Public Libraries

Lord Bird Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Bird]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, following the publication of the report by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals and The Big Issue, Public Libraries: The Case for Support, on 15 October 2019, what plans they have to invest in England’s public libraries.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question in my name on the Order Paper, and I bring to the attention of the House my interest in this product.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are committed to supporting a sustainable, long-term future for libraries in England. We want libraries to be resilient and equipped to meet local challenges—to thrive, not just to survive. The Government announced proposals in December 2019 to increase local government resources by £2.9 billion, meaning spending power will rise by 4.4% in real terms in the year 2020-21. The Government are also investing £125 million, through the cultural investment fund, in regional museums and libraries over five years, starting in 2021.

[Lord Bird]

I thank the Minister for that reply. Might there be a cross-government problem whereby the Minister for the creative industries is in charge of promoting libraries while the local government Minister actually spends the money? In recent times, 6,000usb people have lost their jobs in libraries and we have had 10% shrinkage in libraries, and there has been no intervention by the ministry of culture.

[Baroness Barran]

I start by thanking the noble Lord for the work he does in this area and for his beautiful blue report, which I have a copy of with me and which makes good reading. He makes a good point about the need for close working between government departments and I would like to think that we have made real progress on that, with the establishment of the Libraries Taskforce, together with the Local Government Association, and the establishment of a clear five-year strategy up to 2021, the Libraries Deliver strategy, which the noble Lord will know. For the first time, we have some clear data about libraries; not so long ago, we did not even know how many libraries we had. We are now building a dataset that will allow both departments to make good decisions.