Day two starts with a breakfast with my colleagues in the higher education group – among others, the VCs from Bristol, St Andrews, Cardiff, and the OU, and representatives from Manchester and UEA, together with David Willetts. There is much anticipation of the arrival of David Cameron. David Willetts and Lord Green, the Trade Minister, have done a good job in keeping our business delegation engaged, but there is no doubt that the PM’s arrival signals a complete change in intensity and media attention.
He joins the full delegation at 9:00am having already opened a new JCB factory in Sao Paulo and seeks an update from both the business and higher education groups on progress on the first day of the trip. We are then led on a stage-managed walk through the streets of Sao Paulo to impress upon the media the size and diversity of the delegation. The grey men in suits (including me!) are pushed to the back in favour of the small number of women in our delegation and the required media shot is achieved. There are times on these delegations when you have to realise that you are a prop for an important public statement, and it feels a bit like that this morning.
We attend a joint ‘huddle‘ with the Sao Paulo business community. Speeches are made and the PM receives a special medal of honour for promoting business relations. In the margins of the meeting, I manage to have a conversation with David Willetts about the impact of government policies on student recruitment this year. He is well aware of our disappointment (read frustration, occasional anger) at having to turn away well qualified students that we have capacity to take, and he recognises that there were unintended consequences of current policies for universities like Southampton. As usual, he is very well briefed and knew about our situation in some detail. We agree that, for both of us, lessons can be learned and applied. It was a useful exchange. Regardless of my views on the existence of this type of ’market‘, I am persuaded that the government wants to get its policies right for students and universities in these new and untested conditions. In turn, it is clear that we at Southampton have to get better at responding to this new market-driven environment.
The huddle continues and is a useful opportunity to follow up on conversations initiated the previous day with our business and university colleagues. I am very positive about the new connections made and hope to entice several potential new partners to visit the University in the coming months. We are eventually ushered to our transport for transfer to the airport. Though it probably isn’t the kind of thing one should admit, I do rather enjoy the military police escort that comes when travelling with the PM. The trip to the airport which might otherwise take an hour is accomplished in 30 minutes and we are quickly onto our chartered plane for the 50 minute flight to Rio de Janeiro.