Sciences, or perhaps it was that Politics Department in particular, replied stating that its views should be paid particular attention 'because social scientists know about governance'. Well, I do not think any historian would be quite so confident about that: if we know anything it is that even the most carefully considered systems of governance will have flaws, and that the only certain rule of institutional change is that it will have unintended consequences.

Nevertheless in a democratic society like the United Kingdom, institutions which serve the public have to adapt to changing circumstances—they have to respond to the expectations on them. And it is those expectations that I would like to talk briefly about, not necessarily because they are the most important factor, but because they do matter.

The opponents of the proposals discount those expectations. Their view that we must consider the governance proposals on their demerits, regardless of external pressures, has obvious attractions. But no university of consequence, let alone this University, can afford to ignore public expectations. Oxford, like Cambridge, is an integral part of British society, and it is largely funded by it, by public and by private means. The high level of scrutiny and expectation to which we are presently subject by the press and by Government may be exaggerated (and it may exaggerate our importance); but it is not illegitimate.

The current expectation is that we should give a more visible role to outsiders, to laymen and women, in the running of our affairs. This is not simply a matter of charity law, or letters from HEFCE. It reflects a wider demand for transparency in institutions which receive public and privately donated money—the same demand for transparency which inspires those within the University who seek more information about what Council is doing.

Even if no system of governance will be perfect, the proposed reforms do seem to me to meet the expectation of greater transparency without sacrificing our independence.

We do need an Academic Board which can concentrate on academic policy, take decisions about academic priorities, and thus set the agenda for Council. It may not have all the virtues which Robin Briggs, in a thoughtful piece, recently identified in the old General Board; but I am not sure that a board consisting entirely of 'ordinary working academics' is feasible any longer. As, in a small way, I know to my cost, taking any substantial part in administration has become incompatible with being an 'ordinary working academic'. We now need some academics to hold full-time offices for longer periods of time, and some of them will rightly be on the Academic Board.

For its part, Council will have the lay membership which transparency expects—but will be bound in ways which preserve Congregation's power. Moreover lay members whom we have chosen to engage with our affairs are far more likely to be our allies than the stooges of outside interests. On the contrary, I think this proposal enables us to turn public expectation to our advantage, by giving us the potentially powerful lay allies while keeping academic policy making, and therefore academic independence, for academics, through the Academic Board.

But because public expectation is not illegitimate, we also have to face the consequences of defying it.

I quite agree that it is impossible to predict what those consequences might be. Real external intervention to change our structures is a possibility. It would not be the first time it had been tried, and our ability to resist (now, as in the past) might be limited.

But of more concern to me is public regard for what we do: how we teach and conduct scholarship. And I think here some parts of the University are more vulnerable than others. I guess the sciences would be less affected: there is sufficient public and governmental commitment to scientific and medical research.

But the humanities are another matter: they would be vulnerable. I think they already are, in the face of a government culture sceptical of 'traditional' subjects. I think the humanities are the likeliest scapegoats for defiance of legitimate public expectations.

If those are the possible consequences, then I think it is dangerously self-indulgent to undermine ourselves by a defiance of legitimate public expectation—when we have the opportunity to turn public expectation to our advantage.

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Dr J. Tseng (St Edmund Hall)

Mr Vice-Chancellor, members of Congregation. We have been told time and time again that in order to satisfy external expectations, including those of the Charities Act and HEFCE, we should bow before 'best practice' in the sector. Specifically, we should follow the corporate model, with its lay-dominated Council, espoused in the 2004 CUC Guide.

This is not actually correct.

We have to be careful to distinguish between recommendations and requirements. HEFCE clearly recommends a certain form of governance; it is far from requiring it. Instead, all of its public pronouncements are along the lines of what a HEFCE spokesperson said earlier this month to The Times Higher: 'It is not our practice to force changes in these areas. We prefer to work alongside universities.'

It is true that HEFCE and the Government have considerable powers that can be exercised in extraordinary circumstances, but we would really have to think that the universe does revolve around us to believe that the current situation qualifies. Cambridge rejected this style of reform three years ago and has yet to feel the stick. And we know from HEFCE's Annual General Meeting a few weeks ago that the Board—HEFCE's policy-making body—has not discussed Oxford's governance. The letter which we heard read out in Congregation last time is only from the CEO; if it is being treated as policy, then what we have is the Funding Council having problems with the very structure it is trying to push on us.

Now, of course, this does not mean we are off the hook. We may not mistake the CUC Guide for Holy Scripture, but it still contains useful principles. For instance, 'individual members and governing bodies themselves should at all times conduct themselves in accordance with accepted standards of behaviour in public life which embrace selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership.' The principle seems unarguably appropriate for Oxford.

But where does this leave the corporate model and its lay-dominated Council? It seems to me an implementation detail, one possible method of achieving, or at least appearing to achieve, some of the principles just listed. Now a 'CUC fundamentalist' might uncritically elevate an implementation detail to a general principle. But of course, fundamentalists love a 'litmus test' to see if you are on the straight and narrow.

Now, the analogy between a university and business corporation is understandably familiar and comfortable for businesspeople, but it is hardly the only way to look at a university. Some have argued that we are more like a network of partnerships. Now all these analogies do have some use, but we do have to be careful. Michael Shattock, a former long-serving Registrar at Warwick and the main author of the earlier editions of the CUC Guide, writes in his book, Managing Good Governance in Higher Education, 'Academic organisation and the governance of academic structures are under-researched subjects and simplistic notions that improvements can be obtained by a simple carryover of a structure from one institution to another are fraught with difficulty.'

He seems particularly concerned about the corporate model, and how its prevalence in the regulation of higher education 'concentrates attention and the conduct of business at the governing body level on process to the detriment of consultation, participation and decision-making ... at lower levels of governance where academics and others are involved.' There is indeed a connection between the style of reform and the loss of participation, and it is for a model which is assessed by its own practitioners to have had only 'mixed results'—this actually a Vice-Chancellor writing recently to the Financial Times. Mr Shattock goes so far as to say that 'It is important that the easy analogy with the corporate model is resisted'.

So we find that not only is HEFCE not publicly anxious about changing our governance, but that the very model of governance is itself being challenged. This is not to minimise our need for reform, but only to emphasise that there is not a single model for implementing the principles, such as accountability and openness, which can be found in the CUC Guide. So we should reform but on the basis of what we believe is best for us as an academic community, taking full advantage of our peculiar strengths. I wrap up with one last from Mr Shattock: 'Much more important in modern university governance than structure is good communication, trust and a sense of participation in decision-making'. So I say, if Congregation votes down this inappropriate corporate model today, it is not inconceivable that tomorrow's 'good practice' manual will be written here.

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Professor I.S. McLean (Nuffield College)

Mr Vice-Chancellor, we are now at the heart of the matter. I agree with the previous speaker that HEFCE is central, and therefore I entirely disagree with my colleague from that most eminent Politics Department, Alan Ryan, that HEFCE is irrelevant. We are about to become a regulated charity under the new Charities Act and HEFCE will be our regulator. We now all know what HEFCE thinks—not just the Chief Executive's letter, but the earlier audit report, which is in the White Paper. HEFCE expects us to provide for an external majority of charity trustees. Our board of trustees must between them have the skills required to protect the charity's interests and the interests of beneficiaries. This is nothing to do with corporations, this is to do with charities. English trust law has demanded since 1734 that trustees must be unpaid. The Charity Commission permits few exceptions.

At the start, Nick Bamforth said, quite rightly, that we must 'comply or explain'. He failed to add that our chances of an explanation which says we must remain different from every other of the 500,000 charities in the United Kingdom, is unlikely to convince any regulator. If we tried to fight our regulator, we would lose. It would not be an heroic failure. We would have almost no supporters outside this room. Out of the 130 charities that HEFCE will regulate, 128 already have a board of trustees with an external majority. Suppose we told HEFCE to go to hell. We still want to be a charity. We would still be regulated, if not by HEFCE then directly by the Charity Commission. They would still demand unpaid external trustees. Do we expect our largest single research funder, the Wellcome Trust, to applaud our fight against trusteeship? What sort of constitution do you think the Wellcome Trust has? And all the other medical charities, and all the social science charities that play such a valuable part in funding our research? The siren voices of defiance in the Oxford Magazine include two retired Cambridge professors and—as already mentioned—the Vice-Chancellor of Buckingham, Terence Kealey, who writes warmly, 'We are in this together.' Actually, Terence, we are not. His Council includes at least six external members, two of them nominated by Bucks County Council, with the power to coopt up to sixteen others. If you think we are in this together, Terence, please change your own Council before advising us on ours.

The retired Cambridge professors think we should shelter behind the Oxford and Cambridge Acts of 1571 and 1923. But these Acts are about different things. They do not prevent the University from becoming a regulated charity. We could use them to organise ourselves as something other than a charitable trust; but we would then lose all the benefits of charitable status.

We should do what we think is right, not just what HEFCE demands. And here it helps if you read the White Paper on the precise point of combining a workers' co-operative, which we have been for 800 years, and a charitable trust, which we have also been for 800 years. As a workers' co-op, we must have one-person one-vote sovereignty. And as a charitable trust we must have accountable trustees. I believe the White Paper squares this circle very ingeniously.

It does preserve the sovereignty of Congregation. As has been said, Congregation will set the criteria for the skills required by our board of trustees. It will elect all bar two of the trustees. Its power to vote no confidence in Council is made explicit. Congregation does not have to meet often to be effective. Just knowing it is there is sufficient check—look at today. Two of my four Congregation votes in twenty-four years were cast against the executive of the day, which lost. One of them was on an honorary degree, and the other on the location of the Business School. I do not regret these votes.

But there is more. Section 37, as already mentioned by Derek Wood and others, gives the academic workers and peasants of Oxford University their Supreme Soviet, in the shape of the Academic Board. Some colleagues have expressed a fear, based on American, or in an earlier speech, New Zealand experience, that external trustees would inhibit the University's academic freedom. It seems to me that section 37 could not be more plain to the contrary: it says 'Council ... shall not substitute its own judgement for that of the Academic Board on any question which involves an assessment of academic merit.' Therefore, like Lenin at the Finland Station, I say All Power to the Soviets, and support the amended resolution.

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Dr F. Pirie (Wolfson College)

Vice-Chancellor, members of Congregation. 'Why', it has been asked, 'is Oxford an excellent university, and why does it continue to attract excellent academics?' These are important questions, indicating what should be strengthened and preserved during any process of reform.

As a junior academic I cannot answer these questions, but I can suggest some reasons that Research Fellows might be attracted by Oxford, over and above its sheer academic standards.

Of those I could list, three stand out. The first is simply the college system, which provides a basis for academic encounters beyond my discipline—broadening my academic outlook in a valuable way, as well as providing welcome social functions.

The second is that the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, where I work, is small and still relatively autonomous, factors which we think contribute significantly to excellent relations amongst staff and students and to a productive research and teaching environment—although this autonomy was already undermined in the last round of governance reforms, and we fear for the future.

The third is the excellence of the libraries—not just the Bodleian, but the small, specialist libraries, where I do much of my research, and whose open-shelf collections significantly supplement the Internet-based resources of the Bodleian. Again, their continued existence seems threatened in the Corporate Plan.

I could go on, but what has struck me is that these are all features of Oxford's decentralised, heterogeneous structures.

At the same time some of the least satisfactory aspects of my working life (even as a Research Fellow) are found in the administrative requirements of superior bodies—rules about research ethics, methodology, teaching, recruitment, designed for a wider academic body and badly adapted to my particular research discipline or teaching environment.

I am under no illusions that the University structures are perfect. Decentralisation itself creates problems in governance, especially when efficiency, transparency and accountability are goals. The process of reform is probably never-ending, and should never end. But what I wanted to see in this White Paper was a good strategy for managing that decentralisation: clear statements of problems currently faced by the University and concrete proposals for overcoming them; clear statements of the current strengths of the University and proposals for supporting them. I have looked for those in vain. I am worried that the move towards centralisation will throw the baby out with the bath-water.

Vice-Chancellor, I would like to have come here today to support a set of proposals clearly destined to strengthen and improve the University of which I feel privileged to be a part. And I am sorry that I cannot support this White Paper. Thank you.

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Dr M.J. Spence (St Catherine's College)

Congregation, Vice-Chancellor. As an academic and administrator, I was very ambivalent about the second Green Paper. There were features of the new governance arrangements that I found very attractive. I liked the idea of a small Council, with at least a large number of members who had no direct personal interest in the conduct of University business. A body like that really could hold University officers accountable, and keep a keen eye on our financial affairs. I had seen enough of the University administration to know there had been occasions when hard questions had not been asked to the University's very great cost. I also thought that lay Council members could be effective advocates, advocates in the world at large, advocates whose objectivity would give them a credibility that we sometimes lack in arguing our own corner. And finally, as a lawyer, I support the principle that charities ought not normally to be governed by those who stand to benefit from them.

However, for all these benefits of its proposed system, there was at least one feature of the Green Paper that made me nervous. It seemed wrong that Council, in considering a decision of the Academic Board, should be able to 'make any ... decision or give any directions ... which [it] thought fit.' The Academic Board would, after all, be the body at the heart of our decision-making: it would be not least the place where departments and colleges could plan together. I wanted a small Council with a decent number, even a majority, of lay members. I wanted it to exercise audit, oversight, and advocacy functions. But the Green Paper seemed to give Council more power over the work of the Academic Board than was appropriate.

It is because the White Paper effectively meets these concerns, and does so in a way that preserves the best features of the Green Paper, that I so very strongly urge Congregation to accept it. Under the White Paper, Council does not have the broad power that was proposed in the Green Paper, far less the power that has been suggested today. Section 37 of the draft Statute ensures that it cannot initiate policy on any matter within the broad remit of the Academic Board. It can only accept, reject, or refer back the board decisions. Now that is a significant rebalancing of the authority of the two bodies. If Council rejects or refers back a decision, it must give written reasons. It cannot second-guess the Academic Board on any question involving academic merit: that is, almost everything in the life of the University outside the management of our financial resources. So, for example, Council could say, on explicitly articulated written grounds, that we need to reduce our overall expenditure. But the question of how that was to be done would always involve academic merit—at least in any university that I know or am proud to be a part of. Council could not determine precisely how such savings should be made. It simply would not have the power.

Now, of course, of course, Council and the Academic Board could disagree about their relative jurisdictions. They could disagree about what a question was involving academic merit. Constitutions are not self-interpreting—it is why lawyers, particularly constitutional ones, are so rich. But any dispute between them would be for Congregation to resolve, and Council would always be aware that its decisions could be overturned by Congregation, and that it could, far more easily than now, be removed from office. These would be important checks on a failure to respect the authority of the Academic Board in any dispute between the two bodies.

I urge you, then, to vote for the proposals contained in the White Paper. And I urge you to do so precisely on the accountability grounds that Professor Alan Ryan said were so important. We can talk about confidentiality. We can talk about ways [in which], in the last two or three years, the whole business of the University has been opened up, and I have watched that happen. We can talk about the relationship between the Chancellor, who is, after all, elected by Convocation, and the Vice-Chancellor. We can talk about the Academic Board. We can throw down the challenge to the Conference of Colleges, over whom we do not have jurisdiction, to suggest creative ways about how they might make sure that the college voice, from the most junior fellow to the Heads of House, is effectively represented on the Academic Board. We are going to have those conversations. But today we have to send a signal to the world that we think accountability is important.

I will wrap up by saying that underneath these proposals I think what we have is a carefully balanced constitutional structure that leaves the future of the University in the hands of academics but meets the highest standards of charity governance and increases accountability. We have two bodies, whose power is balanced under the supervision of Congregation, for the level-headed running of the University.

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Mr R. Briggs (All Souls College)

Mr Vice-Chancellor, members of Congregation. The key issues of democracy and accountability arise in acute form with the proposed Academic Board, whose design was not dictated by external pressures. Here as elsewhere the White Paper sets out admirable lists of purposes, then claims to have fulfilled them without explaining how. Congregation is asked to take a leap of faith, and to believe that rearranging the deckchairs will have magical results. Assertion is neither based on analysis nor backed up by argument.

The presence of ten Conference representatives on the main academic body would supposedly inaugurate a new era of efficient decision-making. This is surprising when six Heads of House sit on Council today, and there are regular meetings between the Senior Management Team and the Steering Committee of Conference. The White Paper itself, as we have heard, admits that colleges cannot be bound by these delegates to the Academic Board, although the intention to achieve something like that by sleight of hand seems to me rather obvious.

The fig-leaf of consultation should not deceive us; this amounts to a scheme for pre-empting consent from the colleges. The group of ten nominees will have far too much power in both University and college matters. The proposal allocates as many seats to office holders and nominees of the Conference of Colleges as to those elected by the whole of Congregation. The recent record of the Steering Committee does not appear to justify either giving its new incarnation such power in University affairs or considering it a true representative of college views. Better college representation on the committees that do the real work, like EPSC, would be more effective without having such undesirable consequences.

The Academic Board, chaired by the Vice-Chancellor, also includes the five Pro-VCs and four Heads of Division as ex officio voting members. This is an even stronger executive presence than on our current Council, a serious confusion of roles which is contrary to the same principles of governance which the Working Party recognised in giving Council an independent chair. Is the implication that good governance applies only to the 'institutional' domain and not the academic one?

The Academic Board is also significantly too large to work effectively, with ten members more than the current Council. Imagine the position of the elected members, sandwiched between two large block votes. How many Board members will have any current experience of laboratories, libraries, and lecture rooms? Will not this be an even more difficult environment for real scrutiny of executive proposals? If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, then surely this board is a camel among committees.

The plan to split business between two overlapping committees would add complexity without bringing any obvious gains. In real political terms, of course, the existence of those two bodies will strengthen the executive, as the essential link between them, which can always set one off against the other. Even more so when the financial control is vested in Council.

These proposals amount to a major reduction in the real powers of this House. In the everyday government of the University Congregation can only exercise influence through its elected representatives. The reduction in their numbers greatly aggravates the shift from democracy to oligarchy. Bodies that habitually rubber-stamp executive decisions are also a recipe for bad decisions, because problems go unrecognised.

Democratic systems are essential to regulate the behaviour of the strong executive which we also need. But let us admit how we would all be liable to behave without such checks, becoming too confident in our own opinions and disinclined to listen enough. Whether you blame human nature or original sin, this is something we observe everywhere; I defy anyone to convince us that SMT members and Heads of House enjoy a special immunity from this disorder. We should all ask ourselves how many of the problems of the NHS and other British universities stem from the abuse of power by decent people, operating under pressure within systems that turn them into little autocrats. Democracy is the only known antidote; it must be our first concern, not our last.

I urge Congregation to vote against the Statute.

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Professor R.A. McCabe (Merton College)

Mr Vice-Chancellor, fellow members of Congregation. I want to address the particular issue of lay membership of Council, and I want to remind people that in the year 1869 this House debated, and defeated, a resolution to open the BA to an allegedly subversive and dangerous band of marauding 'outsiders', collectively known as 'women'. An unprecedented number of fliers and flysheets were published—119 pages of them according to one estimate—and the then President of Corpus warned that hundreds of years of male scholarship would be replaced by 'tea parties and tennis'. It is sobering to remember that if such arguments from tradition had continued to prevail none of the women speaking here today would even be admitted to this assembly to discuss governance, let alone partake in it. In fact, if we were to adhere to the oldest Oxford traditions of self- governance, the present motion would be debated primarily by unmarried clergymen. Oxford has not stood still for 800 years, and there is a great difference between respect for tradition and fear of change. In fact, modern Oxford owes its success to its ability to adapt to changing political and social circumstances.

Now once again we are faced, according to some, with a great threat from 'outsiders'. But I would ask Congregation how many of those present here today were appointed, as I was, from outside Oxford? And what would this University be if it could not draw to itself from the world outside so many excellent Heads of House, Heads of Division, Professors, Readers, Lecturers, Research Fellows? The strength of our international reputation derives in large measure from our ability to recruit from the wider, academic administrative and business worlds. Why should membership of Council be different? Much has been said in the current debate about the preservation of Oxford's traditions, but the two most vital traditions are surely those of teaching and research. To preserve and foster those traditions we need, I believe, a truly Academic Board of the sort that is now proposed, a board that can devote due time to the formulation of academic strategy and, above all, secure the maintenance of the tutorial system which is, in my opinion, the crucial point at which research and teaching meet. We all realise that the preservation of that system is under threat from wholly inadequate funding and increased international competition. For that reason, I believe, we need a Council that looks outwards as well as inwards, a Council that strengthens our relations with the outside world and one that can properly articulate our very legitimate claims upon the continued support of that world. Far from fearing external membership of Council, I welcome it. It has been said that many of the men and women we eventually choose will be our own alumni—and understandably so. Contemporary public life is deeply indebted to Oxford in every area of major endeavour from commerce and industry to education, politics, the media, and the arts. As we educate and send out from here many of the most distinguished and accomplished of those who shape our society, why should we not profit from what we produce by bringing their expertise, their accomplishments, their international network of contacts home?

I speak from experience. We have recently set up an External Advisory Panel in English to counsel us in such matters as fundraising for undergraduate bursaries, graduate scholarships and endowed posts. The results, I am pleased to say, have been entirely positive, and the sheer goodwill of our advisers has been quite remarkable. Is it likely that those who would accept the far greater burden of Council membership would be any less committed to the institution they serve? Is it likely they would long regard themselves as merely 'external' to what, for many of them, would be their alma mater?

In conclusion therefore, the proposals before us seem to me to provide for the enriching of Council and the consolidation of the sovereignty of Congregation, not just theoretically, but practically through the power to activate the Audit and Scrutiny Committee, and even to dismiss Council should the need ever arise. I urge you therefore to support the proposals first and foremost because of the advantages they promise to bring us, and secondly because they provide against unforeseen disadvantages by reinforcing the status of Congregation itself. Thank you.

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Mr G.P. Williams (St Peter's College)

Mr Vice-Chancellor, members of Congregation. The Legislative Proposal before us allocates ten places on the Academic Board to the Senior Management Team—ten places go to members directly elected from Congregation. And in between come 'ten members to be elected by the Conference of Colleges'.

Indeed, these members are the keystone to the whole structure. But where are they to come from? How are they to be elected? The resolution before us is silent on this.

An answer is provided in the recommendations of the Henderson Committee. It submitted its report on 6 November this year, but some of you may well not have had the chance to read it. But the report fills the gap that was left open by the White Paper.

The Henderson Committee recommends that the new Steering Committee, I quote, 'Be thereby deemed elected by Conference as its members of the Academic Board.' This proposal at least is integral to the Legislative Proposal before us.

But it will not be put to Congregation to enable us to vote on it today. Nor have any of us had much notice so that we can consider its implications for the resolution.

Now how is this Steering Committee to be made up? Well, there will be five members chosen in their official capacities, if the recommendations are accepted. These are the chair (and vice-chair) of Conference and of its Graduate, Senior Tutors' and Estate Bursars' Committees.

Then there are three Heads of Houses. And finally, two of the ten places are left for college fellows—but their governing bodies will not be entrusted with their election. Taken together, these ten members of the Steering Committee and thus of the Academic Board are to, quote, 'reflect an appropriate breadth of representation and perspectives from within the colleges.'

How then are the five unofficial members to be chosen? Well, they will be nominated by another committee, [which] will be composed of seven members—the previous chair (and vice-chair) of Conference and of its committees. And in each year, fellows of colleges will be nominated to this committee by two colleges in rotation.

So, we are to have the nomination of members of the Nominations Committee to nominate members of the Steering Committee, who will be deemed to be members of the Academic Board. They will in turn nominate their own successors. It would be difficult to devise a better way to ensure a self-perpetuating oligarchy.

Now what is the point of this opaque and cumbersome procedure? It is that in this way, members of the Academic Board can be filtered before they are elected.

Why should this be necessary? I quote from the report—one reason given—'to ensure balance and that appropriate individuals are chosen.' And secondly, to avoid the risk that 'inappropriate GB members may be chosen by colleges'.

Perhaps Congregation should have had the chance to consider all aspects of the constitutional proposals and supplementary recommendations. And perhaps we might be given, all of us, the opportunity—and the responsibility—to elect our own representatives. Members of Congregation, Mr Vice-Chancellor, I thank you.

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Mr A. Strickland (President of the Oxford University Student Union)

Mr Vice-Chancellor, Congregation. 'Self-government is better than good government', a former Prime Minister claimed in the Commons, in a false dichotomy that would have Oxford examiners twitching with delight.

While Oxford has practised very successful self-government, we should ask ourselves whether this has always been good government; 'efficient' and 'effective' not being adjectives which spring to mind when trying to describe it. As tutors never cease to remind their students—'good' is not good enough in Oxford. We must try always to achieve excellence.

The Student Union broadly supports the proposed governance reform because in the debates we have held, student representatives have expressed their belief that the proposal combines a continuing commitment to meaningful self-government through the maintenance of Congregation's sovereignty, with measures which ensure that the large and complex organisation which makes up the collegiate University is able to operate with greater coherence, efficacy and transparency.

It is clear that students are best served by a University secure in both the quality of the education it provides and the integrity of its governance; able to face the international community and those who regulate the University with strength and confidence. The proposed division between corporate and academic governance contributes to this aim.

I would like to draw your attention to some of our particular ambitions for these reforms.

While some have worried that the creation of the Academic Board, as distinct from Council, will downgrade the importance of academic policy, it is our hope that it will have the opposite effect.

The current Council spends relatively little time discussing academic policy, but we expect to see the Academic Board enjoying much tighter focus on the academic matters which lie at the heart of this institution's exceptional strength, but are also responsible for many of the problems students encounter during their degrees.

The Board's more representative membership should allow it to take a more holistic approach to policy-making by ensuring greater coordination and more effective communication.

A world-class university requires world class levels of internal organisation. Breakdowns in communication between colleges, departments and the administration underpin many of the welfare and academic cases we take on through our Student Advice Service.

Poor coordination and arguments over autonomy not only cost the collegiate University time and resources, but deny some students a fulfilling academic experience at Oxford.

We therefore welcome the creation of the Academic Board and look forward to making full use of our two places on it.

Turning to Council, the Student Union strongly welcomes the Morris–Butler amendment and hopes Congregation will take full advantage of the provision to ensure that a majority of internal members sit on it. Students have expressed very strongly their belief that such a majority is of both symbolic and pragmatic importance.

As lay members can only be chosen by Congregation through the Nominations Committee from a pool of candidates suggested by Congregation and the colleges, I have no doubt that the successful candidates who you choose will be those with the academic interests of Oxford at heart. However, such checks and the primacy of Congregation must remain long-term.

The primacy of Congregation roots ultimate control in the lecturers, tutors and others who know best the day-to- day realities of University life. Realities which must be central to any consideration of policy and which demand daily contact with the student body.

Effective governance, however, also requires a cultural shift, namely in the direction of greater transparency. It is incredibly difficult for the Student Union to represent students effectively when many of the decisions which affect our members, and every University decision affects Oxford's 17,000 students in some way, are taken in committees whose agendas and minutes are confidential or are placed on reserved agendas. The proposed Council must not be used as an excuse to expand the scope of this secrecy. While commercial sensitivity and the need to allow frank discussion may necessitate confidentiality on some issues, I also welcome several of the Democratic Governance Group's suggestions for enhancing the accountability and transparency of key committees.

Having spoken to the proponents of both sides of this debate, I have been struck by their passion for reform and commitment to the University. I hope that none of this energy will be wasted and the complementary nature of many of the proposed reforms will be realised.

While many of the papers and articles in the Gazette and the Oxford Magazine have asked Congregation to unite around one proposal or another, this seems a false unity, as it can never be more than a partial unity. What Congregation should unite around is what is best for Oxford, its students, and its research. It is our belief that this means confidently endorsing the proposed Statute today, but acknowledging that if the University is to live up to the lofty ideals of academic community there is much more work to be done in the future. This structural reform must be matched by a cultural shift which sees much greater involvement of student members and a new emphasis on transparency and openness.

The idea suggested earlier of voting this proposal down and trying again seems to me to be somewhat ludicrous. I urge you, try this now and make it work.

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Professor B. Leftow (Oriel College)

Mr Vice-Chancellor, members of Congregation. Under the proposal before us, Council would initially contain five elected dons out of fifteen. The amendment allows this to rise to six. So under the amended proposal Oxford dons permanently give up control of Council. Non-academic Trustees run all US universities, and there are four main ways this system goes wrong.

Though they are not supposed to, almost universally, US Trustees impose non-academic values on university spending. At Purdue University, they underfund Humanities graduate programmes but built and maintain two eighteen-hole golf courses, plus a university airfield for the private university jets they also bought. At Indiana University, they held faculty pay rises below the rate of inflation, and used the money saved inter alia to hire a football coach for a million dollars a year and provide executive severance of $700,000. When the severance was questioned, the reply was that this was just good business practice. Non- academic values led to the closing of chemistry at Sussex and physics at Reading—decisions with academic sides but whose financial sides were given precedence.

Almost as often in the US, non-academics' values lead them to play favourites among departments when they spend money. At my own last university, the favourite was theology; our physics department was primitive, but they diverted money to endow a chair for a Catholic cardinal.

Trustees always delegate their authority to senior management. Management often then misuse it. At Boston University, defying President John Silber got your tenure, raise or leave denied or delayed by years. Recalcitrant departments found their posts frozen. Boston's faculty responded by voting no confidence in Silber three times; the Trustees ignored this. No surprise there—they are business managers, and they know they can ignore labour that will not strike. Harvard's Trustees even responded to a no-confidence vote in Lawrence Summers by giving him a pay rise. When Silber retired, Boston's Trustees voted him $6m severance and a seat on Council.

Non-academic Trustees also interfere directly with academic life. At a flagship US state university, they eliminated sabbaticals. Lower management here were academics, and fought back by granting them under the title 'off-campus work assignments'. This worked a few years. Then the Trustees got wise. They now judge all sabbatical applications themselves—not on 'academic merit', but on whether you really must travel.

These problems occur often. The Trustees and VCs of one in six US universities have been censured at least once formally, and some many times, by the US organisation that polices academic freedom, professional rights and tenure. Still more cases go unreported, or do not rise to the level of formal censure, or fall outside this organisation's remit. Nor do only Americans do such things. At Auckland, the VC has just used the governance set-up that came in during Dr Hood's tenure to eliminate fifty-six established faculty positions, closing down Russian, almost closing down German. They have a faculty Senate—the equivalent of the proposed Academic Board. When the Senate protested, the VC replied that as this was a staffing rather than an academic matter, it was outside their jurisdiction. Again, my first conversation with a UK academic outside Oxford gave me a case of misused VC authority, more extreme than anything I had seen in the US, in which a non-philosopher UPC used the direst threats to force a philosophy department to make appointments it had already rejected on academic grounds.

A Nominating Committee will not ameliorate the risks here. It will look for the same qualities the US looks for, as competently as the US does. Look at US boards of Trustees, they are always alumni, or almost entirely so, and it is inconceivable that those who interview candidates do not look for people who are not going to meddle. Yet the US system often produces bad results. The reason is simple: choose them as carefully as you may, non-academics do not belong in charge of a university. As to Congregation's veto: how often do you want to do this?

I have read everything proponents of the White Paper have put into print. We can have every benefit they claim it would bring without the risks of non-academic control. Unless you are curious what it is like to be an American academic, working for a management that does not share your values, to which you are simply replaceable labour, and on whose actions you have no effective check, vote against the proposal.

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

Perhaps I am mistaken: I thought we were voting on the White Paper rather than the governance structure of Purdue University, which I do not think anyone is suggesting we should adopt. This is a great, marvellous and ancient University. It has been the greatest privilege of my working life to be appointed to work here and I suspect that is a view shared by most of those in this hall today, who have shared that same privilege. Looking back still further, it was a great privilege of my younger life to be admitted a student here. That is something which everyone who comes to this University carries with them. Now, since it is so old, why is it so great? Something which is not afforded to everything. Well, it is so great because it has kept alive a commitment to learning, to teaching, to the primacy of the struggle for scholarship, for truth, for the life of the mind, for principle, all of these things for their own sake. For the beauty, for the power, the importance of the academy—it is that which we all love. That is what we and our students and our alumni value.

Does putting more independent members on Council put that at risk? Absolutely not. They will be, I imagine, the great bulk of them, alumni. They will be identified by us, this group, approved by us, put up by a Nominating Committee which we elect, using criteria which we describe. But more important than all of that, they too love this institution, and the values for which it stands.

I spent last night, as many members of colleges often do, with alumni of my college in London. They were senior members between the ages of about 35 and 50. There were professionals there: public servants, representatives of the media, businesswomen, musicians, politicians, and even one or two businessmen. They want us to go on being dedicated to scholarship for two reasons. Firstly, because it is right; that is what this institution is for, that is why they came, that is what we are all working towards. And secondly, although much less importantly, because they are self-interested. They do not want to be associated with a University that has succumbed to some kind of caricature of financial pressures, they want to be a part of a University that for 800 years and for 800 more years is committed to scholarship. That is why they would only ever, if they were given the privilege of serving on our Council, do all they could to make that possible. They have no desire to see this University do only that which makes money; they know that is their job, not ours.

So there is no risk in my mind that we will have the kind of scare stories we have just heard—but do we need externals? Well, whenever any of us makes a decision we seek advice from other people. We do that as a matter of course. We very rarely make a decision on our own. Surely that must be sensible. Even when we elect our professors in this University we have external members on the electoral board, and that on something which is purely academic. Even on the purely academic we do not entirely trust our own vision. The same is true when we seek to publish our research. We expect it to be validated not by people in this institution, but elsewhere. Now in this University we have huge expertise in an enormously wide range of areas, but much that this University does is not its end product, of scholarship, but is activity that serves that—in financial administration, in fundraising, in IT, in the putting up of buildings. All of these are vital and our goal as a University must be to do those things as well as we do our scholarship, and we have not always been able to claim that is the case. Until we do that we will not flourish as we must. And here we really need help. We are not expert in all of those areas. Let me take one example, the Radcliffe Infirmary site, vital to our future. If we develop it fully, it will cost us about £600m or £700m. That makes it between a third and a quarter the size of the main Olympics complex in London. Do we really believe that we have the right expertise and time available amongst our academic colleagues to do that? Well, I do not. I think we desperately need outsiders to help us.

Let me mention a couple of areas that have been brought up. One is transparency, where Mr Bamforth earlier on mentioned that Council has already done that which Alan Ryan seems to think we should do. Alan Ryan said vote for this new Council once it is committed to transparency. Well, Council earlier this term agreed a plan put forward by the Vice-Chancellor for protocols to be drawn up under which both the agenda and the minutes of Council would be put on the web. So follow Professor Ryan's advice and vote for the amended Council. The Academic Board—it is important to recognise exactly what is going on. There will be two student members, ten members elected by Congregation, five Pro-Vice-Chancellors, four Heads of Department [should read Divisions], three Proctors and Assessor (not normally, I think, part of the senior management team) and ten people who will be, according to the White Paper, which is what we are voting on today, elected by the Conference of Colleges. These proposals will, in my view, allow the great scholarly work of this fantastic University to be done more efficiently, with more transparency, and with greater legitimacy. And I commend them to this House.

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Dr M. Broers (Lady Margaret Hall)

More to the point—and to the hard reality—that same management culture has played a pivotal role in the demise of all but a handful of once proud universities beyond Oxbridge. I firmly believe that Oxford must reform—my seven terms since coming back have taught me that—but not in any manner or means that could resemble, or come to resemble, that failed model of the 'sector norm'. We must reform, because although we have pulled so far ahead of the other British universities, I do not think that has been all of our own making. Oxford has done very well, but it has profited from the relentless demise of the provincial universities, who are now being overtaken by institutions from all over the world, not just by the elite leading American universities or indeed ourselves. We have no cause for complacency, I would agree with the supporters of the White Paper in that, but neither must we follow the road to ruin of our competitors.

I have overcome my fear, you may have noticed, but it has not really come through the promptings of my new friends and colleagues in Oxford. It has come through unsolicited entreaties by many former colleagues in the provinces, most of whom have no Oxbridge connections, I would like to stress. They have come, nevertheless, to regard us as amongst the last bastions of excellence and enlightenment, in an otherwise dark if normal sector. And if anybody here thinks it is bad, if anybody here thinks they are being short-changed and hard-worked, try the Heart of Darkness.

Excellence and enlightenment can only be sustained where there is freedom and trust. They do not thrive under coercion, be it external or indigenous to the institution. When I was approached about a chair elsewhere three years ago, I was told by a senior administrator, without any sense of irony or indeed shame, that several vacancies had sprung up because of the recent reorganisation at the university, which had taken place overnight. I am certainly not accusing anybody here of doing that. But management had, though, of itself, provoked a brain drain and relocations to elsewhere in the UK—a sure sign of mutiny. That this particular institution was a member of the Russell Group—many people I knew fled to non-Russell Group institutions—draw from that what you will. For myself, I chose to come back to Oxford, I chose less money for more work—and I chose liberty. Oxford is almost unique in this in the UK, and I find that something to be lamented and something to be feared. I have worked in an institution whose entire structure was changed by managerial fiat in mid-summer. This is the 'sector norm'. I do not believe for a moment that the Working Party or its supporters think in any such ways, but I can envisage a future under different leadership where its provisions could be used to such ends.

Oxford's greatest strengths are what is particular and unique about it, and it should not seek to imitate even its successful competitors, never mind those who have failed.

I urge you to vote against the White Paper, but I hope that those who disagree with me will vote for the White Paper out of honest conviction, not fear, because fear cannot be allowed to govern us. It is a wasteful and inefficient master. I thank you all.

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Professor R. Peto (Green College)

My name is Richard Peto, I am a conservative, old professor. Mr Vice-Chancellor, members of Congregation. I have been helped a lot by Oxford over the years, first as a Reader, then as a Professor over the last thirty years here, and I have been protected in my research, and it has left me independent to get on with things. And, you know, we have done some good research, the University has been good to us, maybe our research has been good for the University. But when I look at the people who are working in research now, they are not being given anything like the protection and help that I was given. About two-thirds of the researchers now are contract researchers, and they are not being given appropriate protection. The system is not serving them well, and I think that the revised system would serve them better. At least they finish up automatically involved in the Academic Board. Decisions that affect them could be taken under either structure, the old structure, the new structure, or some other new structure. They need to be taken more seriously than they have been, and certainly the new structure does at least explicitly take them and mention them, and these must be members of the board. And for that I like it.

I suspect that having heard how dreadful various things might be or what a catastrophe it will be if we do not pass it or do pass it, it seems to me that probably the world will be very much the same next month whether we pass these changes or not. I was not really sure which way to vote but eventually I will vote in favour of the change, partly because it will be an end to this debate and the mountains of paper coming in—it is completely mad. But what I do want, whatever the outcome, is to say for the contract research workers, that in general they have excellent academic values, although they are really excluded from the University. And the research they do [is] excellent research that saves lives. I have been in medical research, and that is one thing that motivates them. But more than that, however, in the day-to-day conduct of their research, they have, as many people do, a very passionate commitment to the excellence of the perfection of duty of the research they do. And it is very difficult to make research perfect, and when contract researchers do it, then it is really beautiful, beautiful work to them, and at the moment it is under-valued by the system we now have. They get contracts, they have no guarantee, no protection, in for five years and thrown out with nothing; the University takes overheads and does not really give much in exchange. No collegiate life, nothing, and it is not appropriate. So whatever system is adopted I think we need much better protection of the contract researchers. What the system should be is not clear; you cannot give everybody protection for life, that is not a viable system, but at the moment we have really got it wrong. We have the balance wrong, and this is two-thirds of the research of the University at the moment. And in general the contract researchers I have talked to feel that the new structure is likely to get their interests taken a bit more seriously than they have been up until now, and for that reason I hope it goes through. But I am very pleased to have had the opportunity of working here over the decades and I am very pleased to stay here, whatever the decision is. Thank you very much.

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Dr J.G. Deutsch (St Cross College)

Vice-Chancellor, members of Congregation. I speak about the proposed reforms as someone who has only recently joined this University. Previously, I taught at Humboldt University in Berlin.

Upon my arrival I experienced a number of pleasant surprises, the most important one being that—in stark contrast to Germany—nobody here told me what to do. I was given almost complete freedom to develop my own little patch in the humanities, which is Commonwealth History. At the same time, I was given the responsibility to develop that area to the best of my ability.

Thus, in the last two years I have developed my own teaching and research programme. I also became Senior Tutor of St Cross College.

To cut a long story short, I have developed my own teaching research programme as I said, but that meant that I was given the opportunity to lay claim to a tiny bit of ownership of this great University.

I believe that the White Paper threatens that tiny bit of ownership. Part of it will be transferred to the external members of the new Council. They do not have to live with the consequences of their own decisions. Perhaps they will think the subject I teach—Non-European History—does not earn enough hard currency in their brave new world of 'Higher Education–Business partnership' and thus the funding for my post will dry up.

Another part will be transferred to the members of the Senior Management Team, who are likely to dominate the decision-making process in the new Academic Board. They might have my best interests at their heart. However, if recent history offers any guidance in this matter, I have my doubts that this is always the case. I hear that HEFCE's Chief Executive, Professor David Eastwood, has advised the University to change their democratic ways. Leaving aside the interesting question of whether HEFCE's governing body—its Board—shares his views, I do not think that Professor Eastwood's arguments are particularly persuasive. He seems to underestimate what makes people work hard in this place. Executive autocracy—I would argue—is a poor substitute for a sense of institutional belonging. I wish I had the chance to explain this to him.

I have been approached twice this year to apply for Chairs in History, one in Germany and one in the US, offering me a substantially higher salary than I am earning in Oxford, and—if I may add—a lower workload. I decided not to apply for these posts, because I value the freedom and, indeed, the responsibility, I have found in this University, above anything else. I hate to think that this was a grave mistake.

I therefore urge members of Congregation to reject the amended version of the White Paper. Surely, there must be better ways to effect constructive change. Thank you.

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Sir Michael Scholar (President of St John's College)

Vice-Chancellor, members of Congregation. I follow those who today have argued that a shift is taking place, as it has at various points before, in the world's expectations of Oxford and also of Cambridge. We are not obliged, by legislation or anything else, to alter our arrangements now. But there has been a pervasive change in recent years which directly affects us. We have seen a reduction in trust across many areas of our national life. There has been disappointment about the conduct of affairs in a range of different national institutions and bodies. The reaction has been to demand new protections and new safeguards. I believe that is the background to the new Charities Act. It is designed to give to those who financially support charities more assurance than they have at the moment that the charity is actually carrying out what it was set up to do, is spending its money wisely and properly, and so on.

Under the new Charities Act, this University, which enjoys considerable tax advantages through being a charity, will lose its status as an exempt charity and will, in order to be registered as a charity, have to explain to its regulator and funding body, HEFCE, why it is that Oxford should not be obliged to govern itself as other charities must—with external trustees, rigorous rules about public and private benefit and so on. I support the proposals which are before us today because I believe their adoption and implementation will put Oxford in a strong position to answer these questions. They would give to our donors, in both the public and the private sectors, reassurance that we are spending their money properly and wisely. We may be sorry that benefactors need this reassurance, but they do.

I would have no truck with these proposals if they breached two principles, which are for me crucial. First, I strongly believe that Oxford must be self-governing, ruled by academics and nobody else. I saw a striking example of the dangers of departing from this principle when I was at Berkeley, California in the 1960s. The proposals before us today, by contrast, clearly leave Congregation as the supreme body in Oxford: it could reject any proposal made by Council; it could require Council to make particular proposals; and it could dismiss Council after a postal vote.

The second principle I hold dear is the independence of the colleges, which guarantees diversity of opinion and the freedom to pursue academic enquiry wherever the enquirer wishes to go, never mind what HEFCE or anyone else says. Nothing in the legislation before us threatens that in any way whatsoever. Indeed, I believe that these proposals actually offer added protection for this precious academic freedom. For several years I have been, as Chairman or Vice-Chairman of the Conference of Colleges, the thirty-nine colleges' sole representative on a number of University committees. During that time I have spoken for the colleges, and there has sometimes been robust argument with the executive. I have not, as was rather insultingly said earlier in the debate a couple of weeks ago, functioned as a natural supporter of the executive: far from it. I welcome today's proposals for stronger college representation in the main governing committees of the University. I think the present arrangements have insufficiently controlled or challenged the executive, notably over finance and computers; I believe that under the proposed arrangements the colleges would have significantly greater power than at present to influence and control the University's executive.

I do not at all accept the argument advanced earlier in the debate that the Academic Board would somehow inevitably be stuffed with natural supporters of the Vice-Chancellor. Dr Williams has criticised, by implication, the Henderson Report, but I would remind Congregation it has not yet been discussed and nothing has been agreed about that report yet. The White Paper leaves it to the colleges to choose who would be their representatives on the Academic Board, and the colleges should choose whomsoever they think will effectively represent them: not necessarily the Head of House, the Bursar, or the Senior Tutor.

I believe that the proposals before us today protect and strengthen academic control of this University. I will vote for them and I urge you to do so too.

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Dr A.D. Lunn (Worcester College)

Mr Vice-Chancellor, members of Congregation.

Well, here we are for another important vote, with Christmas upon us ...

I find it hard to believe we are having this debate. Democracies do not normally hand themselves over to the generals. But when they do it is on account of one charismatic leader, forgetting that they have set up a system which can be exploited by the next one, or the one after that. This week's Magazine, as we have heard, carried a letter from an academic at Auckland. They opted for something like our White Paper and all was fine for a while. But their new Vice-Chancellor has just abolished their tenure. It seems there is nothing they can do about it; in fact, their Senate now no longer has the power even to discuss the change.

The truth is all of the empirical evidence points to the fact that our democracy gives us a huge advantage. The whole of Europe has only two universities in the top ten, and what do they have in common that is different from the rest? They have systems of democratic governance which have evolved over the years to suit changing social and economic conditions. End that and you really will lock us into stagnation. Academics at Harvard have recently realised this and are currently trying to change, but it is an uphill struggle and they may fail.

So, what are the reasons for changing Statute VI? The White Paper acknowledges that it cannot bring the colleges to heel, so the only plausible reason left is to allow the management team to make quicker, more efficient decisions. But they have been trying to do that anyway, and look at the earlier result. A few months ago admissions were centralised without even asking the Admissions Tutors for a view—nor was time allowed for proper discussion in college governing bodies; a dodgy deal was made with Prince Sultan University which should have been an academic decision and, given the way women are treated, one involving an ethics committee; and then, of course, there is the Juggernaut for Rampant Academic Meddling, better known by its acronym of JRAM. This too is being bulldozed through at breakneck speed. You might think that no one wants us to have too much time to think about it—you might well think that—I could not possibly comment.

If ever anything needed careful consideration and discussion, it is the JRAM, because it is far, far more than a resource allocation mechanism. This is neither the time nor the place to discuss the ethics of robbing the poor to give to the rich, like a kind of inverted Robin Hood, but it is the right time to recognise that its logic is perverse and its timing provides even more evidence of a management style which needs to be better controlled, not less controlled. We are being stampeded into accepting a rigid formula which pays scant attention to the academic and educational principles we believe in, and which will certainly have profound social, ethnic and academic consequences which have not been properly thought out. By the way, could someone please explain to me how it can possibly be 'best practice' to bring in any scheme of this importance in this way?

So, are we really going to vote to replace, for ever, a democracy with a senior management team we cannot control? Cambridge decisively rejected this. If we adopt these sector norms while Cambridge does not, I fully expect that twenty years from now, Cambridge will still be a world-class institution, as it is today.

At this University the managers and Heads of House work for us—we do not work for them. Today's vote could change all that. We must not let this genie out of the bottle—there is no way of putting it back in.

VICE-CHANCELLOR: Professor Fraser, do you wish to reply to the debate?

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Professor D.G. Fraser (Worcester College)

Vice-Chancellor, members of Congregation. I shall be brief because I know only too well the comfort of the seats in the upper gallery. Only six days after we met here two weeks ago, the Council of the University of Reading voted to close its Physics Department. The university as a whole opposed it. The UCU states that 'It seems that neither HEFCE nor its university governance structures are fit for the purpose'.

A member of their Council writes: 'Many lay members were clearly uneasy but in the end they accepted the proposal from the Senior Management Board. This was difficult to overturn because the Board had stopped applications from UCAS, before Senate or Council met.' This is a key issue. A Council tasked with institutional management can decide to close a department irrespective of the judgement of the Academic Board. And with respect to Dr Wheater, it also shows graphically how a Senior Management Team can easily dominate an Academic Board or Council, as pointed out by Professor Smith.

Would it not be an unpardonable irony if Oxford were to adopt these structures just when others are beginning to call them into question?

I believe in external advisers and said so last time, and I was pleased to hear Professor McCabe make a first class case for an advisory Council.

We heard of Warwick. The University of Warwick has a bicameral governance structure rather like that proposed here, but with the crucial difference that their equivalent of the Academic Board is primarily of elected academics, and it, not their equivalent of Council, has control of the budgets. It works well. Why have we not been told this? Alan Ryan is right, the proposed Academic Board needs fixing. Bring it back and I look forward to voting for it. And Cambridge? As we know, Cambridge University rejected similar proposals to those in the White Paper only three years ago. They have not been cut off at their knees! In fact Cambridge shows us what can be done without fundamentally changing governance as reported in yesterday's Financial Times. Let us be clear. The Legislative Proposal will bring us an executive-led style of corporate governance, similar to that at Reading and so comprehensively rejected by Cambridge. Our colleagues in Cambridge—and elsewhere—are looking to us to support them.

We have heard the arguments. The White Paper will magically bring more money and reduce workload. We have been told not to worry. Congregation would retain an ultimate right of vote of no confidence and be able to dismiss the entire Council. History shows that that kind of power is almost never usable.

We have recently seen too much hasty legislation. There was the attempt to rush through the first Green Paper. Now we have immense pressure to accept the JRAM. We were told that we had to comply with Charities Law by having a wholly external Council. This was untrue. We were incorrectly instructed that we had to follow standard HEFCE guidelines.

I was surprised to hear my friend, Iain McLean's, advocacy of 'pre-emptive surrender'. HEFCE's own stated policy is not prescriptive. As Mr Bamforth said, it is that we should comply with their 'expectations' or explain why we should do things in accordance with our own 'good practice'. This is reasonable. Perhaps the time has come for Oxford to explain rather more how, like Cambridge, we have achieved international excellence, and seek rather less simply to comply to sector-norms.

A large number of us voted two weeks ago for the amendment only as an insurance policy and many have written to tell me that they intend to vote against the White Paper today. I thank them for that and they are right.

And after we vote, at least one thing will not have changed: we shall remain colleagues, and excellent colleagues. Each one of us has a contract: to teach, to carry out research or to take part in administration. In many cases, all three. But all of us have a higher contract. That of trust and respect among each other. This is what makes Oxford special. Whichever way the vote goes today, we must remember this.

As Dr Deutsch has explained, one of the key reasons why Oxford academics are so committed to the University is that they have real independence and a real personal stake in the system.

The same point is made in a letter I received from a young faculty member: 'What is different about Oxford is that it does not have top-down line-management.' She continues: 'I am here to teach and research in one of the best universities in the world—not for the cash! I took this job, rather than the much better paid positions available in the US, because I value academic freedom (and democratic government) over financial rewards. If that goes, so will a lot of us.'

The White Paper puts forward similar top-down management to that which now governs the National Health Service. As our medical colleagues are only too aware, managers now seek routinely to achieve targets by imposing decisions on clinicians that are contrary to their best medical judgement.

The Working Party has not given us a single evidence-based reason why the White Paper will benefit the University. Had the Working Party carried out the originally requested review, we could have had chapter and verse on this. As it is, we do not know whether North needs tweaking or scrapping.

Mixed in with the return to bicameral governance are the central questions of the composition of the Council, and the control and composition of the Academic Board. How outsiders participate in our governance (and please note that nobody objects to their involvement) bears on the vital matter of collegiality: are we partners in this enterprise or servants?

None of us can do our job properly without independence of mind. This is strongly fostered by our being partners. We share this privilege with Cambridge and pretty well nowhere else. Is it really a good idea to relegate ourselves to the status enjoyed by colleagues at Reading or Oxford Brookes? They certainly would not think so.

Oxford is a $1.2bn business. No one doubts it needs management and the ability to plan large investment projects. We already do.

A university is not a corporate enterprise, where we are all disposable units of production in an academic factory, and in which contract research staff can be used and replaced, without tenure. As I said last time, this is wrong. I agree with Professor Peto. But one seat on the Academic Board is a small change, one out of thirty-five. We could do much more by modifying the composition of the Personnel Committee or EPSC to include research staff, and we can do so within our existing governance.

Members of Congregation, we must now, like Cambridge, have the courage to reject the outmoded corporate model of the White Paper. It is both outmoded and wrong. We owe this to Oxford and the nation as guardians; not to the past Oxford, but to the future. To all our young colleagues and those who will come; as colleagues and as students. Even to those who will never come. For Oxford, unfettered by 'sector norms', has an important contribution to make to all.

Congregation, I ask you to vote against the paper. I repeat, once you vote democratically to give up democracy, you will never get it back. As Libby Purves said today in The Times: 'We have the right to say "no".' The nation will respect us. The proposal must be rejected, then we can all get back to work to solve the real problems; to move forward, work together, respect each other and evolve together—I am very confident that the University will indeed certainly go from strength to strength. Mr Vice-Chancellor, Congregation, thank you very much.

VICE-CHANCELLOR: Provost of Oriel, do you wish to reply to the debate?

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Sir Derek Morris (Provost of Oriel College)

Mr Vice-Chancellor, members of Congregation. It has been a long afternoon, and by this stage no doubt many minds will be made up and I can make, I am sure, little difference. But I will just focus on a few key points that seem to me to have emerged in the debate that we have had over two weeks. Before I do that, with apologies, Vice-Chancellor, may I just say that I do reject out of hand what has been said about the JRAM. This is not the place to discuss it and I greatly regret that this floor was used as an opportunity to give what I regard to be totally misleading statements about it.

I move on to our debate. First, and perhaps I think most focused on, there is the question of increased external members on Council, who apparently are going to be so damaging to us. And you know, some things are said or written so often that, after a while, you begin to believe them. And then you go back and you check—where are these people coming from? So I went back to the White Paper—and what do I find? You know what I found. It is Congregation who elects them, but that is only half of it. Congregation, under the White Paper, which is what we are debating, must approve the criteria for the appointment of the externals. Congregation controls the composition of the Nominating Committee for the externals. Congregation then elects these lay members and Congregation has to ensure that they meet the criteria that it itself has approved. So if we want unhelpful, wicked, remote businessmen, we can have them. And if we do not, we will not. Personally, I would quite like to see a couple of them with some good financial experience (including some public sector work); perhaps a couple from other major universities but with experience of Oxford; maybe a couple with some high-level governance experience; and so on. And I would like most, perhaps even all of them, to come from Oxford, with a demonstrated commitment to us and our academic values and clearly relevant experience. That is what I would like. But the key thing of course is that my views are quite irrelevant. It is Congregation that will elect these people and we will get, we the members of Congregation, will get the people that we want. So to tell us that we cannot be trusted to find and harness the immense fund of support and expertise and goodwill that exists to help us in this very difficult enterprise—I think to raise the spectre of how damaging these people and this change will be—is, in my view, a quite unacceptable argument and I invite you to reject it.

We have heard all sorts of horror stories from the United States, then we had another one from New Zealand. I will make three points. First, we will not, unless we want it, have a majority of externals; that was the whole point of the amendment. Second, the governance arrangements in those other universities you heard about do not include Congregation, which will be here to determine Council's proper role. So I reject completely the notion that we here should be swayed by these horror stories from the States. I will just add one last thing on that: nearly all the top twenty universities in the regular rankings in the world have this apparent disastrous governance structure. That does not mean it is right, but I do think we may have heard a somewhat less than comprehensive analysis of the role of externals in other countries.

Second is the argument that the White Paper will lead to much greater centralisation, and once again, if we actually go back to the White Paper, we see that is not the case. The new Academic Board will involve much wider participation in the key academic matters that we face. To be sure, it will give us a more cogent framework—heaven knows we need one—but that in no way implies removing decisions and the input to the decisions from the generality of the tutors and researchers in colleges and in the University. If we provide clear and transparent channels from all parts of the University for legitimate academic views to inform our decision-making—and that is what the proposal is—we can attain much more effective governance. That is, I am tempted to say, that is all the White Paper is designed to achieve.

But you might say, can Council not override the Academic Board? Well, let us go back to the White Paper again. Council can approve or remit back for further consideration or override a decision of the Board. Note that it cannot amend, it cannot change an academic decision. So its only power to block is to actually override a proposal in its entirety. So what would happen if this power were used improperly by Council to interfere with our academic priorities? Well, what would you do if you were on the Board? I suspect what you would do is you would send the decision back to Council again, with the very clear implication that if it were improperly blocked again the matter would go to Congregation, who can, and I have no doubt in such circumstances would, override Council.

So what we have is a structure that combines participative decision-taking, academic priorities, sensible accountability and ultimate democratic self-governance. And to dismiss that as some centralisation or executive control or top-down, all of these buzz phrases, I think is quite wrong. I think our student representative seemed to have a much clearer understanding of this than some colleagues.

Finally, there is the argument that our academic freedoms are threatened. We are surrendering our independence, merely bowing to external pressures from HEFCE or wherever that are forcing us to adopt 'a corporate model'. This is perhaps the biggest misconception of all, and it is the most dangerous. And I would note in passing that that characterisation is entirely given to us by the critics of the White Paper. No supporter of the White Paper is proposing any of that at all. The White Paper—a little bit of history —well, you may laugh—but look at the White Paper and look at its history. It was explicitly designed with our needs in mind. There is bicameralism there because of the overload of Council at the moment. There are effective scrutiny/accountability principles put in; wider participation in academic decisions; there are more externals there; and the supremacy of Congregation, and so on. The White Paper makes clear that these proposals were informed by current changes in the external environment, primarily to meet our needs. The only exception to all of that is the possibility of the majority of lay members, which one might attribute to HEFCE. But we have got rid of that, that is the whole point of the amendment. I see I am nearly at the end of my time so I will conclude.

Those who oppose the White Paper say—and I have no reason to doubt this at all—that they want to preserve our independence of action, our academic priorities and our democratic form of self-governance. And I am sure they also want us to maintain and propel forward our outstanding research record, our unique teaching and no doubt good governance. Well, let me say, those of us who support the White Paper want all of those things as well. The difference is that we have a strategy for achieving it. We are faced with weak governance structures at the moment; we are faced with a changing external environment; we are faced with concerns about our accountability, which we can recognise and address without slavishly following.

We also have a critical need for support from all quarters, both tangible and otherwise. So the proposal that we must now vote on I think of as a powerful way forward to secure those objectives, to assist our financial objectives, to maintain our unique character and role and to take our supporters and public opinion with us. Above all to retain control of the process, that would be a real and major success for Oxford. And I ask you at this critical moment, please support the proposal.

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