Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160
- 179)
TUESDAY 14 DECEMBER 2004
MR MARK
WOOD, MR
CHRIS BATT,
MS LYN
BROWN AND
MR TONY
DURCAN
Q160 Chairman: When you say "new",
do you mean replacements?
Mr Batt: They tend to be replacements.
In many cases, with movements of town centres and populations,
the library will be located close to the central population.
Q161 Derek Wyatt: In planning you
have a section 106—how many section 106s produced new libraries
in the United Kingdom last year?
Mr Batt: At a guess I would say
probably none. We could certainly get that information for you.
Ms Brown: There are some. I have
opened three in the last six years and, hopefully, one next year.
I think there is a definition issue here, because one of mine
is a replacement from a first floor to a shop front etc. I have
used section 106. I have used SRB. Stratford Library was built
on section 106; and next year it is going to be refurbished from
our capital fund in another area. Two of my last three were built
from section 106 and one had SRB section 106. I cannot see it
is that unique in truth.
Q162 Derek Wyatt: I think you are
unique. I cannot think of a single one in my authority, and we
are the largest authority—Kent. We have never used section
106 for libraries. We use them for village halls which never get
built and for schools that never get built; but that is how section
106 seems to work—it works in favour of the developer.
Ms Brown: I am sure we can do
some research for you.
Q163 Derek Wyatt: I would love to
know how many section 106s certainly.
Mr Durcan: We have one starting
next year in Newcastle. We have rebuilt one of the new libraries
through LPSA targets, so there are alternative ways of raising
resources.
Q164 Derek Wyatt: In my poorest communities
are the libraries that open the least, where the stock of books
is the worst. Is there a priority going out from government to
say, "This has got to stop. We've got to get libraries to
open in the poorest areas more than in the centre of town"?
Ms Brown: I will talk to you about
something we are doing next year, which is opening a library in
North Woolwich. I closed that library in the mid 1990s because
it was costing me £28 per book issue. I felt such guilt about
closing it because I knew it was a very disadvantaged community
which was cut off from many other services that were there, but
the library simply was not the centre of its community at all,
otherwise it would not be costing me that much to get so few people
through those doors. We have learnt a lot about library usage
since the mid 1990s in my own authority and elsewhere that we
have nicked and added to our own service development. Fingers
crossed that the new library I am going to open next year will
be built from the community outwards. Just like Forest Gate, which
opened last year, we understood who the communities were we wished
to serve, and then tried to configure a service which would serve
that community in total rather than just in part. That is what
I am hoping to do at North Woolwich, which might make this an
albatross that would otherwise hang around my neck until someone
else closes it because it is not getting the people through the
door, or it will make it the centre for that community. I am rather
hoping the latter.
Derek Wyatt: My point was, could the
government do more? Initially the Lottery went to those people
who could get bids together; and now the Lottery is targeted much
more. Should we be doing more to make sure the poorest areas have
very good libraries, the best opening hours and the best broadband
facilities and so on?
Q165 Chairman: Before that question
is answered, could I just add to it with this: everyone now seems
to regard the Lottery as their salvation but we do have an additionality
principle. It would appear to me that there is absolutely no case,
on the basis of the additionality principle, for the Lottery to
fund libraries. It is a mainstream national service through local
authorities and there ought to be funds made available for that
to be done without the Lottery. I suppose one could look at various
ancillary things that would not necessarily be done on the basis
of mainstream funding but for myself, without quarrelling with
what Derek is saying, I would take it very badly if, yet again,
government were to shunt off responsibility for libraries onto
the Lottery. It is not the Lottery's job.
Mr Batt: There is a more general
point which you are probably searching for, which is the fact
there is a need for investment in terms of library buildings—whether
that comes from the Lottery or anywhere else. I think that is
probably the issue we would want to get across. That is clearly
partly the responsibility of the local authority, to make decisions
about their priorities—and there are some very good examples
of local authorities where they have built excellent libraries
in small, very poor communities and it is making a difference.
If you look at Suffolk libraries, every one is open on a Sunday
without exception. One of the things we can bring to bear over
time is the use of the Public Library Standards to establish what
local authorities are doing in terms of delivering services, and
to make sure, so long as there is a connection between the standards
and the Comprehensive Performance Assessment, there is a mechanism
for encouraging those local authorities to increase opening hours
and improve the quality of the services. That is one part of it.
It is two sides of an equation, but we can do some of those things.
There is certainly a need for more money to improve the quality
of public library building stock.
Q166 Derek Wyatt: Let me put to you
a radical idea. We borrowed books in the 19th and 20th century,
and the report BT commissioned last week showed that even by 2025
nine million people in this country still would not have a computer
and still would not be connected; so the digital divide is actually
expanding. Can we borrow laptops from libraries?
Ms Brown: Yes.
Q167 Derek Wyatt: How does that work?
Ms Brown: Very well.
Q168 Derek Wyatt: How many laptops
can you borrow from each library?
Mr Durcan: We provide laptops
to people who cannot get into libraries. We lend them to people
who are either homebound or hospital-bound, as an extension of
the People's Network.
Q169 Derek Wyatt: How many do you
have to loan?
Mr Durcan: About 50.
Q170 Derek Wyatt: For a population
of what?
Mr Durcan: 270,000—but not
270,000 housebound.
Q171 Derek Wyatt: I appreciate that.
Nine million is a large figure of people. You do not get them
stolen? There is no deposit required?
Mr Durcan: No, we take them to
people's homes; we show them how to use them; we leave them there
and collect them later, alongside delivering library books to
those people as well. We felt it was important that the People's
Network was not just available to people who could come into the
library; it was a service to the community and we had to find
a way of delivering it externally.
Q172 Derek Wyatt: That is very interesting.
Mr Wood: That is happening in
a number of authorities. I wish to come back on the last question
because the two are linked. It is slow and steady progress in
some of these areas, but best practice is a very good way of getting
authorities to do things. If one can demonstrate, to take this
example, that an authority with this sort of population and this
kind of demographic can provide this kind of service, these are
powerful arguments to the other ones. That is the way we do make
steady progress without with local authorities.
Q173 Derek Wyatt: If the government
could say, "Listen, all we need to do is provide an internet
access over the computer—it'll cost £75, we could loan
out thousands and thousands of laptops", that is the issue,
is it not? With computers we are being dictated to on costs and
that is an issue.
Mr Wood: That would be a good
way. You have still got to manage the lending and so on.
Q174 Derek Wyatt: I understand that.
Mr Wood: Of course, if you could
get lower cost laptops and make them available, yes.
Ms Brown: Yes, we do loan.
Q175 Derek Wyatt: How many do you
loan?
Ms Brown: I am sorry, I have no
idea.
Q176 Derek Wyatt: 100 or 500?
Ms Brown: It would not be as high
as that. I am in a London authority with a relatively small population.
We do not just do it for housebound, we do it for anybody who
wishes to take the computer home because they wish to continue
to do a CV, a job application or just want to surf the net. We
have our libraries open to them. To answer the question on additionality,
I would argue that libraries are not any more just a depository
of books; they have become village halls for some people; they
have become a place where drama societies meet, so it is almost
like a mini theatre for some of them. There are tiny little rooms;
I am not talking about huge ones. They have become a nursery and
a cre"che. They have become a CAB service, where you access
advice. They are internet cafes. There is a whole bunch of additionality
which is not part of that core service which we would be able
to provide more of if we managed to have buildings that were fit
for purpose in places that were accessible to the local community.
I just offer that as a suggestion as to why we might want to consider
opening a big Lottery fund.
Q177 Chairman: I do not want to appear
to be cavalier about the line of questioning Derek Wyatt has been
following, but is it really the job of libraries to make available
laptop computers? I am not saying laptop computers should not
be available. For those who do not have the resources, access
to computers and the internet ought to be made available through
public funding. In my constituency we have a number of publicly-funded
online centres which are absolutely excellent and which give access
both to training to use computers and to use the internet for
people who cannot afford their own computers. Fine. Is one of
the problems with the libraries that they are being asked to do
things or are expected to do things other than the traditional
job of libraries—which is to have books that people can
read?
Ms Brown: My answer to that would
be, our libraries want to provide for our communities that traditional
role of providing access to information, and in order to do that
we have to find new ways of providing that service. The reason
we loan laptops out is because we are aware our public access
to the internet closes, whether it closes at five, six, seven
or eight at night, and there will be times when people, particularly
on shift work, and young people coming home from school who have
a silly journey to make, cannot access the facility whilst it
is open and may need to have a resource at home in order to enable
them to participate in which part of the function they are needing—whether
it is accessing a job, looking up job vacancies on the internet,
completing their homework or doing a CV. They might not have the
time when the public access to a facility is there for them, so
our libraries do see it as an extension of their natural function
within a community. I think our libraries have begun to see themselves
as they used to be and I do think it is an extension of an idea
as a central place for the community to access the things it needs
to grow and thrive.
Q178 Chairman: This Committee years
ago, at the beginning of the period of office of this government,
pressed hard for online access (not in the libraries inquiry)
to people particularly in deprived areas, but not only in deprived
areas. David Clark, who was then the minister in the Cabinet Office,
was doing a very good job before he was inexplicably removed from
his job. We never looked at that as a job of libraries. To enable
people to have access to job vacancies, to have a direct dialogue
with housing benefit, child benefit, income support, tax credit
and all those things, great, fine, I am strongly in favour of
it; but that is not the job of a library. It has emerged from
the evidence sessions we have had that libraries now curiously
have more money than they have ever had before, yet they are buying
fewer books and they are open fewer hours. May this not be because
the essence of the library is being adulterated by the government
and other public agencies imposing duties on libraries that are
not the job of libraries? Those duties are important, and I do
not in any way cavil that they are being provided—the reverse;
but is too much being loaded on the back of libraries which are
there to provide books not only for information but for pleasure
and entertainment and uplifting? That is what it is all about.
Mr Durcan: I agree entirely with
what you say. It has always been a very important element of the
access to information, a crucial element, which has varied from
community to community. One of the main reasons for our heavy
use of ICT is to provide users with that continuing access. Many,
many years ago it would have been a very simple process of going
to the library for a piece of printed information; but information
has become much more complex. There are many more organisations
involved in providing information, and the library service is
the neutral space in any community which an individual can go
to. When we talk about lending laptops (in our case and in the
case of some other authorities) to people who cannot get to libraries,
what we are trying to do there is no to discriminate against certain
sections of the community who are not able to wander down and
at their leisure use that information. So much information also
is no longer available in traditional printed format; therefore
we need the computer access to provide that. The computer provides
access to services. For example, if you were unable to get to
the library you could still through a computer, whether your own
or one you borrow, access the library catalogue, reserve the books
you want to read, arrange for them to be delivered or renew your
books; things you would be dependent upon other people to do or
not be able to do at all. The person who is dependent on a home
delivery service, at its very basic level, receives books that
other people choose for them. We have worked very hard over many
years to try and get those services to as equal a level as possible.
Chairman: I have got three colleagues
who have suddenly jumped on the bandwagon. As we have only got
a few more minutes to go I should keep it for the collection of
ministers who will be jostling not to claim responsibility for
libraries, to ask them about the possibility not of Lottery funding
but whether there is a role for PFI in libraries.
Q179 Mr Doran: There are two things
I want to ask: first of all, in your submission you mention that
libraries in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales do not charge
for IT access, but there are some libraries in England which do.
You mentioned specifically a survey in Buckinghamshire. Can you
tell me what the basis of the charge is, and the basis upon which
the libraries make that charge, and where the power comes from?
Mr Batt: There is no constraint
on them charging because there is nothing under the current Public
Libraries' Act that requires them to provide that service free
of charge. From the very beginning when we started the People's
Network service and started rolling out the terminals in libraries
we ensured that as much as possible library authorities would
provide it free of charge at point of use. About 10% are now making
charges, and that is often with the first half an hour free and
then 50p per half an hour after that.
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