Universities: Vice-Chancellors’ Pay

Lord Storey Excerpts

Tuesday 12th September 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Storey]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they plan to bring forward proposals to cap university vice-chancellors’ pay.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

Universities are autonomous institutions and the Government have no wish to set a cap on vice-chancellors’ pay. However, given the investment in our world-class higher education system by students and taxpayers, value for money must be of the utmost priority. Exceptional pay should be justified by exceptional performance, and that is why the Minister for Universities has announced that the Office for Students will act to ensure transparency and justification of senior staff pay.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I am grateful for the Minister’s reply. The 2017 survey of vice-chancellors’ pay showed the top eight vice-chancellors earing over £400,000. Similarly, the salaries of chief executives of multi-academy trusts can be counted in hundreds of thousands of pounds. Only today, an education report from the OECD says that teachers are worse off today than they were in 2005. Paraphrasing what the Prime Minister said—that industry fat cats were the unacceptable face of capitalism—does the Minister not consider that some vice-chancellors are the unacceptable face of education?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

There is a mood in the country, and there has been a lot of interest in the press, about vice-chancellors’ pay. That is an obvious point to make. However, as a result of the work that we did on the Higher Education and Research Bill, particularly in this House, we are empowering the new Office for Students to act to ensure value for money in focusing on senior staff pay. This is happening in a number of ways. We are introducing a new condition of registration, requiring the governing bodies of approved fee cap providers to publish key figures so that in future the number of staff paid more than £100,000 per year will be published, broken down into pay bands of £5,000. Also, the names of staff paid more than £150,000 per year, along with the justification for those salaries, will be produced by the OfS, and I think that that is a good step.