Commissions Drafted and Higher Education Funding Debate

Just two days ago, I was in London for NUS Compositing. I was in the Strong and Active Unions zone, which only took about an hour to do the lot.

The basket I was in (Student Activities) had the motion and amendments done in ten minutes, with the cut and pasting done in another five. The other baskets were done within half an hour, and then ten minutes to allocate the speeches.

The big thing was the order that the baskets would be debated at conference. A proposed order was provisionally supported by 12 unions (including Man Met), and three unions, with hard left delegates, were dead against it. The order was amended slightly to bring on board three more (moderate) unions and others joined the ranks in agreement. These three other unions were sill not budging, because they believed that their motion on the NUS Extra card was important, and should be first, not last.

The problem was they missed the point. The NUS Extra motion was controversial, so therefore would induce a lot of debate. The other motions would pass in no time whatsoever. If the NUS Extra motion was debated first, then it's quite possible that the guillotine would fall before any other motions reach the stand; whereas if it's debated last then we get policy on the other motions and NUS Extra will still reach the stand as there'll be plenty of time left in the zone!

Understand? Well probably not, unless you're an NUS hack!

Anyway, the proposed order, as amended, was accepted by steering after trying to get the hard left delegates to understand why we wanted the order how it was, and failing. The good news is there was enough of a consensus in the room.

Other zones were not so lucky. I don't know the details, but I'd basicly heard that the hard left groups had been told to keep fighting for their motions to be prioritized, until steering took the order off the unions (or indeed until they won). A classic example of the left supporting democracy until it doesn't suit them!

Moving on, I'm back in London today for the Higher Education Funding Debate. Should be interesting, and I suspect the left will again be shouting for free education, and I agree in principle. The problem is that the realistic options in the Higher Education Funding Review that is taking place next year will be;

1. Keeping the cap on tuition fees at the current level (just over £3,000)
   
2. Raising the cap to £5,000
3. Lifting the cap altogether to create a market in Higher Education

So basicly the stance we should be taking as a national union is for the cap to stay at the current level. Obviously there will be other viewpoints but that's mine.

More news from London later.

JR