SUCU believes that this claim made by Mark E. Smith in his response to us is misleading.

The letter states: ‘In addition, the University notes its disappointment that UCU has not been able to advance a formal, costed solution during the extensive valuation process to date, that it comes at the eleventh hour and is still not yet a formally tabled proposal at the JNC.’

The facts are that USS-costed proposals have been formally tabled for the JNC meeting this Friday the 11^th of February (tomorrow), which was the date on the USS grid for the tabling of such proposals.

These proposals were not tabled earlier because UUK had declared that they would not negotiate with UCU over proposals until after the close of the USS consultation on the 17^th of January. Moreover, UCU sought confirmation of strength of member consultation support for its approach, involving the paying of higher contributions to preserve current benefits. UCU received reports on the consultation responses on the 21^st and 24^th of January. These responses revealed strong support for our proposals. Having received this confirmation, UCU swiftly publicised the proposals on the 26^th of January.

Since then, employers have simply stalled in unprincipled fashion. Although they were aware of the indicative USS costings on which our proposals were based, they demanded formalisation (which is a very complicated procedure) of these costings from USS as a condition of sending UCU’s proposals out for consultation. This in spite of the fact that they sent their own revised proposals out for employer consultation before they received formal confirmation from USS of the 0.2% costing.

They could and should have sent UCU’s proposals out for consultation when they received them on the 26^th of January, just as they sent their own proposals out for employer consultation before they had received formal confirmation of costings.

UUK has today acknowledged that UCU’s proposals meet the higher standard they set for them than for their own proposals, and that they will be launching a consultation on them from early next week. It is not clear why consultation cannot start today.

The response from VCs on this matter, including the letter from Mark E Smith is deeply disingenuous, and appears to categorise proposals from the employer side in a very different way. We therefore ask that USS members inform themselves fully of the facts rather than relying on communications from the employer.

Follow: Mike Ostsuka @MikeOtsuka, Sam Marsh @Sam_Marsh101 and Jackie Grant via @sussexucu

(With grateful thanks to Mike Otsuka for his input)