The following are the observations of Gary Green, colleague of mine in the Voices for the Library team, from a meeting held with the minister with responsisibity for libraries yesterday.  The writing in italics is mine.

  • He doesn’t agree that library services are being decimated. They are, see this list.
  • He has challenged library closures in the past, but has also supported closures of some libraries. He has challenged no library closures, in any way, while in office, although he did when he was in opposition.  He is certainly supporting closures now.
  • He felt it was up to the local authority to run library services, not his department. It is true enough that his department should not “run” libraries.  However, the DCMS has ultimate responsibility (their website says “We are responsible for national library policy”) and it is this responsibility that he is completely ignoring by malign neglect.
  • The Government have no intention of removing statutory duties. They don’t need to remove them as they are simply completely ignoring them. This has the same effect without the bother of actually doing anything.
  • Community/volunteer run libraries have a place in the provision of local library services.  This is, at least, an honest acknowledgement of government ideology, although it at best only offers short-term hope for threatened libraries, which will work only in the most prosperous areas, and relies on blackmailing library supporters into working for free.
  • He acknowledged that some volunteer run libraries would be outside of a local authorities’ statutory service.  Actually, all of them should be outside of the Act if he has regard for the 1964 Act which describes a public library as “any premises which are occupied by a library authority and are premises where library facilities are made available by the authority“.  However, being Mr Vaizey will not intervene in any case, this is a moot point.
  • Local authorities could provide “cut-price libraries” – every library in a local authority shouldn’t be all singing, all dancing.  It is an inevitable result of this government’s policy of neglect that there will cut-price libraries.  Indeed, it is questionable whether by 2015 there will be any other kind.
  • The comprehensive and efficient aspects of a local authorities duties should be focused on the way they were interpreted in the 1964 Public Libraries & Museums Act. “Comprehensive” equates to stock; “Efficient” equates to reduction of 400+ local library authorities. The 1964 Act did not focus on buildings.  This was not the intention of the creator of the Act or anyone at the time that can be traced.  Besides, it’s all pointless as there are no standards as to what represents an acceptable stock.  In addition, encouraging volunteer-run libraries will effectively massively multiply the number of local library authorities as each one will be independent of the other.
  • He felt that the situations that led to Judicial Review’s in Brent, Gloucestershire, Somerset & Surrey recently were not linked directly to the need for intervention by The Secretary of State in a local situation and, using his skills as a barrister, he argued a fine line in how these two situations do not overlap. Only a barrister could argue that these cases were not linked and the judges in these appeals have in fact said that the ultimate responsibilty lies with the Secretary of State. Mr Vaizey allowed local people to pay their own money and give their own time in order to do something he should have done.  However, when one considers that volunteer libraries practically means precisely this as well, it is no surprise. 
  • There was no plan to re-introduce library standards. However, this didn’t necessarily mean that they were out of the question.  Mr Vaizey will contnue to nothing to support libraries, at all times and in all ways.