This month I led a House of Commons debate in response to the overwhelming public concern about library closures. An estimated 400 are already under threat. The minister’s response was that it is in the gift of local authorities to choose whether to protect their libraries from the onslaught of public sector spending cuts. In my borough, £1.1 million is being carved out of the library service. This surely means some libraries will be axed. Wigan council has to save £55 million – frontloaded so allowing no time for the Government’s much-vaunted “efficiency savings”. That services and staff will go is inevitable, as ministers know. This Government, in its desperation to appear to be reducing public spending, cares little about what disappears in the process.
An alternative to closure, it is suggested, is for volunteers to run their own libraries. This goes to the heart of the Big Society concept, built on a notion that services can be run on thin air; that skilled staff – such as librarians – are unnecessary and that volunteers require neither infrastructure nor resources. Having worked in the voluntary sector, I know the value of volunteers. However, to suggest they can take the place of skilled staff is an insult to the professionals they are supposed to replace and that favours communities where residents have the greatest resources and time. Ministers say libraries are in decline, and much of the debate has been predicated on the view that libraries are a luxury the Government cannot afford to subsidise. This is misleading. In my constituency, library usage is up by 17 per cent over the past six years and user satisfaction is at an all time high. That this is not the case nationally is a reflection of changes, such as falling book prices and the internet. When the changes of the past decade are taken into account, what is remarkable is not libraries’ decline but their survival. They are accessed across age and class divisions, and have particular benefits for the disadvantaged: the one in five that do not have internet access, single mothers, poorer children and the growing number of unemployed.
The Government is unconcerned about the inherent unfairness in library closures. The Public Libraries Act of 1850 was also opposed by the Conservatives because – among other things – it might “agitate” the working classes. In fact, the establishment of free public libraries marked a huge advance towards a better, more enlightened society. Opening Manchester Central Reference library – the first under the new Act – Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, a more enlightened Conservative, said: “I call it an arsenal, for books are weapons whether for war or self-defence.”
The Act was among the great Liberal achievements and it is both sad and ironic that Nick Clegg and his colleagues are now presiding over the unravelling of 160 years of progress that their Liberal predecessors helped to spark. By contrast, the modern Conservative Party’s approach to libraries is indicative of something fundamental in their outlook: to see public services as simply an economic investment, to measure value in terms of profit and to try to brand services that do not make a profit as somehow failing. They would do well to remember the groundbreaking speech given by Bobby Kennedy in 1968. He said: “The gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play… It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.” The Government’s view of the world is one where value can only be measured in terms of money. The plans for publibraries epitomises everything that is wrong about its approach.
Lisa Nandy is Labour MP for Wigan
