The state of influence

As you may have guessed, not one of the Festival of Higher Education attendees agreed with Dewi Knight’s opening question. The former Welsh government official, now director of PolicyWISE, was leading a session in the University of London Senate room on the new realities of influencing government.

As former Universities UK chief executive Alistair Jarvis noted, it was only really with the aftermath of the Brexit vote and the election of Theresa May as Prime Minister that the longstanding consensus on the value of the higher education sector shifted, and the now commonplace government attacks on the sector started in earnest.

That’s not to say it has been a central policy – with government and public attention focused on Brexit, the pandemic, economic problems, and immigration it has been clear that higher education sits very low on the list of government priorities. But there is a danger that a sustained negative ministerial rhetoric could damage networks and relationships – and could lead to bad policy outcomes.

Though polling suggests that those with an outright hostility to universities is a tiny minority, there has been a disturbing trend in commentary to see “woke” universities as being out of touch with the interests of the UK. This does present a risk – and the best response could be an emphasis on local benefits. But for Jarvis the government’s current language is all about trying to appeal to a narrow base, and will not help them win the wider public vote.

Former Scottish higher education minister, and current vice chancellor of the University of Dundee, Wendy Alexander had a perspective both on lobbying and being lobbied. Universities, as the “best driver” of regional equality, should be put at the heart of local and regional renewal.

For her, although returns from university study accrue to the individual and society the balance of the funding burden between these two is not set correctly in England or Scotland. Though she was grateful that Scotland had avoided having a “free speech tsar”, she was clearly concerned that the sector is being drawn into “dog whistle” culture wars by an increasingly polarised media.

Knight, Alexander, and Jarvis all looked forward (with caveats that there would be not sudden beneficial changes in policy) that the widely-expected pending change in government at the next UK election that the relationship could be reset. But for former Northern Ireland politician Megan Fearon Westminster was largely irrelevant. She noted that “decision after decision” had been made to the detriment of the island of Ireland since Brexit, and – citing recent interventions on nursing training – more people were looking to Dublin rather than London for leadership, including on sector concerns.

So how can sector lobbying fix this relationship? Jarvis offered three lessons learned from his time at Universities UK:

• Be a bridge between government and the wider sector, not a mouthpiece for sector concerns.
• Influence the influencers – work to lobby civil servants, policy advisors, think-tanks, and local mayors rather than focusing on politicians.
• Influence implementation rather than policy – it is generally when a policy needs to become a reality that there is scope for sensible changes, rather than during the inevitably politicised passage of a bill.

Alexander noted the sheer pace of turnover both among ministers with higher education responsibility and civil servants. The sheer breadth and complexity of sector issues can make policy makers nervous and it is vital to offer support. She also noted the value of Universities UK, drawing a telling comparison to organisations like the CBI or the Institute of Directors.

Fearon was thankful for devolution – though noting that Northern Ireland frequently (as now) did not have a functioning government. For her the relationship with the Department for the Economy, unmediated by an arms-length body is in general a good one, perhaps because the sector is so small. She noted the success of the “skill up” programme in supporting microcredentials.