March for the libraries

On Monday, 9 March, only a week after the farce of the full council meeting (see previous blog), the Children, Education, Libraries & Safeguarding (CELS) committee met, providing another opportunity to discuss the possibility of saving our library system – not just selected libraries but all of them. I had requested the right to make a comment to the committee, and was allotted the standard 3 minutes. Here is what I said:

"Thank you for this opportunity to raise the issue that unites the majority of Barnet residents: libraries. By now you should be aware of the attitude of residents about the proposed options for cutting our library service, evidenced by the letters in the press, the demonstration at the town hall last Tuesday and the 9000 signatures on the petition presented to council. You should also know what Alasdair Hill said about libraries and what he and Alison Moore and Reema Patel’s motions asked the council to do. We all know that those opinions were ignored and motions denied by one vote, a situation made possible by the votes of councillors who had previously publically stated their support for the libraries.

"Item 7 states the council’s intention is ‘to deliver a comprehensive and efficient library service that best meets the demands of residents’. But you don’t know what those demands are. The survey has not yet been analysed, yet tonight’s report presents decisions: there will be ‘significant service reductions’, ‘reduction … [in]stock purchased’, and library services will operate through ‘an expanded range of volunteering roles, advisory groups and community recognition schemes’, whatever they might be.

"You cannot have a comprehensive, efficient library service based on any of the proposed options. In order to meet the demands of residents, you have to listen to what they are.

"Don’t tell us to wait for the results of the survey. It’s flawed – the antithesis of what consultation should be. And we know, because we have seen it happen here before, that if the result should be to reject all 3 options, this committee will, by one vote, ignore it.

"Don’t tell us that you will take account of the comments on the survey to redesign the options: that’s not credible. Tonight’s report says ‘recommendations to the committee in April’; at the consultations we were told the report would be submitted after the election in May, and tonight’s report also says ‘… the library review, due to be reported … in June’. Which is it? April, May or June, there won’t be time for a redesign, because ‘Implementation of the proposed approach [is to commence] in summer’. Rushing through a bad option on the basis of one vote is not representative democracy.

"To ‘deliver a … library service that best meets the demands of residents’, ask the residents – your constituents, the people you are meant to represent – ask them what their demands are, and ask qualified librarians what is needed. Use what they tell you as the basis of a new plan. You have the power to do that, as Cllr Salinger pointed out on Tuesday night. So please set up a working group from this committee now. You won’t have to spend the £3 million earmarked to destroy the library system. If expenditure is necessary, it should produce what the residents want."

Most of the councillors do you the courtesy of appearing to listen even if they have no intention of agreeing with anything you say before you have uttered a single word. Councillor Dan Thomas didn’t bother with this pretence: he simply busied himself with something else, apparently reading the committee papers for that evening, which you might think he would have done sooner.

Councillor Anne Hutton tried to table a motion to set up a subcommittee to take evidence from a wide range of relevant, interested parties, or ‘stakeholders’ as they are usually labelled now, about what is wanted and needed in the library system. It could, she pointed out, run alongside the council’s survey, the report on which, we had only just been informed, would be delayed until ‘after June’.

Cllr Thompstone, speaking at panic speed in fear of a practical and democratic action, said she couldn’t table her motion, that it couldn’t be done in the committee but had to be referred to full council. Shouts from the public gallery pointed out that full council had only a week before said that it had to be done by the committee. Somehow Cllr Thompstone – perhaps displaying the same level of attention as Cllr Rayner had at the council meeting – had failed to hear Cllr Brian Salinger (how can anyone fail to hear him?) make this point.

Cllr Hutton waited until there was a break in the noise and then calmly read from the rules of procedure, which made it crystal clear that the committee was indeed entitled to set up the subcommittee. A few minutes scrabbling among the officers present and, oh goodness me, they declared ‘she’s right’. So Cllr Hutton repeated her request, explaining very patiently exactly the purpose of the subcommittee, how it would complement the council’s own survey. Still in panic mode, Cllr Thomsptone refused to let Cllr Hutton table her motion at this meeting. He allowed that she could do so at the next meeting, thus delaying by another month the work that could be done. And, of course, there is also the possibility that the Tories will vote not to set up such a group, not because it isn’t needed but because they are afraid of what it will report.

Well, Save Barnet Libraries are going to make sure that the residents’ views are heard. There will be a series of library marches, starting Saturday, 28 March at 11am, going from Edgware Library via Burnt Oak Library to Mill Hill Library. Come along for the entire march or a part of it, or meet us at one the libraries on the route. Make your voice heard.