Llyr Gruffydd AM: But is all this a general piece of work? It's not Brexit-specific, although, no doubt, it may—.
Dr David Blaney: I think that's fair to say, yes. The other dimension around Brexit is the immigration status of EU students, and that's, kind of, beyond our pay scale—that's a UK Government issue.
Llyr Gruffydd AM: Is that something that you have a view on?
Dr David Blaney: It's clearly in the interest of the enrichment of the curriculum and the student experience for students in Welsh institutions to be able to have students from other EU countries in the mix. So, it would be nice to find ways of continuing to facilitate that.
Llyr Gruffydd AM: Okay. Now, of course, you have a statutory duty as well to assess the academic quality of the work in our higher education institutions, and I'm just wondering what potential impacts you think that Brexit might have on that particular aspect.
Dr David Blaney: I think there are possibly a couple of things to say, and one, in a sense, echoes what I was just saying in the final part of my previous response, which is that part of the quality of the student experience is the richness that you get from having students in your cohort who have different backgrounds and different perspectives. So, if there is a continuing reduction in the number of EU students coming into Welsh institutions, then that richness deteriorates. That doesn't mean to say that the base or the threshold standard of what's required for a degree will come under pressure, it's just about the richness on top of that, which will be, in a sense, a quality-enhancement issue. That would be something that we would wish to try to protect against, but in the end you can't force EU students to come—you have to try and look attractive, and we've touched on that. The baseline requirement assessment of quality will not be affected by Brexit, except in so far as the machinery we use to discharge our statutory responsibility, which is through the Quality Assurance Agency, which themselves are accredited with European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education, the European machinery for higher education quality. And there's a set of standards around that, and we would obviously wish not to be in a position where our ability to use and adhere to those standards is adversely impacted upon. Those standards will still exist, and it will be possible for the British system to adhere to them, even if they're not actually able to play in the same way. Then the only other thing I would say is that one of the factors that can cause the quality of the learning and teaching experience to be likely to become inadequate is when institutions come under financial pressure, just because their capacity to maintain the same sort of student experience can get under pressure. So, clearly, we will be looking for and making sure that institutions manage the financial pressures, if there are any—and there are some at the moment, as we've described—and manage those carefully. And in all of that, we will expect institutions to do their duty to make sure that the commitments they've already made to students are carried through. So, where students have already started on the course, they need to be able to finish that course—you can't just pull the plug out. So, all of that comes into the arrangements for quality as well. So, we'll be keeping an eye on that.
Llyr Gruffydd AM: Okay. A lot of what you've told us in the last three quarters of an hour or so will have costs attached, depending on the impacts. Certainly, we're in choppy waters as a sector anyway, and the risk is that things will be even more choppy, if you'll excuse that level of political interpretation, over the years to come. I'm just wondering what advice you might have given the Welsh Government in terms of what level of transition funding, or Brexit transition funding, might be required by the sector, and if you have, what the Welsh Government might have told you.
Bethan Owen: I mentioned earlier that, obviously, we've provided information in terms of the assumptions that the sector are making on income. So, for the year 2017-18, that was £129 million. I think the extent to which that needs to be replaced or supported with transition funding depends absolutely on what the final arrangements for Brexit are, but it's an appropriate point to refer to the report that Professor Graeme Reid has produced, commissioned by Welsh Government. That was, and has, provided advice and recommendations for supporting research and innovation in the transition period. But, again, the Reid recommendations in that report build on the Diamond recommendations, and as soon as Diamond is in place—and Reid is providing recommendations in addition, to establish funding on the basis that the funding needs to be available in Wales to maintain and develop and strengthen the research and innovation infrastructure that we have.
Llyr Gruffydd AM: Are you not worried, though, that the clock is ticking and that we really don't know what the situation is at this point?
Dr David Blaney: Do you mean the Brexit situation?
Llyr Gruffydd AM: The Brexit clock, yes.
Dr David Blaney: Uncertainty is unhelpful, because as I've said several times, the sector is a managed sector at the moment. I don't think there's—. We're not seeing maverick stuff, but actually you can only manage, really, what you can see and what you can reasonably predict. So, the longer the uncertainty persists, the more difficult that is for institutional management and, indeed, for the rest of the machinery to support them. So, yes, the sooner we get clarity, the better for everybody, I imagine.
Darren Millar AM: Chair, can I just ask a question?
John Griffiths AM: Yes, Darren.
Darren Millar AM: In terms of uncertainty, though, we've still got this uncertainty over whether the extra cash that the Government's going to have to spend as a result of Diamond being implemented is coming to the HE sector. They've given a political commitment, but you've got absolutely no other assurance of the sums of money that are coming in. We've got the reform of tertiary education arrangements in Wales, which are also under way, so it's a bit of a perfect storm for you, isn't it, really, with all of these three things happening at the same time?
Dr David Blaney: We're certainly kept busy.
Darren Millar AM: But two of those things are in the gift of the Welsh Government to sort out for you, aren't they?
Dr David Blaney: Well, the policy on the reform of the post-compulsory sector absolutely is a Welsh Government policy. The extent to which they can pre-empt a budgetary process and give us clear sight of the amount of money in future years is—. Well, again, it's not for me to comment. My understanding is that that's difficult for them to do, and I would repeat what I said earlier: officials have been as helpful as I think they can be in respect of that. I mean, you're right, we've only got a political commitment between two people currently in post. It would be great to have that firmer. I'm not sure how that could be done.
Darren Millar AM: I mean, that statement about the savings accrued from Diamond being reinvested wholly into the HE sector has not been repeated, frankly, has it, since the coalition deal was struck?
Dr David Blaney: No, but it hasn't been rescinded either, so—.
Darren Millar AM: No, but there have been opportunities—repeated opportunities—in the Chamber, where the Cabinet Secretary's been asked to repeat that commitment, and the First Minister's been asked to repeat that commitment and has not given that commitment. That must concern you, and must concern your university sector even more than, perhaps, some of the elements of Brexit that we're discussing.
Dr David Blaney: Bethan has outlined earlier on in this session the fact that institutions are currently running deficit budgets in order not to lose the infrastructure on the assumption that the Diamond money will come in. If anything were to cause significant perturbation, either to the timeline of that or to it coming in at all, then there would be much more of what Medwin Hughes calls 'houskeeping' that would be required, and that would be significant. So, at the moment—I don't like the expression 'valley of death', but there is a valley to cross, and I think the sector is reasonably confident about how wide and how deep that valley is. There's a demographic valley as well. So, there are several valleys that they're crossing—the metaphor fails, doesn't it, really, but I think you get the drift? So, there are a number of challenges and they can see their way out of some of those challenges, but if any one of these starts to get significantly disrupted, then that would be a real issue for them.
John Griffiths AM: Okay. Could I go on to ask about other barriers to Welsh universities gaining more funding from UK research councils? What would you say those barriers are?
Dr David Blaney: Well, I think there are a couple of things, really, to say. The first one—and we'll sound like a stuck record if we're not careful—is that there's an issue about investment and the Reid report makes this very clear. So, he has reaffirmed research that had been done previously that identifies that, actually, the quality of the research base in Welsh universities and the productivity of that Welsh research base are both good, there's just not enough of them, and that, in the end, is a product of investment decisions. They have particularly looked at the deficit in science, technology, engineering and mathematics areas, and I always say that research is not just STEM. I mean, STEM is important, and I'm not denying the deficit in that area, but we have to also remember that the research agenda for Wales is not just STEM—it's arts, humanities, it's social sciences. If you look at the impact on public policy that could come from social science research—tremendous. And we're very good at it in Wales. The Welsh impact in its research is better than anywhere else in the UK, so that's good. So, they do very well, and we just really need to invest a little bit further—so continue to do very well, but put it on a broader front. If you want to be able to play into the UK-wide research funding, then the investment has two dimensions to it. One is just having enough researchers to be able to play into those increasingly larger projects rather than small-scale projects. If you haven't got the critical mass, it's very hard to make the case that you can play. And the second thing is that UK-wide research pots nearly always fund at about 80 per cent of the total cost of the research, and the other 20 per cent is meant to be found from the core research funding for the university, and if you're in a situation where your core research funding is not competitive, then you're not going to be competitive at getting that money. So, that's, kind of, straightforward. There are other things. I think it's fair to say that the Welsh sector has not been sufficiently focused on getting in on the conversations with the research councils, making sure they're in the various committees and so on. We are intending to do a bit of work to see if we can systematise that a bit better—that engagement—because there's no doubt about it: it's not to say that this system is in any way inappropriate, but the more you're in the conversations, the more likely you are to be better placed to respond to the research challenges that come up.
John Griffiths AM: Okay. One final question: in terms of the researcher collaborations and networks that exist, do you see potential difficulties after Brexit for the continuation and enhancement of those, and are there any particular lessons to learn from Sêr Cymru II?
Dr David Blaney: I think that there are two things to say here as well. First of all, the Brexit deal might or might not impact adversely on the capacity of Welsh and, indeed, UK research infrastructure to play into broader collaborative activity across Europe, and, in a sense, that's a function of the deal whatever the deal looks like, and we'll have to wait and see. But we've mentioned playing into Horizon Europe, and being able to continue with that would be an important part of that capacity. It's not just the money, it's being in the club and it's the signalling that we're in the game. So, all of that would be important. And then the other part of my response to this would be that, actually, Wales will need to continue to be good at the research it does, so maintaining the quality, maintaining the impact, and hopefully growing the critical mass. The Sêr Cymru initiative has been quite important in doing that, because it's been very focused, capturing key research players, and the attractiveness that that has then to other researchers around them, and to industry collaboration, and they have been areas of real strength that we've invested in. And I think they are already showing dividends in terms of the capacity to win more research funding, and to establish an even stronger presence in the international research market.
John Griffiths AM: Okay. Just one further point, from Darren.