Arts and Creative Industries

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 19th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I will not talk about the wider economic benefit of regeneration by the use of culture, which I hope will be demonstrated in my constituency and which is admirably demonstrated by many other places around the country, particularly in Gateshead. I am particularly impressed by how it has used cultural services to regenerate an area. Instead, I want to focus my remarks on libraries. Any debate about the arts and creative industries worth its name must include a focus on libraries, contributing as they do so fundamentally to social mobility, literacy and skills development, creative and cultural activity, building economic capacity and helping to safeguard intellectual property. Sitting at the heart of our communities, public libraries are for everyone. They enrich lives and support the wider arts and creative industries, and our economic well-being.

I want to give three examples of why I believe that libraries are so important and why I am absolutely passionate about them. First, they are a gateway for personal development. They fuel aspiration and creativity and they contribute to economic capacity. Secondly, they bring people together in a way that other institutions simply cannot do. They are a safe space where people can congregate. They build the fabric of our communities. They are a real communal space that is free for all. Thirdly, they are a means to reduce social exclusion, which in itself carries an economic benefit for our communities.

[Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful defence of public libraries. Does she share my concerns about Croydon council, which is not only proposing to privatise its libraries, but to hand them over to the bidder that offered the worst value for money of the three bids that it received?

[Lyn Brown]

I am sad to hear that about Croydon libraries. I visited Croydon libraries in my role as a Local Government Association libraries spokesperson and I thought that they were rather good. That they are being privatised is distressing, especially given that the previous Tory Government did not go that far with its compulsory competitive tendering. It is a real shame that Croydon feels that that is where it needs go.

Libraries make such a contribution to our economy and society that spending on them should be seen as an investment. They host job clubs and Open university access. They provide computer training and internet access for families and micro-businesses that would otherwise be excluded. They provide literacy and numeracy classes that help combat disadvantage and allow people to thrive. All of that is at the grassroots level, at the heart of our very community.

Yet libraries are under more stress than ever before. On top of library closures, surveys uncover reduced hours, higher charges and less outreach to schools. School holiday activities are being cut and volunteers are replacing trained, skilled library staff, as if a librarian is like someone at a checkout counter at Asda or Morrisons. Being a librarian is so much more than just giving out a book.

But my main focus today is to talk to the Minister about how libraries might be developed and safeguarded in the future, in the context of a strategy for the arts and creativity. Libraries absolutely deserve leadership, attention and support, and I am concerned that they are not getting them.

Ministers will recall breaking up the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council. I must say that I did not mourn the passing of that organisation, but I am disappointed that the Government reduced the libraries budget that was transferred to Arts Council England and think that they missed a trick. I believe that they should have followed the approach widely advocated in the sector at the time by establishing a development agency. It would have been quite realistic to do that within the available financial envelope and would have made a better and more effective use of the moneys that previously went to the MLAC.

Indeed, it has been argued that such a development agency could provide the leadership that would enable local library services to make the necessary savings or to demonstrate their contribution to the wider social good in a way that allowed councils to understand their economic and social value. I want to see a development agency created because I think that we need confident leadership of our libraries in order to secure future library evolution, the development of our libraries and the success of a modern library service in England.

I think that there are indications that the Minister shares my analysis of the problem. In a recent speech he talked about the Government appointing a specialist adviser on libraries to work with local authorities and Arts Council England to consider different approaches to library service provision and new ways of thinking about sustainability. I believe that a development agency would have delivered on that for him. Forgive me for saying it, but appointing a recently retired head of service on a part-time basis, however good he might be, will hardly address the leadership vacuum that continues to bedevil the public libraries sector. Furthermore, I understand that Arts Council England is about to be restructured, with the result that it will have not a single post focused solely on libraries. That is massive disappointment and can lead only to the dilution of libraries.