Gloucestershire Libraries

Neil Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 12th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

This debate has turned out to be extremely topical. In the past week, the importance of libraries has been highlighted by children’s laureate Julia Donaldson, author of “The Gruffalo” and “The Snail and the Whale”, which I think is a masterpiece of children’s literature. I must have read it at least 50 times with my kids and I never stopped enjoying it. Ms Donaldson says that

“Libraries…provide a wonderful opportunity for adults and children to browse, borrow and engage with books, but they are also great community centres.”

She is right, of course. Libraries are community hubs and noticeboards, providing sources of information as well as pleasure and learning. They are vital in communities that face particular challenges, where free access to books is not some middle-class luxury, but an essential local service—and not simply access to books, but access to quiet work space, including for homework, when sometimes that is impossible to find at home. In the internet age, modern libraries increasingly provide access to the net for those who cannot easily afford the latest home PC, thus combating both digital and social exclusion.

Hesters Way is one such community in my constituency. It belies Cheltenham’s stereotypical image as a picture-perfect, universally affluent, regency resort town. Three of the six worst-scoring neighbourhoods in Cheltenham, according to the Government’s multiple indices of deprivation, are in Hesters Way, and all three are in the bottom 17% of neighbourhoods nationwide. According to one of those indices, educational outcomes, two of those neighbourhoods are in the bottom 10% in the country. Hesters Way’s schools, both the primary schools and the stunning new All Saints academy, are benefiting significantly from the pupil premium. I am not citing those statistics to embarrass anyone in Hesters Way, which boasts many community success stories, not least in education now at both primary and secondary levels. I am doing it simply to underline the fact that it is a part of Cheltenham where many people have to work very hard to make ends meet and where the luxury of buying a new computer or splashing out on new books in the beautiful branch of Waterstones in town is not always possible.

In short, Hesters Way is an area that needs a library, and given that the source for the statistics I have cited is the county council’s own dataset, it should have known that, too; yet the rather opaque process followed in Gloucestershire suggested that Hesters Way’s was one of those libraries that was surplus to county council requirements. At this point, I should say that I understand the Conservative administration’s genuine problems. I accept the need to reduce the deficit at national level and it was inevitable that local government would have to play a part in that. We may have argued in this place about the pace and scale of the cuts, but that was not Gloucestershire county council’s responsibility. Tough decisions would have been necessary, whatever the political flavour of the administration. All the same, recent figures from the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, which gathered survey responses from 93 library authorities, highlight the scope for different approaches, given the political will.

According to the institute’s survey, some English authorities reported increases in expenditure; eight reported reductions in revenue expenditure of 2% or less; 45 reported reductions of between 2% and 10%; 25 reported cuts of at least 10%; and two reported cuts of more than 20%. The scope for political decision makers to follow different paths is clear. I am not sure whether Gloucestershire was among those that responded to the survey, but if it was, we would have been at the very top of that league table. Politicians often trade statistics, but let me quote from a letter that John Holland, the previous assistant head of Gloucestershire’s libraries and information service, sent both to the leader of Gloucestershire county council, Councillor Mark Hawthorne, and to the Minister. He wrote:

“Whilst the need to make savings and reduce services is clear, the proposed cuts to the library service are damaging and disproportionate. The library service is a high profile cost-effective service representing only 1.45% of the county council budget, yet loans over 3.3 million books and other media and has nearly 3 million visits from users a year. The proposed cuts reduce the current library service budget by 43%, a far greater cut than the overall county council target of 28%.”

Even allowing for annual variations in the book fund, Gloucestershire is still at the very top end of the cuts being made by library authorities in England.

In Cheltenham, the suggestion was that Hesters Way library would close as a county library and that the community might take it over, with residual support of some £20,000 per annum from the county council. Hesters Way is also, for all the reasons that I have mentioned, an area in which volunteers are not as easy to come by as they are in more affluent areas. In practice, what was meant by “the community” was the local neighbourhood project, which was initiated and supported by Cheltenham borough council. The plan was far from ideal; it would have resulted in the loss of the library’s existing premises; and, most of all, it risked the loss of professional librarians—a nationwide issue highlighted by the institute. An issue that was never resolved was the risk that non-public libraries would not pay public lending rights, thus reducing the income to authors as well.

I pay tribute to all those who supported a tremendous campaign to save Hesters Way library as a public library, including the outstanding county councillor, Suzanne Williams, Councillors Charmian Shepherd and Mike Skinner, and Chris Pallet and Nancy Graham. Most of all, I pay tribute to a non-party political voluntary campaign group, Friends of Gloucestershire Libraries, which surpassed all our efforts in its dogged campaign to defend Gloucestershire’s library services, and gathered 13,000 petition signatures and took the battle all the way to the High Court.

Again and again, Friends of Gloucestershire Libraries highlighted the impact of the cuts, particularly the careless way in which the strategy seemed to have been put together. In its case to the High Court, it highlighted an issue that was particularly relevant to Hesters Way—that of equalities—which I had raised personally on a number of occasions with Councillor Hawthorne. On Wednesday 16 November 2011, His Honour Judge McKenna ruled that Gloucestershire county council’s plans for our public library service were unlawful on equalities grounds, the council having failed to consider properly the impact of its proposals on disadvantaged groups—just as Friends of Gloucestershire Libraries and many others had pointed out.

Councillor Hawthorne, for whom I have a great deal of time in other respects, dismissed the ruling as being

“tripped up on a technical point”.

I have to disagree with his conclusion very, very profoundly. I think that it was a damning judgment that could have been avoided if the county council had been prepared to listen to dissenting voices.

To be kind to the county administration for a moment, the outcome in Hesters Way is good. The forced rethink has resulted in the library staying open in its current premises as part of the county network, albeit with reduced hours, which is a tremendous community victory. Friends of Gloucestershire Libraries, however, remains deeply concerned, and reports that under the redrawn plans, seven libraries still face closure. Public library services will be withdrawn from those areas, and local communities will be offered the chance to run and fund their own library facilities as volunteers. Those facilities will not be part of the statutory public library network.

Friends of Gloucestershire Libraries has raised with me, and with the Minister on a number of occasions, an issue that directly concerns him: the duty of the Secretary of State under the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964 to

“superintend, and promote the improvement of, the public library service provided by local authorities in England and Wales, and to secure the proper discharge by local authorities of the functions in relation to libraries conferred on them as authorities by or under this Act”.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to point out that we have similar issues about libraries in my constituency of Stroud. For example, we have a very well run community library in Painswick, which is well supported and, indeed, has the support of the county council. It is a great success story, so will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating the people of Painswick on making such a successful effort?

[Martin Horwood]

I am not familiar with the situation in Painswick, so I had better not venture into that. I remind the hon. Gentleman of the provisions from the 1964 Act that I read out. It is the duty of the Secretary of State to

“superintend, and promote the improvement of, the public library service provided by local authorities in England and Wales, and to secure the proper discharge by local authorities of the functions in relation to libraries conferred on them as authorities by or under this Act”.

Those local authority duties include the provision of a

“comprehensive and efficient library service for all persons desiring to make use thereof”.

The Minister is familiar with those powers, as he drew attention to them in the case of the Wirral in 2009, when we were both in opposition.