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Alasdair Smith, chair of the Universities and Colleges Employers Association, wrote about the 2006 pay agreement (Letters, August 3) noting that "the agreement is for three years and has no clause enabling reopening of talks".

Part of the agreement was to jointly commission a review of higher education financial data. This appears on the Ucea website. It states that "in the event that the review were to provide evidence of higher education institutions' ability further to improve the pay of staff for the 2008-09 year this would be included within these negotiations". I think that is fairly clear.

Charlie Owen
Institute of Education
University of London