I'm sat at my desk in Cardiff and I thought I would share with you some of my thoughts following NUS Wales Spring Conference 2008 which took place in Llandrindod Wells the weekend just gone. We had a good number of unions attend and we were particularly encouraged by the attendance of FE unions who had previously not been involved in the work of NUS Wales. This is a testament to the FE involvement strategy that Carl Harris has been working on with Wales' Development and Training officer Rhys Dart.

We had some useful presentations before opening conference on the partnership work NUS Wales has been doing with Shelter Cymru and the housing training day that Carl Harris has arranged with them for welfare officers from across Wales to come and learn about the latest developments in housing law and how the tenancy deposit scheme works. Conference also heard from Dave Lewis on the importance of the next stages in the governance reform process and although there was no formal vote on the subject I feel it is safe to say that there was the same united resolve from members to support the proposals and change NUS for the better as there had been at NUS Wales Winter Council back in November. The last item before formally opening conference was chaired by Jo Roberts who introduced members to a new survey the NUS Wales Women's Campaign are working with Amnesty International on the theme of domestic abuse in the 18 - 25 year old demographic. Those present were asked to complete the related survey and this was well received.

Now we turned to motions, and perhaps where the Welsh identity I mentioned above will be seen most prominently. We had six motions to discuss and there were interesting debates around all of them, but the one you will probably hear most about over the grapevine was the policy against the introduction of a graduate tax.

Download the full motion.

The debate at conference revolved around a slightly different set of principles to that laid out in the resolves above, in that the debate in Wales has to be put against the background of an agenda of devolution. With a greater devolution of responsibilities Wales could have the chance to abolish all fees and target spending in line with Welsh priorities in a similar way that it has happened in Scotland.

There was not as much malice towards NUS UK's future stance as set out in the motion itself, and I know a lot of members are not entirely 'on board' with the idea of a graduate tax anyway, it is about defining a Welsh identity to the discussion and ensuring that we do not simply get swept along with it all. Whether that's the dominant opinion that the Westminster government will always have a greater say over the Welsh system compared with the Scottish devolution settlement; or that that NUS UK debate will look at the majority opinion and wont bear in mind how we can intelligently campaign in the devolved nations when it maps its whole strategy.

The final point I would like to make is about elections, I was successfully re-elected to the post of NUS Wales President and Carl Harris was re-elected to the post of NUS Wales Deputy President. The excitement was also evident for the NUS UK presidential hustings which were attended by Wes and Ciaran (Ruqayyah had a previous commitment and Daniel couldn't make it either so they both sent statements to be read out). It was great to see delegates being able to ask intelligent questions of candidates and forming their opinion on who to vote for on the basis of the answers and not which candidate had the shiniest freebies as you could argue is the case in Blackpool! As a result of the hustings, I will be personally remaining neutral on the presidential election as there was no clear feeling either way from delegates following the questions and I wouldn't want to give the wrong impression on how Wales felt as a whole. Everyone was happy that they had been able to come and speak and that the candidates were up for a bit of role play (ask Wes or Ciaran about the great NUS democracy car!)

I left the conference feeling that Wales had begun to develop its voice and that the governance review process we are about to embark on has the chance to be innovative in its content and extremely wide ranging in its discussions.

I am excited about the year ahead and I am very proud to have been re-elected as NUS Wales President for the coming academic year.

Ben Gray

The Blogs on this site represent the individual views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies or practices of the National Union of Students.

All links in blogs will open in a new browser window.

The permanent URL for this specific blog entry is: http://www.officeronline.co.uk/blogs/bengray/275246.aspx