Dr. Graham Love:

I found that the issues that we were facing day to day were a classic case of the urgent crowding out the important. As alluded to in the previous conversation - which is worth developing here because it explains a lot of the lack of role clarity question that is raised - there is a significant issue with the HEA legislation. Let me be very clear on that. This legislation dates from 1971. The HEA is good at allocating funding; it is good at policy advice and the gathering statistics and data analytics etc on policy advice; it is good, to a degree, at advocacy for the system; but it struggles significantly with the fourth function - the one that was conferred on the HEA after the Hunt report and the national strategy published in 2013 - which is the oversight and regulatory piece.