Public Libraries (England)

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Westminster Hall

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Bayley. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) on securing the debate and, much more importantly, on making a really excellent speech, a first-class speech, a committed speech, an informed speech, a knowledgeable speech—possibly a speech that was written in a library. She knows a lot about libraries; she was involved with them when she was in local government in London, and it showed. She would make a fantastic Minister for Libraries—if it was not for the fact that I will be in that role if the Labour party wins the next election.

My hon. Friend pointed to the value of public libraries, and she was absolutely right to do so. Libraries are trusted by the public. They are not just places for learning, but community meeting places, where young people go to find information about jobs, children without computers can do their homework and grannies meet for knitting circles. Last week, BBC 6 even announced it would be broadcasting programmes from a series of Manchester libraries to celebrate libraries’ role in inspiring musicians.

However, as my hon. Friend set out, libraries are under extreme financial pressure. Over this Parliament, there will be a 40% cut in central Government funding to local authorities. That means that local authorities are making difficult decisions, often resulting in library closures, cuts to opening hours and staff, and the transfer of libraries to the control of voluntary groups.

[Mr Vaizey]

Given the hon. Lady’s statement about a 40% cut to local authorities, will she enlighten us as to what a future Labour Government would do in terms of restoring those cuts?

[Helen Goodman]

I am happy to do that, although I was going to come to that at the end of my speech. Resources are clearly one of the most important problems. The worst thing about what the Minister’s colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government have done is take out the needs element from the local authority funding formula. That means that in Surrey, Berkshire and Dorset the local authorities have received 1% increases in their resources, whereas in Durham, Liverpool and Hackney, the places where council services and libraries are most needed, the cuts are the biggest. A Labour Government would rejig the formula within the overall envelope, to take the pressure off the hardest pressed local authorities.

[Mr Steve Reed]

Is my hon. Friend familiar with the way Croydon and Wandsworth councils, which were at the time both run by the Conservatives, attempted to secure value from their libraries by putting them all out for tender jointly? Wandsworth chose the best value bid in the tender operation. Croydon chose the worst value bid, and happened to go with a firm of builders with which it had a £450 million property development joint venture. Will my hon. Friend comment on that example of Conservative values?

[Helen Goodman]

My hon. Friend has set out something that is of extreme concern to the people of Croydon. I wonder whether what the council did was legal. To issue consultation, ignore it and then take into account completely different factors does not seem to me to hold water.

In Lincolnshire a Tory local authority decided that it wanted to close three quarters of the libraries. It is very different from Croydon—a large rural area needing a totally different library service. A consultation was held, which was so inadequate that local library campaigners took the council to the High Court and won. It had not been properly carried out and the council must now do it all again. Would not it have been better to carry it out properly in the first place? That is what we think. It is similar to the Croydon case and shows that local authorities must take their responsibilities seriously, which is not happening at the moment. The Minister does not provide the leadership that he should.

[Mr Vaizey]

My recollection is that Brent also lost a judicial review for carrying out an inadequate consultation. Does the hon. Lady not undermine her argument by being so partisan and focusing only on Conservative councils? Surely she should also hold Labour authorities to account.

[Helen Goodman]

The point I was making about cuts to local authority grant, which were overseen by the Secretary of State, is that the Tory-led coalition made the funding decisions that were imposed on Labour and Tory councils around the country. There were unfortunate results in local authorities led by Labour, the Tories and presumably the Liberals as well. The problem was driven by the unfortunate way in which the Secretary of State carried out, or failed to carry out, his responsibilities.

The Minister is a cultivated man who reads books and may even have visited a library on occasion. The problem is that he has failed to persuade his colleagues in other Departments of the significance of the cultural life of the nation. For the country to have a good cultural life, all the Departments must work together. We need the Department for Education and the Department for Communities and Local Government to be on board. We need them all to understand; we even need the Ministry of Justice to understand that it is a good idea if prisoners can read books.

[Lyn Brown]

I agree with everything my hon. Friend is saying and welcome her passion for the sector. The Government are also missing a trick on the economic development role that libraries can play in their communities. It is not only the obvious Departments that should be involved. All Departments would benefit from understanding libraries’ community role.

[Helen Goodman]

Once again, a colleague has anticipated what I was going to say. My hon. Friend is right.

There seems to be quite a lot of confusion regarding numbers. The Minister says that he produces an annual report. We have figures from the trade unions and from the Carnegie UK Trust. I do not want to debate statistics, but it is clear that library provision is down, and that is not helpful to many communities.

[Mr Reed]

Will my hon. Friend consider visiting the Upper Norwood joint library, which will be opening five days a week instead of just three because the newly elected Labour administration in Croydon has reinstated £50,000 of the funding that was cut by the previous Conservative administration?

[Helen Goodman]

I am very pleased to hear what is happening in my hon. Friend’s constituency and congratulate the Labour local authority responsible.

Despite the unhappy austerity that libraries face, there is a growing consensus about the role of libraries in modern Britain. The professional bodies have done a lot of work on that. The Society of Chief Librarians feels that every library should offer four things. The first, obviously, is books and reading; the second is information; the third is action to facilitate digital inclusion; and the fourth is health and well-being. I have sparred with the Minister on several occasions about the need for more Government action on digital inclusion, and the Government’s failures on broadband, and there is no need to go over it all again today. Suffice it to say that 5 million households are not online, and 11 million people lack basic online skills. Digital exclusion is a problem for many groups of people—not just old people, but also young people and, particularly, people on low incomes. Under the previous Government we had the People’s Network. A massive investment was rolled out through the library service. The present Government do next to nothing on digital inclusion. I have urged the Minister more than once to switch £75 million from his failing SuperConnected Cities programme into digital inclusion. I further urge that the best location for that would be in the public library service, which would give a boost to the libraries and to digital inclusion.

The geographical aspect of access also matters. It was fantastic that campaigners in Lincolnshire won some of their points in the High Court. It goes to show how, when a determined group of local people put their mind to it, they can achieve things for their community. It is not acceptable that people in a rural area should have to travel for more than an hour to reach a public library. I do not know why the Minister did not intervene, but I know why one of the professional bodies has passed a vote of no confidence in him, given that he has not intervened in any of the places in question.

[Mr Vaizey]

Which local authority would the hon. Lady like me to intervene in?

[Helen Goodman]

Lincolnshire would have been a good start.

We also need to consider where mobile provision would be most effective. My hon. Friend the Member for West Ham set out very well how such provision has been reduced, which is very significant. The mobile provision in my constituency is extremely valued by some people.

Governance is another issue that needs attention. When I have talked to councillors involved in library provision, and to the professional bodies, they have praised standards in Wales. We should perhaps go back and borrow from the Welsh model for our system. The Government seem to be taking a completely laissez-faire approach. The Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964 requires local authorities to have a comprehensive and efficient service, but the Government have not fleshed that out in any way or form. At one point the last Labour Government had 24 indicators, and I agree that we do not need to be quite so bureaucratic, but we do need to think about the key measures for a good library service so that we do not have a postcode lottery.

My hon. Friend raised the important matter of professional leadership, and she made a good point. The Government got rid of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council, and I do not know whether the Minister has completed the abolition of the Advisory Council on Libraries or whether he is just in the process of doing so.

[Mr Vaizey]

In the process.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Goodman]

I have no doubt that the Arts Council is doing its best, but its best is clearly not good enough. Arts Council staff are not professionals in this area. A part-time professional is working on it, but one part-time professional for a national network of public libraries is not nearly sufficient. The different stakeholder groups are not being brought together at the moment. The Society of Chief Librarians, the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, the trade unions and the British Library all have a role to play in helping to share good practice, develop the library service and advise the Minister. My hon. Friend the Member for West Ham made a very good suggestion, and it is one that I will seriously consider.

To achieve those things we might need to update the 1964 Act, which is so brief that it lacks the teeth necessary for a proper library service. The most important thing is that libraries remain a statutory duty of the local authorities. Although it is great to have volunteers helping in libraries, particularly in certain communities or where libraries are extremely uneconomic, it is obvious that we cannot hand over a whole library service to a voluntary group. The problem is, first, that there is a big skills gap and, secondly, that there will be initial enthusiasm for such ventures—there is often initial enthusiasm for such things—but we need a professional library service that is well managed in the medium term.

It is important to have professional librarians in every library authority. Before becoming a Member of Parliament, I worked for a charity called the National Association of Toy and Leisure Libraries. We ran children’s groups in libraries, which was great. Mums and toddlers would turn up and, as well as having story time and the chance to share books, there would be an opportunity to borrow toys and engage in different kinds of play, which helped mothers and babies to learn together. All that is fine, and some of that work is well done, and perhaps better done, by volunteers who are in tune with the people coming into the library. However, stock control and purchasing policy are professional jobs: we need to have professional librarians on whom volunteers can depend—that is key. We need to make it clear that there is a good role for volunteers and a good role for staff, but we need to distinguish those roles and have clearer guidelines and a code of conduct so that we do not jumble them up.

I have spoken about resources and what we would do. It is also clear that back-office functions can sometimes be shared between library services in different local authorities. I understand that people who have looked into this in detail think there is still scope for more savings from such sharing. Despite the fact that libraries face tough times, we must assert that libraries are not about the past—they are about the future. We want a successful, modern economy, and the modern economy is knowledge-based. Where better to build that modern economy than the library?

[The Minister of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship in this important debate, Mr Bayley. I apologise profusely for the number of interventions that I made during the excellent speech by the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown)—it is brilliant that she has secured this debate. I also apologise for intervening on the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), but it is probably clear that I feel, to a certain extent, that much of the Opposition’s position on public libraries, and indeed on my role as a Minister, is somewhat distorted, if I may put it that way. I would not accuse either hon. Lady of doing that themselves, but four and a half years of pent up frustration may be apparent because this is the first real debate on libraries in this Parliament. Given the importance that the Opposition spokesman attaches to libraries, it is surprising that there has been no official Opposition debate on this subject. There was a debate on arts and culture two or three years ago, and I look forward to her using her influence to call an Opposition debate in the main Chamber so that we can properly debate libraries.

Although both speeches were excellent, another element that added to my frustration is that the only library authorities to be criticised were Conservative-controlled. If someone made it back in Philae from the comet that is spinning hundreds of millions of miles away from us and landed in this debate, they would think that everything was perfect both under Labour authorities and under the previous Labour Government. It may surprise people to learn that libraries did close under the last Government, and that many Labour local authorities have closed libraries over the past four years.

The main reason for my receiving criticism is because it is alleged that I have not used my power under the 1964 Act, an Act that is 50 years old, to intervene and order an inquiry into some of the closures that have been announced over the past four and a half years. It is important to put that in context. The power has been used only once in the 50 years that the Act has been active—it was used in 2009 by the then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), to intervene on Wirral metropolitan borough council’s proposed closure of half its libraries.

I was then the Opposition spokesman, and I came off the fence to give my views on the Wirral. In fact, there were two causes célèbres at the time: there were the Wirral library closures and the proposed closure of the Old Town library in Swindon, of which my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) will be aware. I visited both local authorities and listened to the case of both local councils. It transpired that although Old Town library was closed, it was moved to the museum next door and is now more popular than it was in its previous location. I made it plain that I thought there should be an inquiry on the Wirral, and eventually there was. It is interesting that the Opposition spokesman has not called for a single inquiry into any local authority closures except, most recently, in Lincolnshire, which happens to be Conservative-controlled.

[Helen Goodman]

The Minister is slightly over-egging the pudding. There is a difference between what he has done and what I have done. When I went to Lincolnshire to meet the Lincoln library campaign, I did not sit on the fence; I jumped on a wall to make a speech. Apart from that, I wrote to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport about libraries before the summer recess, so I am not coming late to this; I did this months ago. I am sorry if the Minister did not know about that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Vaizey]

I reject that accusation, because when the hon. Lady says that the Government have failed to take leadership she is effectively saying that I have failed to take leadership.

At the end of last year, we published our first report under the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964, which the Select Committee asked us to do. It asked us to do it at the end of 2014, but I was anxious to have a public document around which people can debate the future of public libraries. We published our first report at the end of last year, which recorded that fewer than 100 static libraries have closed.

It is important to remember that when I was the Opposition spokesman, I was keen not to say that the public library service was in crisis. Yes, I called out the Wirral, but at no point would I have said that the public library was in crisis. Time and again, we see only the bad news reported about libraries, as though the library service is being laid waste.

The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland said in a passing remark that I have probably visited a few libraries. Yes, I have. On a couple of days I visited the fantastic Liverpool central library, in which there has been a £40 million investment. It is truly a cathedral of learning, and it has had more than 1 million visitors in the less than 18 months that it has been open. The hon. Member for West Ham referred to Birmingham, which has the biggest library in Europe. It has had 3 million visitors since it was opened by the Nobel prize winner Malala Yousafzai. Manchester central library has been refurbished, as has Wakefield’s library. The hon. Lady will know about East Ham, which has had a £40 million investment in its library. There are Havering and Streatham libraries, and the tri-borough model of Westminster, Hammersmith and Kensington, which saved £1 million and kept their libraries open. Bexley and Bromley merged their library services to save money. There is the Suffolk model—the independent industrial and provident society model—which has kept libraries open for longer. All around the country, one sees innovation in libraries and hard-working people in the library service making a real difference to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people. We should celebrate those people.

What can one do from the centre? I cannot and do not want to run 151 library authorities, not only because it is physically impossible for me to do so, but because I believe local authorities should run their library services. I can encourage them and work with them.

When we abolished the Museum, Libraries and Archives Council, one of the first things I did was to put libraries with the Arts Council. If one looks at the framing of the 1964 Act, in terms of the White Papers that led up to it, a lot of the tone was about the merging, as it were, of cultural and library services—about putting culture at the heart of our libraries. With the Arts Council working with local authorities on arts provision, it is a totally natural move for it to work with libraries.

[Helen Goodman]

I just want to help the Minister, because he seems to be in a complete mess about what the role of central Government is in this sector. Could we just draw a little analogy with another public service that is delivered by local government—adult social care? However, that fact does not mean that the Department of Health does not have policy, does not provide the legal framework and that we do not have the Care Quality Commission to carry out inspections. Obviously, libraries are not as large as adult social care—what needs to be done is not as big—but it is just a little model, a little inkling, for the Minister about how he might approach libraries.

[Mr Vaizey]

But it is important to say that most adult social care is funded by central Government, so of course the Government will have a much more hands-on role in that area.

As I said earlier, libraries are funded, paid for and run by local authorities, and they always have been since the first public libraries emerged in the middle of the 19th century. The debate then was about putting money on the rates to pay for local libraries; it was not about central Government funding or running local libraries.

The Arts Council has taken a role with libraries, and with it we have set up a £6 million fund for libraries; 75 projects have already been funded. The Arts Council has worked with the British Library and the Department for Communities and Local Government on enterprising libraries, which put libraries at the heart of the business community, whose members are a good audience for libraries. Six major city-centre libraries and 10 hubs are planned, to provide advice for small businesses and intellectual property advice. We have paid for the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy statistics to be made public and freely accessible, to help library campaigners and people involved in the provision of library services to compare and contrast their library service with that of neighbouring councils; in this context, “neighbouring” does not mean geographically neighbouring, but councils with similar topography and demography.

We have worked to extend the public lending right to audio-books and e-books. We have also worked with William Sieghart to put together four pilots on e-book lending, bringing together publishers and libraries. They are obviously natural bedfellows, but on this issue there is some concern from publishers that e-lending could potentially cannibalise their business model. Consequently, we have worked to bring both sides together, so that they can work together for a solution that all sides can be happy with.

We work closely with the Society of Chief Librarians, which promotes its own campaigns to make libraries as relevant as possible; there is, obviously, a reading campaign, but also an information campaign, a digital campaign and a health campaign. The SCL has also launched a highly successful Books On Prescription scheme with the Reading Agency, which 91% of library authorities are signed up to. And the Reading Agency’s Six Book Challenge continues to draw in hundreds of thousands of children, and every year participation in the scheme increases.

To me, that is not the depiction of a library service in crisis. Of course, there are incidents where the modernisation, adaptation or change of a library service causes extreme concern, but everybody acknowledges that closing a library does not necessarily mean that the library service is no longer comprehensive and efficient. When we talk about a closure, sometimes we are talking about a merger of two libraries. Also, we rarely talk about the number of libraries that are opening across the country.

Earlier, the hon. Member for West Ham asked me about the Sieghart report. I would not have asked William Sieghart to produce a report unless I thought there was some opportunity to build on what I see as a highly successful public library service in England. The reason I asked him to produce this report—he has been ably assisted by a distinguished panel of publishers and other people working in worlds related to libraries—is to see how we can push forward, and the reason I asked him in particular is that he is an extremely practical man. He was the man who brought together the publishers and the libraries to support e-lending. He is now proposing a series of practical recommendations to move forward, one of which is a task and finish group that will work with local authorities to make practical recommendations to help library services to survive in what is not only a difficult financial climate but a difficult period of transition as the world itself changes, with the move to digital. It is important to emphasise that that group will meet, with local authorities at its heart, to make practical recommendations to take matters forward.

This has been a good and full debate. I completely understand the concerns of library campaigners across the country who would be concerned if they saw their local library closing its doors. However, a lot of heat and not enough light is generated in this debate. The number of library closures has been severely exaggerated. The number of closures that you, Mr Bayley, and I would regard as a library closure—that is, a building with its doors shut, empty and the lights off—is, by the Government’s estimation, fewer than a hundred. Libraries have opened up and down the country. I have already referred to the reams of central libraries that have been refurbished. In Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham, literally millions of people are visiting libraries and there are new library members.

[Helen Goodman]

The Minister is, of course, right to point to the success of the new library buildings in Liverpool and Birmingham is. However, is he not a little bit worried about the library service being a postcode lottery, because he is not seeking to have a secure policy framework across the country?

[Mr Vaizey]

I do not know what that means. For example, Liverpool reopened its central library; a million people have visited it; and until recently, Liverpool was proposing to close 10 of its 18 branch libraries. That proposal has now been withdrawn. Is it being suggested that I should have personally intervened three or four years ago to tell Liverpool, “No, you don’t run the library service like this. You don’t put money into refurbishing your central library. You’re going to keep all your branch libraries open”? Liverpool is seeking to deliver a comprehensive and efficient library service, and one of the ways it seeks to do that is to refurbish its central library to make it a hugely attractive hub for thousands of people living in that great city. That was a decision for the local authority, just as it was a decision for Birmingham to invest in a new central library, which is now the pride of the city and already one of the most well-known libraries in Europe.

Such decisions must be taken by local authorities but, as I said earlier, the number of static libraries that have been closed is often exaggerated; the actual number, while it may be regrettable, is far lower than people say. The action taken by this Government has been active: bringing on board the Arts Council, to provide leadership for libraries; providing a £6 million fund to support cultural work in libraries; extending e-lending to the PLR; working to introduce pilots with publishers, so as to promote e-lending; and now commissioning the Sieghart report, to continue to take libraries forward during the next decade or so.

As I have said, while I may understand the frustration and sometimes even the anger of some library campaigners, I feel that I can hold my head up high, in terms of being a proactive campaigner for the library sector.