Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what definition of Central Libraries his Department used in the 2020 Statement of Funding: Funding the Scottish Government, Welsh Government and Northern Ireland Executive.

In the Statement of Funding Policy, the Department for Digital, Media, Culture and Sport (DCMS) concluded that ‘Central Libraries’ refer to ‘The British Library’ and public library spend that is not already captured as part of the Local Government Finance Settlement. DCMS allocate a small amount of programme spend that relates to supporting public libraries in England outside of this settlement, therefore the majority of spend relates to ‘The British Library’ which benefits the entire United Kingdom.

‘The British Library’ was established through the British Library Act 1972 which effected, for the United Kingdom, a national library. It is absolutely clear that the legal extent of the British Library is the United Kingdom.

As outlined in the Statement of Funding Policy, where the UK government has responsibility for providing services across the UK, the comparability factor will be 0%.