Good morning everyone, and welcome to the first of many strategic conversation events. I don’t believe it’s going too far to say that this event marks a watershed in the decision-making of the national union. I have spoken before of my belief that we must develop a more open and constructive relationship with our members, one that doesn’t only depend on elections and policy debates for input and feedback on our work. We plan to make this kind of strategic conversation an annual process, and in doing so open up more ways for you to contribute to our work, and to help us become more responsive to your real needs.

I hope that the tone of today’s discussions will be creative, open, honest and constructive. Of course, on some levels the content of today’s discussions is deeply political. The financial health and strategic direction of the organisation matter to its members, and I and my NEC colleagues should rightly be judged by those measures. The day we stop being held to account for the work done by our managers and staff will be the day we have serious questions to ask about our political culture. So though you might be sceptical about our commitment to meaningful reform, I plead with you not to be cynical about it. I promise you the NEC is ready to stand up and take responsibility for this, and I am first amongst them.

I want today to be an event where people can come together: elected and employed, left and right, from unions large and small, to discuss the future. That’s why today is so important to me- an NUS event not about what we believe, but about what we are, and what we should be: a strategic conversation about our purpose, our finances and our future. I want today to focus on us building an NUS in which anyone can be successful, an NUS where, whoever wins the election, they can thrive and inspire others. Like me or loathe me, as you please, but don’t doubt my determination to see this through.

And I want to set out a few important points, right from the outset.

Firstly, I think it’s fair to say that many of you - officers and managers alike - have had concerns about the management of NUS in the past: even the recent past. I don’t want to dwell on that now - as many will say today, we are where we are. Suffice it to say that given recent changes and several changes still to come, I’m completely confident that our programme to broaden the scope and accelerate the pace of change in NUS is in safe hands.

I also want at the outset to take on, head on, the suggestion that we are wrong to have senior managers in the room today. So often we have let the excuse that input from our members is political and so should be student only, to hide or denigrate input into our finances, strategy or management direction. Of course decisions on policy should be the reserve of our members in our formal structures. But the idea that we can’t learn from critical friends who have a stake in our success is nonsense.

Secondly, I know that some of you will have concerns about some of the major financial decisions we have already taken, especially about the Endsleigh deal and our estimates for next year. There have already been quite a few rumours circulating about what has, or hasn’t happened, and part of the purpose of today is to explain to you, as fully as we can, the nature of the new arrangements, and the rationale for making the choices we have. Matt will go into this in more detail in a moment.

And finally, I am keenly aware that phrases like ‘root and branch reform’, ‘serious about change’, and ‘opening the books’, are very tired clichés for most people in the room. All I can do is point out that we’re not in the ballroom of the Blackpool winter gardens now; we’re here today to talk calmly and constructively about the future of NUS, with all the aimless rhetoric behind us, and the facts and evidence in front of us.

So with those things said, I want to begin by doing a little reflection on the shape the year has taken so far, since I took office in July 2006.

It’s very often said that NUS has a long and proud history of groundbreaking diversity work. As the Guardian recently pointed out, it’s common to see women stand for president, and win, or to see openly gay speakers stand on out platform at conference and make speeches. It’s also the case that the expression of religious diversity on campus is now so strong that it has become a source of real debate in our movement rather than a novelty or photo op.

But I had no idea last July that questions of religion and faith would come to dominate my year in office so overtly. From reactionary Government proposals around Muslim students to legal challenges from evangelical Christians, barely a day goes by without the agenda on religious diversity developing a crucial new dimension. And I welcome it, because it’s issues like these that really matter to hundreds of thousands of students, and have been set aside as a low priority for far too long. It’s also an area where I know that NUS has a clear role to play in defending the right of students to organise and express themselves in an atmosphere of tolerance and respect. Nothing we do is more consistent with our values than this.

That’s why, on the 5th of March, we’ll be holding the student movement’s first ever national faith symposium, to discuss and debate religion on campus. I need as many of you as possible to be there – officers and managers – to help us to work together with religious student leaders to strengthen two interlocked rights: the right to freedom of expression, and the right to freedom from oppression. It might seem a world away from sports councils and commercial services, but these are real issues that are live today, and really matter to so many students.

And I had no idea last June just how far we could go in putting the concerns of student workers back on the agenda. But we went to the TUC and told them that this is a serious issue for our members. We commissioned a major piece of joint research, which proves our case beyond doubt; students in Britain today are seriously disadvantaged by the need to work long hours to support themselves, and they are then doubly disadvantaged by the poor terms and conditions under which they are employed. We have the evidence, and in 2006, we put the issue front and centre, by signing a partnership agreement with the TUC, developing ways to encourage student workers to unionise, and setting in motion a national initiative towards organising in students’ unions.

And on that point, I want to say something about the language we use in the student movement. I know that in the world of NUS, words like Liberation, Activism, and Organising, are bandied around in a way that often alienates the very people we seek to inspire, and I think it’s time we modernised our approach to these timeless concepts. The concepts are correct – the language and methods need reinventing.

That doesn’t mean treating students like consumers in an educational environment that robs them of any real power.

And it doesn’t mean abandoning all the services NUS delivers, it means trying to build a culture that gives students they need students and their unions what they need to affect change – an organising culture.

What it does mean is timeless values in a changing setting. It means finding new messages, new technology and a renewed political culture in which to exchange ideas and make good things happen.

It means recognising that whilst our access to national decision makers remains crucial, real change for your members will so often come through local work, in your unions, and NUS must support you in this much more than we do today.

And it means responding to supposedly apathetic students, not by reflecting that apathy, but by challenging it with examples of inspirational leadership that demonstrate the power students can have when they take on problems in the world around them.

New university students this year will spend up to thirty thousand pounds each on their education, most of it turning into debt. That’s one tragedy, but the even greater shame is that the vast majority will leave believing that they couldn’t have made it any better. It’s just not good enough for our members to leave education not understanding what’s being done to it by those in power - or how they can change it for the better.

So yes, many are probably put off by the term activist, and the idea of joining a trade union may be old fashioned. But through our activist academy event in February and our ongoing commitment to the whole agenda of what we’ve called “organising”, we aim to energize the political citizens of tomorrow. I believe that idea, if not the terminology, remains as relevant as ever. There is the appetite – we’ve seen it through events like Make Poverty History.

And there’s no single issue on which we need to be encouraging students to change more than education itself.

The new educational landscape- diverse institutions, student funding decided locally and an increasing emphasis on learner voice, quality and advocacy means new responses from NUS. We don’t need just another lobby on fees, important though that is, but an increasing focus on developing educational quality and representation locally, right down to the course rep or individual student, and their learning experience. That what our members want when they become part of their national union, that’s what NUS has to deliver to you to give you value for money. And that’s what we need to work together to achieve.

Working together to achieve change? Oh yes, more timeless language, the notion of collectivism. I’ve got something to say about collectivism, which I think is the most important thing I’ve got to say to you today. For far too long, when NUS has talked about collectivism, it has been about the success of NUSSL’s beer deal, not the opportunity to make important political changes that happen by working together. And I think every person in this room knows that’s the truth. That’s why I think we’re ready now to build a new kind of collectivism together- a collectivism that means more in terms of the daily lives of your members, than any of the words or language I could possibly use.

A collectivism that allows representatives and students at all levels to share and network and campaign together across the UK.

A collectivism that really demonstrates value for money to students’ unions whose dwindling resources are ever more precious.

A collectivism that doesn’t just ask you to stump up cash to have things done for you, but that focuses on sharing expertise, knowledge, and ideas.

And a collectivism that never wastes another penny on a bloated bureaucracy or duplicated back office functions.

When I said last year that we were gearing up for growth, that we had to expand our provision, end the cutback culture, and ensure NUS Extra really delivered for students and unions on the ground, I meant it. When I said that a small NUS wouldn’t happen under my leadership, I meant it too.

But what I didn’t make clear before is this: we are learning the mistakes of the past, we have listened, we have heard, and we are now acting to ensure they are never repeated.

Never again: deficit after deficit.

Never again: shoddy management.

Never again: ducking the difficult decisions that our members deserve.

That’s why we’re now conducting an urgent review of our central resources with the intention of outsourcing, insourcing, sharing or removing anything that doesn’t efficiently and cheaply contribute to the success of our movement.

That’s why the NEC have agreed to appoint an improvement board and a Chief Operating Officer to drive forward real management and financial change.

That’s why we’ve asked Matt and the SMT to find over half a million pounds of savings from next year’s budget.

That’s why real discussion with NUSSL and AMSU is happening now on gaps and overlap. We will begin by relocating our business development function moving to Macclesfield where it belongs, with similar projects in the pipeline.

That’s why we said we’d deliver a real affiliation fee review and we meant it. We will root out unfairness and backroom deals to create a system we can all believe in.

And that’s why the new recurrent income from Endsleigh won’t be frittered away on running costs- we’ve ordered a real 10% cut in affiliation fees beginning next academic year and there’s more to come when we can.

I said last year that we had made real progress in our drive to reform our governance. And we have. More unions than ever are involved in our policy-making processes. Conference debated and passed more policy last year than ever before. And our changes to the NEC- zoned campaigns and committees and a strong and sound Senior Management officer team handling the finances and strategy at the centre have started to transform our working culture at NUS.

But I know and you know that improving the culture and tinkering with the structure wasn’t enough, and isn’t enough.

I want Governance in NUS to be lean and mean. We need efficient structures that mean we actually spend more on campaigning than deciding what to campaign on: and I know you do too.

I want real external expertise and scrutiny over our finances and management so that when I say: “I have good staff and strategy” I know, and you know, that I mean it.

And I want a Governance culture that really harnesses the talents in our movement. A culture where it’s not just about winning and losing elections and debates, but about people feeling able and willing to volunteer on groups, boards and committees, or using technology, to share their expertise, passion and commitment to our movement, and its mission, vision and values.

And that’s what it comes down to. The ultimate old chestnut of language: our mission, vision, and values.

The danger of course with visions and missions is that they’re either too narrow and exclude sections of your membership, or so wide as to be useless in shaping and directing our work. 6 million students, 500 unions, even 27 members of the NEC don’t make it easy. But if we focus on what we agree on, rather than what divides us, it’s actually easier than ever: it’s about Students and their Unions.

It’s about promoting, defending and extending the rights of students and It’s about developing and championing strong students’ unions.

And that’s just about all it’s about. And that’s all we’ll do from now on.

And if that means stopping the fortnightly mailing and diverting the resources to quality research and focused campaigning, we will.

If it means less of a focus on meetings with ministers and more of a focus on helping you to win locally, we’ll do it.

And if it means not doing what NUSSL or AMSU or BWB or SUEI can do better, we’ll stop and work with those who best placed to add value to students’ unions.

And if it means making tough decisions about the costs of running NUS, we will make those decisions, and – just for once – not cower away from them.

Difficult decisions but decisions that need to be taken.

Well governed, well run, and well within budget: this is the NUS we know you want, and I think it’s about time you got it.

We have so much to be proud of in the student movement and in NUS. So many successes, so many supporters so many things we could never replace. So thank you, in advance for the work you’ll do today and in months to come to support us in delivering a student movement to be proud of tomorrow.

Thankyou.

I know you are ready to go after a long day, but if you could just give me a couple of minutes to summarise changes that have already happened in NUS, that we will build on over the coming months.

Thank you so much for your attendance and input today, I think its fair to say that this event is only the start, we have so much to do and we will relish the challenge with your support.

Much has been achieved in the last three months on money, on management and on membership.

Money

10% cut in affiliation fees

Proposed new affiliation fee model

Committed to stripping 500k expenditure over the coming months

Management

Improvement board giving us new and much needed external scrutiny

Change in SMT, with a new Chief Operating Officer

Management training programme for our staff with your support as mentors – again thank you for the goodwill and support

Membership

Starting strategic conversation, with a commitment to running them at least annually

Impact report to come

Support for students unions through work with SUEI

What must be remembered is that the NEC has agreed to all of the above, there is a recognition that NUS must change and I’m proud of my NEC for at last facing these challenges head on.

We recognise that many of you will have had your patience stretched with NUS in the past and may still be wondering if our actions will meet our words, but I know we are now turning a corner.

As I said, there is much to do, now the hard part starts but I hope you will be there supporting us to change

Lastly I’d like to thank my SMT, officers and staff for all of their hard work and commitment to making this happen.

Have a safe journey home

Thank you

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