Meeting of the Parliament 08 March 2016
As Iain Gray set out at the beginning of the debate, Labour supports the general principles of the bill. The bill has the laudable aims of ensuring that the structure of governance of our universities continues to develop and adapt to maintain the first-class university provision in which we should all take pride.
From the start of the process, we have offered our support in particular for the inclusion of trade union and student representatives on governing bodies as a democratisation of higher education institutions’ governing bodies. We believe that that is central to ensuring that we meet our aims of greater transparency and accountability in the sector.
All parties and all members who have spoken in the chamber today have recognised the importance of the higher education sector to Scotland’s economy and our international standing. We should be listening to the sector’s views and responding to its concerns. The value that we place on our higher education system is part of our cultural DNA. We extol the virtues of our historic and new universities, and it is with great pride that we talk about our contribution to the world—not just in educating our own young people, but in the world-leading research and dynamic entrepreneurship that are recognised across the globe. It is in that context that we must view the bill.
That context has seen our universities continue to succeed in an increasingly competitive international climate, and we must be cautious in attempting to improve the way in which our institutions operate. We should avoid diminishing or restricting the freedom that has contributed to their success.
Scottish higher education has a long history of having staff and students at the heart of its mechanisms of governance. Staff and students are full members of the university’s governing body, the court, in every institution. According to Universities Scotland, 94 per cent of institutions have two or more staff members on their courts and 72 per cent have two or more student members of court. We all recognise that the approach that we must take should seek to build on that record rather than suggest that there is a problem with university governance that requires a top-down overhaul.
What the Government presented, throughout the various stages of the bill, has caused the process to be unnecessarily difficult. The cabinet secretary said that she was surprised at the level of opposition, and I am surprised at how difficult it was for us to support the bill as it was drafted, given our support for its general principles. I think that bad drafting, ministerial overreach and, at times, genuine incompetence have put unhelpful pressure on the coalition of support that has existed for the bill.
I am pleased that the cabinet secretary has recognised many of the drafting mistakes and that the committee was able to help to rectify them. The issue of ONS reclassification, the clash with the role of the rector and the incoherence of the Government’s role in managing our universities have all been overcome. Nevertheless, I am disappointed that we have not chosen to further strengthen and improve the bill at stage 3.
We supported the representation of staff and students on the remuneration committee. In light of the Government’s failure to get to grips with pay and conditions packages in our colleges, it would seem that it is content to allow other public bodies to set their own terms. We felt that having those at the top and bottom ends of the pay scale deciding on pay increases for senior management could have been a crucial check on excessive pay, and we are disappointed that the Government has chosen to reject that approach.
The cabinet secretary is to be commended for accepting that mistakes have been made and that there have been issues with the drafting, and for listening to the committee, the sector and voices in the Parliament, but the repercussions of the Government getting it wrong on higher education governance are so serious that we will be watching carefully. The implementation of good ideas has never been the Government’s strong point—curriculum for excellence is a case in point—which is why we will be scrutinising every detail as the policy moves forward in practice.
Despite a bad start and the rocky road that the bill has been on to get this far, we must ensure that our world-class universities are supported with the freedom and the framework that will allow them to continue to provide the first-class education and groundbreaking research for which they are revered. That is why we will support the bill.
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