Library Services

Debate between Diane Abbott and Gloria De Piero

Tuesday 25th January 2011 Westminster Hall

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) on securing this important and timely debate. Her fears for the future of the nation’s libraries are shared throughout the country by people of all parties and none, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith) pointed out when talking about the protests in his constituency. Libraries are popular: my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) discussed the popularity of libraries in his constituency, and my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) talked about waiting lists for reading groups. The hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) also said that library usage was up in her constituency.

I shall start my winding-up speech by focusing on the social progress and advancement for working people that libraries provide. That was alluded to by my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan and by the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb). People have spoken passionately in favour of libraries because they facilitate social mobility. The Victorian pioneers who began the public library service were not a bunch of crazed public spenders. Many were hard-nosed men of industry who realised just how vital it was for both the economic and the moral health of their communities that ordinary men and women had the opportunity to learn from the great books and journals that were accessible for the first time to those without means. They gave that opportunity for self-improvement to so many.

That was a public value, which was given legal recognition by the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964. That declared, as plain as can be:

“It shall be the duty of every library authority to provide a comprehensive and efficient library service for all persons desiring to make use thereof”.

Whose Government passed that legislation? None other than that of the 14th Earl of Home, better known as the Conservative Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home. That was the age of one-nation conservatism, when even the Tory party believed in something real called society.

Let us talk about the people whom libraries serve. They serve millions of mums, such as those in my constituency who tell me that their youngsters cannot get through the contents of the local library’s children’s section fast enough. These mums are desperate to give their kids a head start through good reading skills and an understanding of the world gained through books.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

We have heard about libraries as a leisure activity for people in their later years and as places housing computers, but does my hon. Friend agree that there are still communities for whom libraries are a window for their young people on the world of books and learning? I was brought up in a household in which there was one book—the “Encyclopaedia Britannica”. When I had just turned five, my mother took me to the library. She did not read, but she understood the importance of reading. We need to preserve libraries for communities in our cities and rural areas, where libraries give children their first introduction to the world of books and learning.

[Gloria De Piero]

My hon. Friend makes a good point about social progress, social mobility and advancement. Some of the mums whom I speak to do not have much money, so without easy access to a local library, their kids simply would not have books at home. Some of the mums are better off, but even those on middle incomes tell me that they cannot afford to keep up with their kids’ appetite for new books. The Minister can no doubt pop on to Amazon with his gold card whenever he likes, but that option is not open to millions of our fellow citizens, especially at a time when the cuts and tax hikes of the Government of whom he is a member are hitting family budgets throughout the land.

It is not just mums who are served by libraries. They also serve people seeking work and those looking for a better job. Jobseekers have told me that many big employers now advertise online only. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan has said, more than one in four households are not online, and the lowest earners are the least likely to have internet access at home. Without access to the internet at their local library, they would struggle to find out about vacancies.

Those seeking new skills rely on their libraries, too. The actor Chris Gascoyne, who is from my constituency of Ashfield and is now a leading light in “Coronation Street”, told me quite plainly that much of the reason why he has become a successful actor is that he fell in love with the library in Sutton in Ashfield. If people slash the library, they are slashing routes into the world of work. How much of a false economy is that?

I have not mentioned the battalions of school kids who rely on their local library to do homework, to study for exams and to help to guarantee their future success, as alluded to by my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock). No one is saying that the library service cannot modernise and that it should not continually look for ways of achieving more bang for its buck. However, I am sometimes confused when I read speeches given by the Minister, because whenever he is in front of an audience that cares about libraries, he says that he will

“do my best to be a champion for libraries as your minister.”

He says that he will

“keep emphasising the importance of libraries”.

He also says:

“Libraries offer opportunities and sustainable solutions—they are not a service that is simply an easy cut in tough times.”

I do not know whether those words will reassure the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) or whether he shares my fear that they are warm words, which, as always, are charmingly spoken but which mean absolutely nothing when they come up against the reality of the pernicious local government settlement that is threatening libraries up and down the country. News is coming in from all over the country of threats to libraries. According to media reports, more than 400 libraries and 50-plus mobile libraries are currently under threat or have recently closed, and those are only the figures from half the local authorities that have done their settlements. I apologise for not having exact figures, but despite my repeated pleas to the Minister in written questions, he has not given me an exact figure.

Where libraries are not closing, they are reducing the service. Where I live in Nottinghamshire, the Conservatives reign supreme on the county council. They propose to reduce the budget for buying new books from £1.6 million to just £400,000—a cut of 75%. The average age of a book in a Nottinghamshire library will go from 5.4 years to 21.5 years, so when people sit in Notting Hill discussing the Booker shortlist, it will be two decades before those titles reach Sutton in Ashfield. What is the reason for that? The Conservative leader of the county council has summed it up. It is

“to meet the challenges of the financial settlement for local government”.

That is echoed by councils throughout the country, which many hon. Members have referred to during the debate.

If any part of my constituency reminds the world of the power of literature, it is the town of Eastwood, where my home is and where the adolescent D. H. Lawrence would borrow books on Thursday evenings from the lending library at the Mechanics institute, yet even there, where there is positive proof of the power of social mobility, the Conservative council is proposing to cut library opening hours by 40%. I feel sorry for budding Lawrences among today’s residents of Eastwood.

The Minister often says, “Not me, guv.”—he might put it more elegantly than that. He has written to every local authority, reminding them of their statutory duty on libraries, but he knows that such a letter is not worth the paper that it is printed on when his ministerial colleagues are ensuring that local councils simply do not have the cash to maintain, never mind improve, their library service. He will not get away with it, because voters throughout Britain can see that this good-value service on which they rely is under threat directly because of the coalition’s policies, and when they look for the fingerprints on the murder weapon—as Agatha Christie, one of library users’ favourites, might have put it—they will see that the Lib Dems’ paws are all over it.

I hope that every local Lib Dem councillor realises that there is no point in rushing out a petition to save their local library when their MPs in Westminster are standing by as the service is slashed. As the Minister said on the radio on Wednesday, “You have to elect councillors who believe in libraries and you have to campaign in your local area to get councils to back their library service.” Exactly, but there is only one party whose record in government locally and nationally shows that it can be trusted to protect our libraries, and I am proud to say that it is my party.

There can be no better indictment of the present Government’s hypocrisy than their treatment of Britain’s libraries. They spill out warm words of support while starving libraries of the cash that they need to continue. They pretend that these huge savings can be made without taking books off the shelves or turning the lights out as libraries close, although the Minister and his colleagues know that that simply is not the case.

It is time for the Minister to come clean. Will he accept that he is not a champion for libraries and that he is responsible for a reduction in services? Will he tell us whether he warned the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury during the spending round that the cuts to local authorities would put them under pressure to reduce library provision? Will he tell us just how far he thinks library services can be cut while the law is fulfilled? Will he guarantee that the 1964 Act will remain in place for the lifetime of this Parliament? Finally, does he accept that librarians, such as the ones whose expertise we, as MPs, are lucky enough to draw on in the House of Commons, require special skills, or does he have plans for the House of Commons Library service to be staffed by volunteers? There are many questions for the Minister, and I hope that he will now provide some answers.