Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, with reference to his Department's document entitled: Libraries Deliver: Ambition for Public Libraries in England 2016 to 2021, published in September 2016, if he will publish the criteria by which his Department assesses whether communities are being provided with safe, welcoming and accessible physical and virtual environments freely open to all.

Local authorities in England have a statutory duty to provide a comprehensive and efficient library service that meets local needs. There is no specific criteria that requires public libraries to provide safe, welcoming and accessible physical and virtual environments freely open to all, although we would hope and expect them to do as much as can reasonably be done in this regard.