Examination of Witnesses (Questions 125
- 139)
TUESDAY 30 NOVEMBER 2004
ADVISORY COUNCIL
ON LIBRARIES
Chairman: Welcome, Mr Macnaught, and
thank you for listening. One of the things that I find very attractive
about inquiries like this is that witnesses arrive early and listen
to other people's evidence or stay on after their own evidence
because they are really interested in the subject that we are
discussing. It does not always happen that way. Rosemary McKenna?
Q125 Rosemary McKenna: Would you
explain to the Committee the role played by the ACL and the difference
between the role that you play and the role of the MLA? Is there
a difference in the membership of both bodies?
Mr Macnaught: Yes, the role of
the Advisory Council on Libraries follows from the legislation
in 1964 and our purpose is to advise the Minister on all matters
pertaining to public libraries, and that can be in response to
questions from the Minister or it can be unsolicited advice from
ACL to the Minister. The Advisory Council was reconstituted two
years ago and I was appointed by Baroness Blackstone, the then
Minister. She deliberately reconstituted the Advisory Council
to be practitioner based and so the current membership, as you
will have seen from the evidence, consists largely of chief librarians
from public library authorities. The difference between our role
and the advice that the Government might get from the Museums,
Libraries and Archives Council is a very interesting point at
the moment because there is some discussion about the possible
move of the Advisory Council to be hosted by the Museums, Libraries
and Archives Council, which is still the subject of much discussion
both within MLA and within DCMS.
Q126 Rosemary McKenna: So the membership
is quite different? Both are quite distinct?
Mr Macnaught: Yes, as chair of
the Advisory Council I am a board member of the Museums, Libraries
and Archives Council and, as it happens, Bob McKee from CILIP
is also on the board of MLA but he is an observer at the Advisory
Council. This may be confusing for you.
Q127 Rosemary McKenna: So the Minister
is getting advice from two different directions and maybe sometimes
conflicting advice?
Mr Macnaught: Possibly. It has
to be said I cannot think of too many areas where we have differed
in our advice to the Minister.
Q128 Rosemary McKenna: But your role
is basically to act as advocates for library services?
Mr Macnaught: The Advisory Council
on Libraries, I am quite clear, is there specifically to advise
the Minister as best we can.
Q129 Rosemary McKenna: Have you felt
that you have had any impact in the two years of your existence?
Mr Macnaught: We have helped steer
the revision of the public library standards. I suppose the one
area where I feel frustrated at the lack of impact is the very
strong advice we gave about free internet access.
Q130 Rosemary McKenna: I know that
that is something that does concern the Minister and concerns
this Committee. It just cuts across the whole reason for establishing
the People's Network and the funding that was put in from various
sources to do that. Do you feel that it is possible that something
can be done about that, that authorities can be instructed in
some way not to charge?
Mr Macnaught: As a member of the
original working party that produced the People's Network report,
I do feel a deep sense of frustration that we have not been able
to ensure free internet access in every library authority. The
general mood at the moment within local government is that we
do not welcome in local government micro management from central
government, and I think some local authorities feel that that
would be micro management, therefore some kind of instruction
would probably not be welcome. However, I do think that the inspection
of local authorities could send a very strong signal to public
libraries that a "good" and an "excellent"
library service would expect to include free internet access.
I think it would be perfectly within the powers of DCMS to include
free internet access as one of the standards.
Q131 Rosemary McKenna: As one of
the standards?
Mr Macnaught: That was our advice.
Q132 Rosemary McKenna: But they did
not accept that advice?
Mr Macnaught: They chose not to.
Q133 Rosemary McKenna: My recollection
of it was it just was not envisaged that any local authority would
charge and therefore it came as a surprise to learn that 10% is
the figure. Is that accurate?
Mr Macnaught: I could not say
exactly what figure it is. I believe that it is a small minority
but it is an important issue because with the financial pressures
on public library services clearly if one authority is charging
then it becomes attractive to treasurers in other authorities.
Q134 Rosemary McKenna: Yes, creeping
up rather than being removed. Therefore, you were not successful
in that. What would be the thing that you would say was your major
achievement?
Mr Macnaught: The main thing that
we have been doing in the last two years is helping to manage
the implementation of the Framework for the Future action plan,
in partnership with the MLA. One of the areas that I believe is
most important in implementing the Framework for the Future is
precisely this issue of clarity about our purpose as a public
library service. I think the framework document leaves room for
some ambiguity. I think we need to get much better at articulating
a clear message to the public, to government, to local authorities
about the role of the public library service in the 21st century.
Therefore, one of the things that we have successfully done is
to persuade government and the MLA to support a marketing programme.
I hasten to add by that I do not mean some glib superficial advertising
campaign but a proper exercise working from the basic premise
of what business are we in all the way through to a proper promotion
of that.
Q135 Rosemary McKenna: Do you think
that within some authorities, as we have been hearing, there are
some very, very good examples of a modern, 21st century library,
whether it is called a library or not?
Mr Macnaught: I would have to
say that my own authority in Gateshead is quite a good example.
We were inspected by the Audit Commission through the best value
inspection regime in the year 2000 and we remain one of a handful
of authorities that received a three-star rating. What is particularly
interesting for me about that is that Gateshead, in answer to
a previous question, is a high spending authority. It was interesting
for me that when that question was asked earlier—which are
the good authorities and which are the bad authorities—it
depends who you ask whether high spending is good or low spending
is good. What was interesting for me in the best value review
of Gateshead is that the Audit Commission's best value inspectors
were prepared to award three stars to an authority that was at
the top end of the spending range.
Q136 Rosemary McKenna: Yes, but it
has also been said to this Committee that sometimes it is not
necessarily how much money but given the resources that are given
to the library service by the local authority it is what they
actually do with that money.
Mr Macnaught: I agree absolutely
and I think the other success of the Advisory Council in libraries
has been to support very strongly the importance of a leadership
programme. It is something that I have been urging government
for about 14 years to pursue because the quality of management
in the public library service can be improved. Of course it can.
I think what is important is that there is a properly supported
management development programme for librarians, including a leadership
element to that management development programme. I absolutely
agree that we can get more efficient management in the public
library service.
Rosemary McKenna: Thank you, Chairman.
Q137 Derek Wyatt: Good morning. Given
that the last Act was 1964 is it your view that the Act should
be updated or do you think it is strong enough?
Mr Macnaught: I think it would
be very interesting to sit down again and write a Public Libraries
Act in the year 2004, or probably 2005 before we would start something
like that.
Q138 Derek Wyatt: Because?
Mr Macnaught: Because the world
in which we operate has moved on significantly. Not in terms of
our core purpose because I have always believed that public libraries
are about literature and information as our two main products,
if you like, but the way that we deliver information clearly has
been transformed and we have quietly in the public library service
gone through a major re-engineering of how we deliver our information
role. I am not sure that that would alter the values that were
articulated in the 1964 Act about free access. I think it would
be helpful if the new legislation could enshrine, for example,
the free access to the internet because it is fundamentally equivalent
to providing a free book-lending service, and that would require
legislation, I believe.
Derek Wyatt: In the 1970s and 1980s when
the then Government was uncertain what to do, it created agencies
like the Highways Agency, the Environment Agency and the Child
Support Agency as a sort of halfway house to making this more
important. Do you feel that there are too many library institutions
and people? Would it be better that we had a Libraries Agency
or would it be better that we just gave to the British Library?
What should we do to make sure that there was just one, so that
the schools libraries, the university libraries, the whole of
libraries came under one tent?.
Q139 Rosemary McKenna: Private libraries
and all that.
Mr Macnaught: I think the creation
of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council was an attempt
by Government to provide that streamlining within the cultural
sector. It obviously incorporated the Library and Information
Commission which had had a brief life before that. I think that
the challenge at the moment is to strengthen the ability of the
Museums, Libraries and Archives Council to provide that leadership
for the library domain, as it is described, and at the moment
I feel that the public library world is still looking for that
level of leadership from the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council.
I know that the chair of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council
very much wants to develop the role of MLA to provide that strong
leadership.
Derek Wyatt: Thank you, Chairman.
Chairman: Thank you, Mr Wyatt. Seriously
though, I disagree with the trend of your questioning since I
was opposed totally to the creation of all the next steps agencies,
but that is a different matter. Debra Shipley?
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