You can be open or you can have government

I was getting very cross with Terry Deary's comments so I decided to email him to try and understand where he is coming from. The complete exchange is below. He did give his permission for me to put this up:

This bit is my initial email :

"Dear Terry,

We don't know each other but I come from the East End of Sunderland, next to Hendon where I understand you are from, growing up it was as you no doubt know a utter shit hole. I didn't do that well at school and my home life wasn't great but the one thing that helped me better myself in life was libraries. I know you have strong views and I'm sure the PLR money isn't fair but libraries are something that are of massive benefit to society. How can anything that provides information and knowledge to anyone without any prejudice be a bad thing? If I was growing up today a kindle would be as much use as a door stop because I wouldn't be able to afford the e-books and libraries offered the space away from home and the bullies at school to learn.

Please re-consider your views on this, libraries aren't finished and are still vitally important. Councillors and politicians are going to jump on your words and use them as justification for closing libraries. There will be lots of kids from the rough parts of Sunderland that libraries will offer a way out to. It did for me. 

With best wishes,

Trevor Craig.

p.s. I am very angry about this and I hope you will take up the offers of a public debate so I can at least understand better what it is that informs your views"

Too which he kindly replied:

"Hello Trevor

I am not sure exactly what you have read of my views – the media distorts and edits mercilessly. What I have been trying to say is that I want all people of all ages to have access to literature. A book is filled with an author’s ideas and its purpose is to entertain and communicate with a reader. A library is just a building. I want to know if libraries (buildings) are still the best way to enable writers and readers to come together. I am asking a question, not proposing a solution. If librarians feel threatened by that question then you should not. If they are doing a wonderful job that justifies every penny of taxpayer’s money you have NOTHING to worry about.

If you are arguing that socially deprived children from places like Hendon need access to books then I agree wholeheartedly (as you can imagine). But the answer is to find the BEST way to ensure EVERY Hendon kid has the BEST access. Many children (like me) found libraries intimidating places full of old stock with old attitudes, wholly inappropriate to children growing up in the 1950s. But just because they were useful in the past doesn’t mean they have a God-given right to exist forever. The world is changing at an ever-increasing pace. I’m not advocating the closure of libraries – I am saying that, when there are so many social and economic problems, the libraries have to work much harder to justify their existence and demonstrate they are fit-for-purpose (sorry, horrible phrase) in 2013 and beyond. YES, they were great in the past and, yes, they helped people like yourself. Can they still do the same today? Can they do better? That’s all I’m asking.

A public debate? Sorry I am not a fan of debates. I can air my views and someone can argue against me but will a “debate” change a single thing? I’m not convinced. And you would not believe the amount of vile abuse I’ve received for daring to challenge the orthodoxy. Do I really want to stand up to be shot down? It is very tiring at my age to be on the receiving end of so much spite and bitterness. On which note I must sincerely thank you for your considered and courteous message … I would never have guessed you were angry until your footnote said so. I wish everyone were as restrained and intelligent.

All the best

Terry"

There was a couple of further brief bits but they are not worth putting up, its fair to say Terry has similar views to the political classes as I do but it adds nothing to the libraries debate that is going on. There has been a lot of stuff flying round on this now, included stuff by me on various comments boards. He is right to say the media edit and distort peoples views and take things out of context. I am going to have a re-read of all the stuff written on this and try and reconcile it to the view he has given above.

Opposition is the enemy in exile

Democracy should be for the voters about choice, when there is no difference between the two main parties in a council or in Westminster then where is the choice for voters? There is an old saying about Westminster politics that if both side of the house agree on something then it’s probably the wrong idea. This equally applies to local politics, if the party seeking office intends to do exactly the same as those that are in power then what is the point? Dan Jarvis MP has been making all the right noises on libraries, yet when he travels to Newcastle to speak to one of the worst councils for proposed libraries cuts he has not a single negative think to say about the council and their clearly dodgy statistics. Some people seem to be of the view (myself included) that it’s just a tactic anyway to raise the profile of the ambitious leader to help him in his next attempt to secure a safe seat. Dan has nothing to say about the dodgy stats or the leader’s ambition, it’s the evil Tory cuts to blame, nothing else. These are the same cuts that Labour in Government would have made, despite what they say now. The banker’s bonus tax cannot pay for everything.

Closer to home in Swindon, the Conservatives are slashing the opening hours of libraries, sacking the low paid library managers and assistants, and protecting the bloated back office and service support and decimating the library service all to save a measly 99k.  You would think the Labour party would have at least a few different ideas, sadly not. They are planning on doing exactly the same thing as the email below shows from a Labour spokesman to a local campaigner:

“I've spoken with Jim Grant and he's asked me to forward on the following information to you:

The cuts to the library services are as a result of the cuts being made by the Coalition government centrally which are supported by the Tory and Liberal Democrats locally.

Were Labour in power nationally or locally it is hoped we wouldn't have to make these cuts. However, because of the financial constraints being imposed by central government local government has to make very hard choices about how we spend what little money we have.

Labour will be amending the overall budget by finding additional savings in non essential spending in order to preserve services which have a direct affect on the lives of the vulnerable people of the town. This will not include opposing the cuts to library services.

Labour's long term plan for the library service is to ensure that libraries are contained within community hubs, similar to the Old Town library moving into the Arts centre. Unless this path is followed the future cuts to local government, supported by the Tories and the Liberal Democrats, will inevitably mean permanent closure of libraries in Swindon”

So the Swindon Labour position is: It’s the Tories fault, along with the Lib Dems, if we were in power we hope we wouldn’t have to make these cuts but since we have to we plan on making the same cuts to libraries as the party in power and if we don't co-locate and make savings, libraries will close.

The Borough does however have a chief exec of a small borough council on a basic salary of £161k a year, more that the prime minister who is on 142k, for  more like for like comparison Sir Jeremy Heywood , who is responsible for every civil servant in the country is on 200k. Even after the cuts (and they have made some) they still have 115 staff on over 50k a year, getting rid of two of the 115 staff would save the libraries from cuts, two back office officers are worth more than the library service it seems. Considering nearly all council services are outsourced it seems odd they need so many well paid people when the services have been contracted out. These are the people who the councillors ask to make the cuts, they are hardly going to suggest chopping themselves.

I’m sure if I looked at the >500 spending data there will be plenty of stuff in there where efficiencies could be made. The sad thing is the “opposition” don’t appear to be trying, they just want to have the power, blame the other side and take no responsibility. They libraries don't have a direct affect on the vulnerable, they are wrong. Cut the libraries and what is lost to society won’t appear on the annual balance sheet but when their power to transform lives, raise aspirations and open up minds is lost then you will certainly see it in years to come when more people don’t realise their potential and have to rely on the state for their pensions and social care. All parties bang on about aspiration and closing the gap between the rich and the poor, sadly they don’t have the vision to see that libraries are one of the best ways of doing this. And when it comes to choice, at the ballot box in Swindon, it seems we don’t have any.

The Law of Inverse Relevance

The Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964 is supposed to set out the framework in which the minister superintends and promotes the library service to ensure it is comprehensive and efficient for all that desire to use it. The minister is only ever one person so within the act a framework exists so the minister has a body to advise him/her on library matters including if any of the authorities are breaching their duties to provide the service under the act. The body that was setup was called the Advisory Council on Libraries, they fulfilled the role under the act to:

“advise the Secretary of State upon such matters connected with the provision or use of library facilities whether under this Act or otherwise as they think fit, and upon any questions referred to them by him”

The problem is when the current government came into power they had a “bonfire of the quangos” and decided to abolish the ACL.

Vaizey has cast about trying to find some other group or body to take over this role as his eyes and ears but the MLA (also no abolished) and the arts council (which has been savagely cut) both have categorically said that this wasn’t/isn’t their role. In the government response to the select committee on libraries they had another go and suggested that the 5 regional relationship managers could feed back to the department and minister to presumably make the government act within the law again in relationship to the act. Considering there is only going to be five of these relationship managers they cannot conceivably superintend 30.2 library authorities each to ensure their compliance with the act, even if ACE agreed to go along with it.

The reason I am going on about all this is I put in a FOI to the DCMS about information on when the last met, the meeting notes and current members.  They released the meeting notes, the last of which was on the 4/Feb/2010 before the current government even came into power. The last advice issued from the body to the minister was on 07/Dec/09! There are according to the FOI still two current members of the body who I intend to contact but a body in this sense cannot consist of two people. Their terms end on the 11/Feb/2013 and 02/Aug/2013. I intend to contact both of these individuals and ask them why they are not advising the minister. The ACL if it still existed would be hamstrung because the minister refuses to define what the act actually means. But the minister has been without the statutory body to provide him with advice for over three years:

Not only does the minister break the law by not intervening when the destruction of the library service is ongoing, the minister has no idea what is going on because there is no one to advice as it clearly states in the act. See no evil, hear no evil and say a lot of half-truths, spun stats on closures and piffle seems to be what the library service is getting from the government.

Below is the link to the FOI, many thanks to Shirley for suggesting it.

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/advisory_council_on_libraries#incoming-358620

I would prefer a statutory library service to a OFFER

The SCL (Society of Chief Librarians) are developing a strategy to make best use of existing resources to help keep libraries relevant and accessible. They have been working with ACE, The Reading Agency and others to come up with four OFFERS that they think users want from public libraries. They are:

• The Universal Health Offer
• The Universal Reading Offer
• The Universal Information Offer
• The Universal Digital Offer 

They launched it this morning with the minister Ed Vaizey who put up his usual new speak about how the library service is in good health despite hundreds of service points closing and the service being handed over to the “volunteers” wholesale as the war between local and national government heats up.

Reading through the list of things under each of the OFFERS there are some good ideas in there and to be perfectly honest it’s the good libraries were doing anyway before Vaizey allowed them to be decimated. They talk about a national program and rollout in 2013 without going into any detail. As with all initiatives the main question is show me the money. Nothing is free and for the good libraries not already doing this stuff, where is the money going to come from to pay for all of this stuff?  Perhaps the LGA will lower its subscription costs to allow local authorities to plough some of that money into the library service? Perhaps Ed will find some cash for local authorities to do this like Mr Pickles did when the Daily Mail started kicking off about the bin collections?

No, what will happen is the statutory libraries will start doing some of this stuff if they are not already and the non-statutory libraries in the small communities that were doing this stuff (my local one already does most of the stuff on the list) are being cut and will not be involved, the already two tier service will be further widened. Otherwise someone has to train the volunteers and any of the low paid library managers and assistants who have managed to escape the chop. The“librarians”  or “OFFER facilitators” who rarely go into libraries these days will find lots of what Sir Humphrey calls “useful work” in their back office empires.

My favourite political novels of the last few years are by a former back bench MP called Christ Mullin, he said something along the lines of that under New Labour there was always funding for new and eye catching initiatives and the core funding for services was always at the bottom of the list of priorities. Sadly in the library service there is funding for neither.

You can read about it all here:

http://www.goscl.com/libraries-of-the-21st-century-scl-launches-four-national-offers-for-public-libraries/

Power to the people

The Westminster bubble has excreted yet another report on the library service called "Community libraries: guidance from the Arts Council" this one comes via various bodies, The LGA, Arts council, presumably the SCL had input and something called “Locality” which is a movement of 700 inspiring community-led organisations. It appears to be a keen advocate of Dave’s Big Society and they have hosted fringe events at the Tory party conference so has links to the party. Ironically the staff listing on their site has 46 members of staff and only one volunteer. I’m not certain this is a grass roots organisation, rather something setup to promote community involvement that appears to closely mirror the agenda of the Conservative party with regards to localism and the Big Society.

Reading the report put out by this lot you would think there was a great clamour by communities to take over and run council services and that volunteers are better at doing jobs than professionals. They have no evidence base to back this up, its pure ideology and spin. It also ties in with the Tories small state ideology and some bygone age ideal (that never existed) where communities were self-sustaining and required little input or involvement from the authorities. Some kind of libertarian utopia.

The problem with all this is the localism and big society agenda being pushed by the Tories isn’t actually achieving this, the councils are using this to divest themselves of their responsibility to provide front line statutory services but are retaining their administrators. In effect they keep the bloated expensive back office, sack the low paid front line staff and the people provide the service to themselves. Specifically on libraries I am not aware of any community or local group that would prefer to run the service themselves. If the Government really believed in localism they would properly reform local government by making the scrutiny meaningful and the decision making transparent, that would be pushing down power the people. Forcing communities to provide statutory services to themselves isn’t localism, its blackmail and its forcing the taxpayer to pay for services twice.

Any senior librarians involved in this report and the push for volunteers to replace low paid library assistants and managers have miscalculated, it might just be volunteers in the community libraries today, give it time the localism agenda will be used to make us do your job too.

If you want to waste a hour of you life reading biased drivel with cherry picked case studies to back up their erroneous arguments knock yourself out:

http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/what-we-do/supporting-libraries/community-libraries-research/

The propinquity of its ultimate regrettable termination

I sent my last blog post about the Newcastle and Gateshead situations to the leaders of Newcastle and Gateshead Council. I didn't expect a reply from either but did get a reply from the office of Mick Henry from Gateshead. It contained a lot of the factual information about what is happening and a thank you for getting in touch and my comments had been added to the consultation. What I found surprising is that they have discussed joint sharing but they won't because:

"As part of a service review, opportunities for shared services were considered and detailed discussions held with officers from Newcastle City Council.  A range of service areas were considered for sharing.  It was concluded that the areas of service that could be considered for sharing were not feasible owing to the very limited capacity that now exists in these areas across both Councils. "

Which if you have limited capacity that is exactly the reason you pool resources not a reason not to do it! And anyway, both within the library service and the service support/ other expenditure there is still plenty of duplication and expensive back office support going on as I wrote about here. 

Politics as always buggers everything up though, why cut up your little empire when you can blame the other side and cut services to make a point. It more clear than ever that the Tories are closing libraries by stealth by handing them to volunteers and Labour are openly closing them but blaming the evil coalition for making them do something they claim they don't want to do. And in some cases it looks like certain politicians are using the cuts to give themselves a national platform, no doubt with a eye on a future safe seat.

The Newcastle 90 million figure is a nonsense and has been clearly torn apart by Lee Hall and his brilliant analysis of the figures put up by Newcastle:

http://savenewcastlelibraries.org/curious-things-about-the-budget/

I think its time for Mick Henry and Nick Forbes to go back to their officers tell them to merge the management and back office spending of the two library services and that no library should have its hours or low paid library managers/assistants cut otherwise the tail is wagging the dog. Libraries more than pay for themselves in hundreds of ways, sadly very few councillors understand this and its not something that appears in their budgets but you cut the libraries and watch literacy decrease, watch the elderly need extra care because they have lost their one lifeline, watch the job seekers fail to get re-employed because they have no access to a computer or books on how to find work or re skill. None of that appears on the budget sheet for the financial year so to these people it doesn't matter.

Confusion between the policy of administration and the administration of policy

I recently visited the SCL (The Society of Chief Librarians) with a few other library campaigners at their first stakeholder forum. Despite my many criticisms of the SCL I see this as a good sign. I won't go into the whole two hours, Public Library News covered it in great detail here. I do however want to go through my main gripe with the SCL which is their policy on volunteers, and more specifically volunteers replacing paid staff. The SCL according to their site exist to:

"The Society of Chief Librarians leads the debate on the future of public libraries and advocates for continuous improvement of the public library service on behalf of local people"

They are great supporters of volunteers in libraries, but controversially they support volunteers replacing paid staff in libraries. They don't have any evidence to support this, the position is based on their experience as librarians and they cite a specific hypothetical example of where a volunteer replacing a paid staff member would save a library that would otherwise close:

Volunteers could remove the need to double staff some service points which would reduce costs and this meant libraries were kept open. If there was absolutely no job substitution then libraries will close.

Unfortunately in my opinion, their stance, however well intended has opened the flood gates and councils up and down the land are going straight to the volunteers option without looking to save costs elsewhere in the library service first. We now know that 201 libraries closed last year so they didn't appear to benefit from the stance given by the SCL. I doubt many libraries were actually saved by their position, I think quite a few senior librarians were though as someone senior has to be there to push through the volunteers policy.

The SCL are taxpayer funded, unaccountable to local people (who they say they act on behalf of) and we as taxpayers have no say in their policy. Its one thing for a single chief librarian giving their best professional advice, its entirely another thing a for a taxpayer funded organisation without any sort of evidence or mandate endorsing a policy that affects the library provision of all. 

They have said they will publish guidance on what tasks are suitable, and which are not for volunteers. It is a start but not enough. We are meeting again in the spring I believe and this is something I want to explore with them further, especially the democratic deficit of their organisation. By their own words they are supposed to be debating on the future of libraries and advocating for its continuous improvement. 

I will put a little survey widget on the blog, please vote and ask any library users (explain who the SCL are) you know to vote, also leave comments if there are things you want me to raise with them the next time we meet. 

Previous posts on the SCL and their position on volunteers replacing staff:

http://questioneverythingtheytellyou.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/scl-on-volunteers-replacing-staff.html

http://questioneverythingtheytellyou.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/society-of-chief-barbarians.html