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Below is the text of the speech made by Chuka Umunna to the High Pay Commission and IPPR on 12th January 2012.

Thank you for that introduction Michael and to the ICAEW for hosting this event.

And thank you too to the High Pay Commission and the Institute of Public Policy Research for inviting me to speak.

All three organisations have made major contributions to informing and stimulating the national debate on this issue which has dominated the news agenda since the year started, the High Pay Commission in particular.

The headlines and clipped news reports do not do justice to this issue so today my aim is:

– to explain why excessive pay and rewards for failure matter from the point of view of our businesses, those who own them and society at large; and,

– to get to the heart of the problem and outline the solutions as we see them in Her Majesty’s Opposition.

The economy is the issue of this parliament not simply because of the lack of growth and the highest rate of unemployment for 17 years which people are experiencing in the here and now. But also because of the long term structural trends in an economy which has failed to deliver incomes to keep pace with rising living costs, a pattern repeated in other developed economies.

What do I mean by this? Not enough of the reward from rising productivity has found its way into the wage packets of average earners with the result that middle income earners have actually seen their wages stagnate from 2003, whilst high earners have seen their wages soar. Consequently many people have come to feel that, in the good times the economy did not really work for them, while in the bad times they were being made to carry much of the risk.

So it is time for some hard reflection on the nature and direction of our economy and the changes we need to make:

– changes to get growth going again in the short term, which is why we have put forward an immediate stimulus package in the form of our 5 point plan for growth and jobs;

– changes to ensure that future prosperity benefits everyone;

– changes to ensure we can pay our way in the world and take full advantage of the new opportunities that new markets bring – which is why we need to build a New Economy based on a reformed capitalism.

The FT have just started a series of articles under the title Capitalism in Crisis. I wouldn’t go as far as those dangerous lefties. Capitalism has been and remains a powerful engine of human progress. But in recent speeches and, again, over the weekend I argued that what we need is a New Economy based on a better, more responsible and more productive capitalism than our current national variety.

That New Economy must be built on a partnership between productive business and active government: the entrepreneurial impulse in us all encouraged and supported; closed circles broken up and opened to everyone. And, as Ed Miliband said in his speech on Tuesday, we must think how we build a New Economy that delivers fairness for Britain at a time when there is less money to spend.

In many ways, the issues around executive pay are a good place to start. Excessive pay and rewards for failure are symptomatic of what is wrong with the way our economy has been operating over the last 30 years – of how wealth is created, how opportunities are shared, how success is rewarded, and how power is exercised in our companies. It is something Ed Miliband has been talking about for many, many months now.

There are some who say it is no business of government – no business of politicians – to be commenting on these matters. We have no right to interfere in the affairs of privately owned companies is their refrain. I could not disagree more strongly with that statement.

At the heart of my politics is the belief that we are all mutually dependent. This notion is deeply embedded in the values of the Labour Party. Better together. Stronger together.

So to argue that politicians and society at large, should not take an interest in these matters, is to feed the idea that society is here and business is over in the corner there which is dangerous.

Why? Because business and society are not separate islands – they are mutually dependent. Business needs a strong society, providing it with human resource, talent and custom. A strong society needs everything that productive business can offer: the jobs, the growth, the innovation, the opportunities, the wealth creating potential. That is why we should take an interest in the pay issue.

And while it is right that those who work hard, generate wealth and create jobs for our country are rewarded, where failure is rewarded or people award themselves huge pay rises that bear no relation to performance or what their companies can bear, trust is severely undermined. As Ken Costa, the former Chair of Lazard International said last October:

“Put bluntly, ultimately businesses cannot work, banks cannot lend, economies cannot function and societies cannot flourish without mutual trust and respect, or without fundamental honesty and integrity.”

That is why the contributions that the ICEAW have made are so welcome – you are the important keepers of the accountancy flame, your mission to ensure that “people can do business with confidence”. And here you are helping to ensure that people can have confidence in business. That has to be right.

As Sir Roger Carr, the current Chair of the CBI, said on taking up his post last year, business needs to show that it is “a force for good.” This is why it was so ridiculous for the Prime Minister and others to infer or suggest that Ed Miliband was being anti-business for raising these issues in his Labour Party conference speech last year – it is very much in the interests of business to resolve these problems and it is rather ironic that the PM is now talking about the need for reform in much the same terms as Ed.

The discussion should start by asking what we pay people for? We pay people to do a job and, where they do so successfully, people do not object to them enjoying the fruits of their success. As for bonuses – my colleague the former Chancellor Alistair Darling put it well last Sunday when he said a bonus is surely “something special, something unusual, something that you give for that little bit extra, not a matter of routine and entitlement.”

Having a skill that is in short supply but high demand is likely to be well rewarded in the marketplace. And as the size of some markets has increased – to become continental and in some cases genuinely global – so have rewards to those at the top have risen.

Of course it is not easy to chart a successful course for a major corporation, where the contours of the market place can change rapidly, where new competitors are around every corner, and where new technologies can make an entire business model obsolete overnight. It takes special skill and extraordinary commitment. So no one is against success that rewards this merit and application. Success should be rewarded.

But increasingly, what we have seen is something else. Reward that is not linked to success or performance: a self-perpetuating spiral of remuneration for those in the golden circle. Handsome rewards for failure. Rewards that seem quite unbelievable to the vast majority of people in this country; rewards from another planet.

And while there are more egregious examples that have gained notoriety, this is not about individuals. The growing gap between increases in pay and increases in company performance is systemic. In the last decade the value of FTSE 350 companies increased by eight per cent, while the average total earning of executives in those companies increased by one hundred and eight per cent.

As rewards at the top have become disproportionate to company performance, so rewards for executives have become disconnected from the rest of the workforce. They are no longer just the best paid employees. Increasingly, they are becoming a class apart.

And let us be absolutely clear who we are talking about – we are not talking about the budding entrepreneur, the small business owner struggling in tough times; this does not apply across all business. We are talking about the relatively small number of people running our largest businesses and working in our more prominent financial institutions. We are talking about FTSE 100 bosses who were paid 14 times the median pay of a worker in 1980, and who are now paid 75 times the median pay of a worker.

I should also point out that this is not a recent phenomenon, but a trend over the last three decades. In the three decades to 1979, executive pay grew 0.8% on average. In the last ten years, growth in the pay of FTSE 100 executives has been closer to 20% a year. It has now reached a point where, as Richard Lambert, former Director General of the CBI said last November, it is “damaging the interests of British business in political, economic and reputational terms”.

Why is this ballooning pay such a problem? For three reasons: it is a bad for the companies themselves; it is bad for our economy overall; and, yes, it is bad for our society.

For the companies themselves, the issue is a classic problem of agency.

Since the 1980s there was a move to create an entrepreneurial culture amongst executives at the top of our large corporations but it didn’t quite work. I’ll explain why.

The owners of the company – the shareholders – entrust executives with substantial powers to make far reaching decisions about the running of the company. Oversight is difficult, because those involved in the day to day management have plenty of discretion and a large information advantage. How can shareholders ensure their agents, the directors – the executive directors in particular – act consistently in those shareholders best interests? The solution was to try to align the incentives – through bonuses, shares, share options, incentive plans and the like, using different mechanisms and over different time frames.

But the fact is that it is hard to create a true entrepreneurial culture among executives at the top of a large corporation. Upside incentives can be made similar, but the structure of downside risk is completely different for an entrepreneur who has everything on the line. Entrepreneurs have most of their own money on the line when they make decisions; executive directors of large companies do not.

The result has been that the value of incentive packages for executives has risen out of all proportion to improvements in company performance. If it ever worked, it seems that there are now declining returns. In the first decade of this century FTSE 350 firms increased their pre-tax profits by 50% and their earnings per share by 73%, while year end share prices fell by 5%. Over the same period, bonuses for executives in these companies have risen by 187%, long term incentive plans by 254%. This demonstrates what psychologists have already found – that the relationship between financial incentives and performance is far from simple, and is not even reliably positive.

At the same time, the heavy focus on the alignment of high powered incentives risks crowding out other, more rounded but equally powerful intrinsic motivations of executives that are just as relevant to the company’s success – the satisfaction of doing a good job, the pride in leading and growing a great company, of winning in the market place, of having the respect of peers, of creating a legacy of sustained and sustainable success.

We are not opposed to performance related pay but it does make you wonder: if a company is so concerned that an executive paid only their salary won’t be motivated to work hard in the best interests of the company, then maybe they have the wrong person in the job?

At its worst you end up with perverse incentive structures which encourage the wrong kind of decision making, as the failures in many financial institutions in the wake of the 2008/9 financial crash so clearly illustrated.

And this approach to executive reward creates negative consequences in other parts of the business. Overemphasising the importance of the contribution of those of those at the top can undermine the motivations of others in the business. As the High Pay Commission has shown, there is a growing body of research that confirms that just as relative rewards matter as a basis for social comparison among executives, so they matter to other employees too. They matter for employee engagement, and their sense of identification with company goals. Feelings of unfairness in pay reduce the willingness to cooperate, can reduce effort and weaken commitment. Unsurprisingly, greater pay inequality in a firm has been found to be associated with lower firm performance.

So excessive pay and rewards for failure are undoubtedly bad for business.

The second reason this is a problem is because it is bad for our economy. I’ve lost count of the number of companies I’ve visited who say to me that they can’t find the engineering graduates they need to hire. Where are they? Lets face it – many of them are following the money. In the decade to 2007, 60% of the increase in the income share of the top 10 per cent went to finance workers. This talent drain, with rewards disproportionate to success, has distorted the market and makes the challenge of rebalancing the economy – by region as well as by sector – so much harder.

Likewise, entrepreneurs, those running our small businesses are the lifeblood of our economy, providing approximately two thirds of private sector jobs and almost half of private sector turnover. We need people to take risks and set up these businesses – why would they do so if they can earn excessive wealth in the boardroom and the City?

And the third reason this matters is because it is bad for our society. Executive pay has helped promote inequality and there is a huge body of research to show that this has a detrimental impact on society. At this juncture many people refer to the “Spirit Level”, the book by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett.

Today, I’ll refer you to comments of the former Chief Economist at the IMF, Raghuram Rajan – the IMF is of course George Osborne’s institution of choice when it comes to quoting people! He has argued that high levels of inequality contributed to the financial crisis. In his recent book, Fault Lines, Rajan explains how high levels of wage inflation at the top and wage stagnation for the rest of the population led to a growth in easy credit.

So I have talked about what we pay people for, how a small group are being paid far in excess of what they deserve, and the adverse impact this is having on our businesses, our economy and our society. What would we – the Opposition – do to change all this?

The High Pay Commission has put forward a tranche of recommendations to increase transparency, accountability and fairness. The recommendations enjoy support in the business community and are in line with measures implemented in the U.S., Germany and other countries to address these issues. We support them too.

In the main, the Commission suggests seeking to effect the changes through the UK Corporate Governance Code in the first instance, followed by legislation if the amendments to the Code do not bring about the change needed. This is the right approach. Legislation should be the last resort, used only if there is not sufficient compliance with the Code within a reasonable period of time.

On the proposals themselves: first, transparency – over the level of reward and over the approval of reward packages. In trying to align executive incentives, reward packages have become increasingly complex, making it difficult for shareholders to understand exactly what is being paid.

This problem is intensifying. Increasing numbers of directors are being rewarded through ever more complex service agreements. Individual reward packages are more generous and ‘performance’ targets seem to be getting easier to hit.

To enhance transparency, the High Pay Commission recommends that:

– Executive pay should comprise a basic salary, with only one additional performance related element where necessary;

– The publication of pay packages of the ten highest paid employees outside the boardroom; and,

– The reporting of pay packages in a standardised form, including a single figure showing total remuneration.

We endorse these proposals. They will give shareholders access to simple, standardised information on which they can make reasoned judgements. While we wait and wait for this Conservative led-government to match words with deeds, there is no reason why business cannot begin taking action now.

In addition, the Commission proposes that investment and pension fund managers be required to disclose how they vote on all issues, including on remuneration. This transparency would allow pensioners and investors to see where their monies are being used to finance big pay deals. It is their money, after all.

This increase in transparency would also increase accountability, and is just one of a number of changes needed to do so.

To examine the dynamics of a remuneration committee is to observe a case study of what happens when responsibility is diffused, backgrounds of participants are homogenous, and loyalties can overlap. Participants are drawn mostly from a narrow class of, mostly male, current or former executives. The voice of employees is silent and shareholders vote in an advisory capacity on remuneration reports after the event. You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to detect a problem with this old way of doing business.

The way non-executive directors are appointed and the backgrounds from which they are drawn – they are often ex-executives themselves – is not conducive to the appointment of people who are prepared to shake it up and introduce new ways of thinking. That is why we endorse the Commission’s recommendations to have employee representation on remuneration committees and to open up the recruitment of non-execs to a wider pool.

But I want to look at where we should go further. In the UK, the nomination committee of the Board – which is responsible for hunting out people to serve on boards – is made up of other Board members. Candidates are nominated by those Board members at the company’s AGM and, in most cases, are elected as a matter of course.

We should consider moving towards a system which other countries have adopted where the nomination committee is not composed of board members but is composed of the four or five biggest shareholders in the company along with the non-executive chair of the board – that same committee, composed of shareholders, also recommends the structure and amount of remuneration. This would create far stronger lines of accountability to those who ultimately own the business and would promote the shareholder activism and engagement which is key.

In addition the role of remuneration consultants must be looked at, as the Commission says in its report. In his 2006 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, Warren Buffet referred to a remuneration consultancy called “Ratchet, Ratchet and Bingo”; “The name may be phony,” he said, “but the action it conveys is not”, highlighting his view that such consultancies inflate executive pay. There are widespread concerns that these consultancies are ratcheting up pay here too.

Indeed, it is my view that, unchecked, their effect could be similar to that of unscrupulous football players’ agents – inflating salaries sometimes way beyond talent or contribution and often working against the long term interests of the companies themselves.

Part of the problem is that – in their advisory role to remuneration committees – the consultants owe their duties to the Board and not to shareholders. This needs to be looked at, along with the risk of conflict where consultants are advising both executive management and non-executive directors on remuneration. That is why it is right that companies should publish the extent of their use of remuneration consultants.

I am aware of the voluntary guidelines to prevent remuneration consultants cross-selling services but, given the risk of conflict, consideration should be given to taking a more strict approach. Lawyers giving legal advice in the same context are not subject to some voluntary code but to binding rules that prevent the provision of advice where there is a potential for conflict of interests, unless strong, viable and properly policed Chinese Walls are erected. Why should the same not apply here?

Finally, on fairness, the disconnection of executive reward from the pay of other employees is at the heart of loss of trust. This needs to be rebuilt. That is why we endorse the Commission’s call for companies to publish the ratios between the highest paid employees and the median.

It is also another reason for having an employee on the remuneration committee of the Board, something the Prime Minister has failed to commit to implement – as Ed said on Tuesday, it would mean top executives would have to look an ordinary member of staff in the eye before they award these pay packages.

To continue to inform this important debate, we endorse the High Pay Commission’s call for a permanent body to monitor high pay, along the lines of the Low Pay Commission Labour established.

All of these measures are designed to empower shareholders – to give them the tools to be able to take action, and to increase the accountability of directors to them.

David Cameron has sought to do this by making shareholder votes on remuneration binding. We will examine this proposal when Vince Cable, my opposite number, provides further detail later this month.

However, there are a number of problems with what he has suggested. First, it is backward looking. As CBI Head John Cridland has said, this would be like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Secondly, there are large practical difficulties with the proposal as its retrospective impact would create legal problems in trying to unpick contracts already agreed – I say this from my own experience, having practiced as a specialist employment law solicitor for the best part of a decade.

And thirdly, without a matching requirement of transparency – the provision of clear and simple information – shareholders may not be any the wiser about what they are voting on, and may even be less inclined to vote.

So it is not enough for David Cameron to say he wants shareholders to be given a vote on these issues. We have seen and heard this kind of thing from him before – talking a good game but fiddling at the margins.

I believe in shareholders’ democracy but democracy is about more than voting. If we are to empower shareholders, they need information provided through greater transparency of boardroom pay – as well as the means to mobilise and become more active in the running of their companies.

And this takes us to the heart of the issue – the need to encourage greater activism amongst shareholders. We cannot ignore the long term trends that are working against this. Since the early 1990s, foreign ownership of total UK equity has increased from less than 15% to around 40% in 2008. The average length of time investors hold their shares has fallen from 5 years in the 1960s to less than 8 months by 2007, with an enormous increase in high frequency trading.

These trends make it harder, but all is not lost – there are grounds for optimism. Voting by shareholders in FTSE 350 companies has now risen to a respectable 68%. There is clearly an appetite for more shareholder power and we have to nurture the use of it. It can be built upon by putting more – and more effective – tools in the hands of shareholders in the way I have described.

And all this needs to be underpinned by a renewed and explicit focus on relative reward based on merit – the fairness that inspires employee loyalty to a company, and the fairness that renews public trust in business.

The current business environment is as tough as it has ever been. Labour has set out a plan for jobs and growth to get the economy moving again, get people back into work, and to reduce the deficit.

But we also must address the underlying challenges in our economy that have persisted over many years, and which the financial crisis brought in to sharp relief. Excessive executive pay is one of them.

That is why I am glad that this debate is going on and proud of the role that Ed has played in leading it. Let’s make it count. Let us begin preparing the ground for the better days that lie ahead. Let us build a better economy for Britain.

Thank you.

Below is the text of the speech made by Chuka Umunna to Universities UK on 2nd December 2011.

Thank you for that kind welcome. I am hugely grateful for your invitation to speak today at this critical time for our universities and the Higher Education sector.

This gives me the first opportunity to give a speech on this major part of my brief since my appointment as the Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills.

At a time of considerable change and instability Universities UK has been a constant voice of good sense and reason. I know both my predecessor in the role, John Denham, and our former lead on Higher Education, Gareth Thomas, greatly appreciated your wise counsel and advice.

Though he is not here, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank John, who is a real champion of Higher Education. He brought a huge amount of expertise to bear on the brief as a former Secretary of State for Innovation Universities and Skills and as Shadow Business Secretary.

Both I and Shabana Mahmood, our new Shadow on Universities, want to maintain and grow the close working relationship John and Gareth had with you.

I, of course, shadow Vince Cable. Vince is a bit different to me – he has been around for somewhat longer than me. In fact, a journalist pointed out when I was appointed in October that not only is Vince twice my age but, during his lifetime, he has been a member of the Labour Party for longer than I have.

Anyway – notwithstanding the comparisons with Vince – though Shabana and I may not be in Government, we have an important role to play as an Opposition holding the government to account and ensuring they do right by our students, by the institutions our students attend, by those who work in them and, above all, by our country. You want this too which is why a constant dialogue, between us and you, is absolutely essential. For example, we will want to work closely with you on the forthcoming Bill and the changes that it will bring.

Shabana and I will also be making a series of visits to universities in the coming months to listen and learn, and we look forward to engaging with many of you then as we develop our policy, and thank you for all your help and assistance to date.

Just as there has been change in our team I know there has been some in yours too.

I look forward to working with Eric Thomas, and I would like to pay tribute to the work of Steve Smith before him. I want to pay tribute to you, the members – Vice Chancellors and Principal s up and down the country – for the work you do, not just as leaders of your institutions but also as leaders in your communities. You preside over a world class Higher Education sector with a strong international reputation.

Collectively, you represent excellence in teaching and research. Your institutions consistently feature high up in global rankings as the latest figures demonstrate and you continue to drive innovation through your advanced research and its application.

People forget that our HE sector is our seventh largest export industry, generating over £59 billion in output, and more than 650,000 jobs. You are drivers of jobs and growth nationally.

And the institutions that you lead are major employers, and important drivers of regional growth too. With the abolition of the Regional Development Agencies, your voices as advocates for your regions are more important than ever.

The bottom line is that universities are integral to our future success as a country.

Nowhere was this more evident to me than during my recent trip with Ed Miliband to the Warwick Manufacturing Group which is part of Warwick University.

In 1980, Professor Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya set up the WMG to reinvigorate UK manufacturing through the application of cutting edge research and effective knowledge transfer. Thirty years on, it is continuing to do just that. It brings academic rigour together with industrial and organisational practice. It is an example of how the Higher Education sector, working with industry, can drive growth in the real economy.

There are other excellent examples too like Cambridge Technopole, at the heart of which sits Cambridge University. It provides research and innovation support for high-tech businesses in that region.

There is the University of Abertay, at the centre of a video games designing cluster, with degree courses providing highly skilled graduates but also managing a research and development fund for local developers.

One of the business advisers helping our review talks extremely positively of the knowledge transfer from Sheffield Universities and his bakery business, in improving skills progression and development and productivity improvements to achieve his goal of being the best baker in Britain.

I am sure you would all be able to give me more examples of what your centres of learning are doing to add to this list.

These kinds of collaborations and partnerships should be a bigger part of getting growth going in our economy and our future success. And so it is an essential element of our policy review work.

Later I will say something about our thinking to date and the principles that will guide the development of our policy:

Fairness for students;

Autonomy for universities enabling them to deliver excellence;

Sustainable funding; and,

Universities playing a central role in the economic as well as the cultural life, in regional and national economies.

However, before I do this I must turn to the elephant in the room (so to speak) – the cloud hanging over your futures – what the Government is pushing through and where it is getting it wrong.

Where the Conservative-led Government is getting it wrong

With the anniversary of the vote to triple fees next week, I think it would be worth recapping on what has been, let us say, a challenging year and where we have got to.

When the Conservative-led Government initially set out its changes to Higher Education – cutting the teaching grant by 80% and hiking up fees – we said what was proposed was unnecessary, unfair and unsustainable: not good for students or the future of Higher Education, one of Britain’s great success stories.

It was why we asked the Government to lay out their p lans in full so we could subject them to the necessary scrutiny. So what happened?

The vote to triple tuition fees came first before any White Paper, surely the wrong way round. Then the changes on access and widening participation were forced out, with subsequent changes to those plans.

As fees levels began to emerge with £9,000 looking to be far from the exception to the rule which the Government promised, their sums didn’t add up and a black hole came into view. First Ministers ignored this and claimed it would all even out in the end. But their miscalculation saw a scramble to claw back in other ways. There were exhortations; claims OFFA was now a regulator and would set levels; even threats to universities with Ministers crudely claiming that fee levels were so high because universities were inefficient.

Lets take a step back and reflect on that particular claim for a moment – in business, companies have to factor in risk and cost it. You are businesses too and this Government has displayed an abject lesson in creating unnecessary risk for you.

So the White Paper arrives at the end of June of this year. When the threats failed, frankly because of the mess the Government had created, they pulled ‘core and margin’ and AAB out of a hat which they then bolted onto the original plans.

This is no way to run government policy on Higher Education – this is no way to treat our universities. Vince Cable called his dismantling of the RDAs Maoist and chaotic. It could equally have applied to another area of his brief.

The reforms are not the evolutionary change UUK has argued for.

Institutions have had to make decisions affecting their future financial viability not knowing how the rules will change month to month.

You are now in the ridiculous position where you have previously set your fee levels and agreed access agreements with OFFA in April only to find that the rules of the game changed with the Wh ite Paper. Following its publication you found you were faced with a deadline to bid for the 20,000 places which were taken from universities and for which you could now bid – that deadline closed before the deadline for revised access agreements to be signed off by OFFA.

27 institutions have re-submitted their access agreements proposing lower fee levels and 25 today have been told they can change their agreements according to OFFA’s announcement a few moments ago. We still need to look fully at the detail but the OFFA letter confirms there is no evidence on what works best to widen access – fee waivers or bursaries – but the Government still ploughs ahead none-the-less. Fee waivers of course help the Government’s mess as it reduces its bill. The chaos remains for students and the university system, a system which gets ever more complex and bureaucratic.

If the Government had backed Labour’s proposal at conference, which I will get onto in a moment, none of these current access changes, nor core and margin would have been necessary, nor would quality be under threat. Fees would have been capped at £6,000.

‘Core and margin’ is designed to reduce the cost of courses to make up for the Government getting its sums wrong – it isn’t for the benefit of students or the Higher Education sector. And because of this mess students have applied for courses without knowing the fee levels – making far reaching decisions about their lives without the information that they need. This is no way to help our young people get on in life.

Then there are the visa changes to Tier 4 – the student visa route – which hasn’t helped either. As I said, the UK’s 7th largest export is Higher Education for foreign students. This was thrown into chaos by the Home Office’s changes which deter foreign students from applying to UK universities. There was little regard to the impact and to the reputation of the UK HE Sector around the worl d. Where was the Business Department pressing your case? As an Opposition we recognised this threat and I know John worked with you in trying to get the Government to recognise the damage it was doing.

Overall, though, their reforms are seeking to introduce something more fundamental: a more market-led system, or mini-markets, overlaid with a more complex and bureaucratic structure.

We are supportive of student choice. Within a diverse sector, students currently have a wide range of high quality options by course and by institution. We welcome the extension of choice that will result from allowing Further Education colleges the power to award degrees, which will allow people who live in areas that are not near a university to access Higher Education courses.

But this market is beset with problems and few have said it will work well. There will be intended and unintended consequences. Ministers admitted that there would be institutional failure as a result.

There are rightly fears that the reforms will discourage universities from offering science and technology courses and student take up of the same, at a time when these types of course should be the centre-piece of a future Higher Education system as our competitors countries recognise.

There are rightly fears that social mobility and access will stall. Aim Higher has been scrapped, the National Scholarship Programme, though described as “national” is misleading – it does not have national eligibility criteria but is more a lottery with students with the same social and economic backgrounds getting different types of benefit depending on where they study; and there is widespread confusion among students as to its purpose. The respected Sutton Trust has said the tripling of fees will reduce the gains made on widening access and social mobility. This is exacerbated by ‘AAB’ and ‘core and margin’, which has led to complex access arrangements b eing crow-barred on to try and correct imbalances. Widening access is very much an afterthought not an outcome of the new system.

OFFA, with a hugely expanded role, is still an office of a handful of staff assessing access agreements. It is not clear what the sanctions are going to be for universities that do not fulfil their obligations.

In fact, UCAS figures have seen a drop in application to universities and a variation is emerging across regions with the North East seeing the highest drop. What does that say about ‘rebalancing’ the economy?

Also, there are fears that the expansion of for-profit providers will unbalance Higher Education further and undermine quality. Apollo Group, Kaplan and the Education Management Corporation have all met with the Higher Education Minister, David Willetts. All currently have lawsuits being pursued against them in the US for aggressive recruitment practices and miss-selling of courses.

And with the changes that have taken place we still do not know how much future turbulence will be added on top – will there be further rounds of core and margin?

So that is the landscape. In light of all this, let me pause a second and pose some questions:

Are the changes to Higher Education helping to widen access, ensuring that those with the best potential are in our universities?

Are they enhancing opportunities?

Are they giving stability to universities to plan and to build on their success?

Are they helping our universities compete in the world?

Are they helping to put universities at the heart of growth, working with business and Government to create future success?

Are they working to support the STEM needs of our economy?

In all case the answers is sadly a no.

So it is in this context that we are having to think about the future of Higher Education – who knows what we would inherit at the time of the next General Election were we elected.

And I know that you have of course worked with the Government to try and secure a better outcome to the changes. It hasn’t been easy. You all want the best for your institutions and the sector. For some there are silver linings – perhaps the ability to raise more income. Some argued from the start that, with the Government cutting the teaching grant by 80%, higher fees were the only way. Some perhaps see opportunities flowing from the access changes and bidding for courses. Others we know are deeply frustrated with what has been going on.

So what is our thinking? Well, we must deal with the world as we find it, not as we would like it to be. This lies behind the policy announced by Ed Miliband at the Labour Party Conference.

First, let me turn to fees. It is absolutely right that graduates make a contribution. It underpins the changes we introduced in Government and which brought an extra £1bn into Higher Education. But this Government is now forcing many students to take on debts of more than £40,000 – long-term debts, and long-term impacts.

It strikes at the root of what Ed Miliband has called the Promise of Britain – that the next generation should do better than the last. Many families fear their children will do worse than the generation before. That’s why we have put forward an alternative funding package, reducing the maximum level of fees from £9,000 to £6,000.

No university would be worse off under this plan, as any money lost through a reduction in tuition fees would be compensated for – for individual universities the proposal is revenue neutral.

And, there would be no need for the core and margin system and the uncertainties and mess it creates. With the sums back under control, there would be no black hole from £9,000 fees.

I’ll explain how this works: reducing the maximum level of fees to £6,000 while compensating universities for the difference costs £1.1 billion. Of that £1.1 billion:

£350 million will come from automatic savings from reducing the cap to £6,000 because it will means some associated expenditure, such as on as fee waivers, will no longer be required;

£300 million comes from cancelling the Government’s planned cut to the corporation tax on the banks; and,

£500 million comes from asking the top ten percent of graduates – graduates earning over £65,000 in each year of their working life – to pay more through a combination of a higher interest rate (from 3% to 4%) and to continue to pay for an additional two years if they pay off their loan within 20 years.

So this could be implemented now. It would maintain funding for universities but avoid harm to families and graduates from the Government’s plans. It would reduce the debt which graduates will be loaded with, and would be an important step towards a more graduate-tax like system with wealthier graduates being asked to pay more due to the combination of a higher interest rate and time limited overpayment for two years.

Our proposal and our approach are guided by our core principles – that graduates should make a fair contribution to the cost of Higher Education and that those who benefit the most should pay the most.

And if by the time of the next election we can do more, then we will – so starting out from the position set out at our Party Conference this year, we will be looking at further ways to:

Reduce the burden on families and students who are being saddled with high debts;

Maintain funding for universities; and

Develop a fairer payment system for graduates.

Our policy review will be looking at these issues further.

To date the review – and the interim findings were published a few weeks ago – has been focused on the economic challenges we face which brings me to my second point – international competitiveness and paying our way in the world.

We need a new economy, which is fair, resilient, competitive, and supports the long-term. It needs active, intelligent government working with business to build a vision for the future economy, and develop strategies for the sectors for which we have a competitive advantage and where can compete. It is not business as usual but a different approach.

Higher Education is an essential element of our future success – not only as an export sector as I have laid out, but in terms of training, skilling and developing what will be part of the future workforce, supporting the research and leading the collaborative work with industry. Your report published yesterday supports this view.

One of the challenges Britain faces is that the economy has skill shortages at the same time as under-utilising the skills we have. We need more companies that can utilise those skills. That means creating the conditions where we encourage companies who invest in the long term; creating the conditions in which we do not rely on low skills, low paid jobs where we cannot and should not compete.

The role of universities is central to increasing our productivity and building a more skilled workforce to bring this new economy about.

In 2001 we set a commitment to get 50% of 18-30 year olds entering Higher Education to go to university. It was ambitious. It was right. It helped focus our collective efforts. It wasn’t arbitrary as some claimed but achieved real change. In 1999 39% of young people went to university and this grew to 47% in 2009/10. This is a huge achievement. And it happened at a tim e when we rescued apprenticeships and supported vocational education too.

But, the target was virtually met when we left office. A fair question is therefore what should the future hold?

As part of our review, we will be looking at how we can build on this and the best way we can assess ourselves against our competitor countries – I think that has to be the yardstick against which we should judge our progress in the future.

It is right in the global world, with global markets, that we are outward looking in this way. We need to be focused on being among the best in the world. So we need to benchmark ourselves against the best.

Yes, the numbers of young people going into university but also a broader account too, of the quality and type of courses students undertake which supports our industries and economy of the future and – in a similar way – the quality, level and take up of vocational education. We need to look at the overall skill and education levels of 100% of our future generation and be among the best in the world.

In concluding, let me draw on your report and quote two thin gs to support the arguments I’ve just made for a new economy – something I can leave you to think about.

In your report you say, and I quote:

“Countries with high levels of innovation [also] tend to have, on average, higher proportions of graduates in their populations and a stronger track record of investment in Higher Education.”

I think innovation is key.

In your report you also list the number of Chinese, US and EU graduates per year in 2010 and the estimates in 2020. I added up the numbers. The increase in per year graduates in China in 2020 compared to 2010 is nearly the same as the total number graduates in 2020 in the US and EU combined.

The landscape is changing.

Together we must work to ensure Britain is set up to meet the new challenges.

Thank you.