British Library Board (Power to Borrow) Bill

Lord Moylan Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Vaizey and all the others who have brought this Bill thus far. I support it, but I want to put it in the context of our recent fiscal history.

It was Gordon Brown, when Chancellor of the Exchequer, who sought to increase the Government’s spending power through the great Ponzi scheme of forcing capital expenditure off the government balance sheet and on to the books of quasi-governmental bodies that could ill bear it. The effect was that the bodies required to take on their own debt found themselves paying a much higher rate of interest than they would have done had the Government been the borrower— understandably so, because their credit rating was much lower. We still live with the hospitals and other cherished institutions that were burdened by that debt, the cost of which is far higher than it need have been. In some ways, this Bill is the last knockings of that process. To the British Library board, it is an anomaly that it is denied a freedom granted to other museums and great collections. Perhaps we should be asking, rather, to whose benefit those other institutions were given the power in the first place.

None the less, given where we are, this is not a bad Bill. On the face of it, it does not oblige the British Library to borrow and, in practice—despite, if I may say so, the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone—it is likely to borrow only from the Government, for which bank would lend to it? Although its land and, in my view, very fine building—by Colin St John Wilson—are valued in the books at more than £500 million, they are in effect worthless as collateral. It is hardly likely that the Government would allow the national collection of books and manuscripts to be seized by a bank to redeem a defaulted loan—although if they did, it would be the jumble sale of the century.

For all that, should one oppose this modest Bill? I think not. The British Library is held in such high regard that it would be like depriving a revered aunt of her favourite sherry. I shall not use my vote to refuse her that tipple—but let us hope that it does not go to her head.