Meeting of the Parliament 14 January 2016
It seems to me that we have debated the bill and its measures a number of times, so it is quite hard to believe that we are just at the stage 1 debate. Nonetheless, that is the case, and there is therefore some value in turning back to the bill’s first principles and to why, throughout the process, Labour has taken the position that it has taken.
We support democratic and transparent governance in our higher education institutions. It is our view that, as they are the recipients of more than £1 billion of public funding every year and are central to the future of Scotland, it is reasonable that we ensure that their governance is modern, transparent and fit for purpose.
We also support trade union and student representation on the council. That should be no surprise: we are the Labour Party and of course we support trade union representation. We have never accepted the argument mounted by some that trade union representatives on a body such as the council will face conflicts of interests and sometimes difficult situations when they are part of making collective decisions that those who they represent might find hard to understand. Those of us who have been trade union activists in other lives know that wherever trade unions have representation that is the sort of difficulty and contradiction that representatives have to deal with every day.
As a principle, we support the autonomy and academic freedom of our universities. Over centuries that has been one of their greatest strengths and it must be preserved.
Finally, we have been at pains to be clear that we do not support measures that pose a risk to the fiscal basis of the higher education sector through jeopardising either the institutions’ charitable status or their ONS classification.
Underpinning all that is our acceptance that the legislation is needed, largely because, we would argue, the voluntary code has failed. There has been a serious question around transparency of governance in the sector over recent years, which is perhaps most dramatically characterised by pay settlements for senior staff and particular principals. Although some have argued that the voluntary code developed by the principal of one of our universities would be enough, we are not convinced, because the voluntary code is in place but the transparency is not.
The University and College Union Scotland, in the helpful briefing that it provided for today’s debate, points out that after the voluntary code was put in place, it submitted freedom of information requests to try to ascertain how principals’ pay had been determined in remuneration committees. Only a handful of the 19 higher education institutions in Scottish were willing to provide that information, and many of those that were provided it in a form so redacted as to be completely useless. Therefore it is not the case that the voluntary code is enough.
Given that we are at stage 1 of the bill, we are entitled to consider the bill as introduced. Although we support the principle of the bill, we have been very clear that the bill as introduced fails on many counts. It fails to describe in detail the process of the election of chairs—a measure that we support—and includes sweeping discretionary ministerial powers that could be used to change the governance of higher education institutions in the future without reference to Parliament. The bill veers into areas that seem to us to be completely unnecessary, such as the size of the academic court, and it has ignored the historical position of rectors.