Universities: Administration (Hansard, 14 March 1989)

§ Viscount Davidson
My Lords, the Government are confident that, from 1st April, the new Universities Funding Council will follow the University Grants Committee in seeking the correct balance between freedom of action for independent institutions and the proper stewardship of the considerable public funds put at their disposal.

§ Lord Grimond
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. Is he aware that his optimism is not very widely shared? At the moment the universities are snowed under with returns and demands of one kind or another, nearly all emanating from the Government or their appointed bodies. The problem has become so bad that there is talk of making the position of the principal of the vice-chancellor's committee a full-time job for a year, taking him away from his university duties so that he can deal with this mass of administration. Would this not be a complete waste of time, money and talent?

§ Viscount Davidson
My Lords, I do not share the noble Lord's pessimism. The universities together receive £1.7 billion of public funds. Most of that is distributed as block grants, allowing universities considerable freedom on how it is spent. However, your Lordships would rightly criticise the Government if there were no means of accounting for the considerable sums that had been spent. A suitable flow of information from the universities to the UGC and the new UFC is thus necessary.

§ Lord Beloff
My Lords, is the Minister aware that his reply will cast further gloom into an already gloomy university world? It is simply untrue that universities need to fill in endless forms in order for public money properly to be controlled. The Government's purpose in getting universities to teach more students and to do more and better research is being frustrated by the need to switch people from their proper jobs to unnecessary form filling to please the bureaucrats in Elizabeth House.

§ Viscount Davidson
My Lords, I can assure my noble friend that it is not bureaucrats in Elizabeth House who are issuing these forms. They are being issued by the UGC. As the UFC will, like the UGC, involve university interests, it seems to me that it will be the first to recognise the issues that are being discussed today.

§ Baroness Seear
My Lords, the noble Viscount told us that he was confident. That is the reply we receive frequently from the Front Bench. The Government never tell us why they are confident. We are not interested in their state of mind but in the reasons behind it.

§ Viscount Davidson
My Lords, I am smiling, and that reflects confidence.

§ Lord Glenamara
My Lords, is the noble Viscount aware that exactly the same problem—only more so—now afflicts the polytechnics, which are supposed to be becoming independent on 1st April? Is he aware that they are snowed under with demands from the new funding council for development plans, mission statements, and heaven knows what? Such jobs are taking hundreds of manpower hours throughout the country which should be spent on teaching. What is the good of removing the servitude to a local authority and putting in its place servitude to a bureaucratic layer between the Government and the institutions?

§ Viscount Davidson
My Lords, we spent many hours in this House debating the university funding provisions of the Education Reform Act, which, in accordance with the wishes of Parliament, leaves the UFC with substantial autonomy in the way it manages its affairs. The balancing judgment—to which I referred in my first reply to the noble Lord, Lord Grimond—is properly one for the UFC, which may adjust that from time to time in the light of its dealings with universities.

§ Lord Taylor of Blackburn
My Lords, does the Minister not feel it is very sad that a distinguished vice-chancellor has to go away from his university for one year to deal with all the bureaucracy that is coming from various offices in Whitehall?

§ Viscount Davidson
My Lords, I said that it was not coming from the Ministries in Whitehall. Perhaps noble Lords would like to show me examples. I shall certainly look into the matter and write to them.

§ Lord Peston
My Lords, is the noble Viscount aware that, although I am partially retired as an academic, even I am snowed under with filling out such forms? It deflects me from my main job of asking the noble Viscount difficult questions! More seriously, does he recall that the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor and the noble Baroness who was the Minister at that time both reassured your Lordships when we were debating these matters that we would not be snowed under with these bits of paper when the Bill became an Act? It looks as though the promises they made have not been fulfilled.
I am aware of the role of the UFC and of the PCFC. However, I ask the noble Viscount to draw the attention of his right honourable friend the Secretary of State to the problem, which I assure him is not a fiction but an absolute fact in universities. I ask him to draw his attention to these problems and to ask him whether he will use his good offices to have a word with the UFC.

§ Viscount Davidson
My Lords, I do not believe that filling in forms has deflected the noble Lord from asking me difficult questions. However, I should like to see some of the forms that he has had to fill in. I shall certainly draw the attention of my right honourable friend to what he has said.