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May 7, 2006
Politics and public libraries
In England we have just had a set of local council elections. The people in most of the country have used the occasion to express their extreme unhappiness with the current government. They may hasten the end of Mr Blair's period as British Prime Minister. Certainly they have caused the realignment of many local councils and "Who's in Charge?" of public libraries has changed in many places as a result of last Thursday.
My own sense is that in 1997 Mr Blair identified correctly that the people of the country wanted better management of all our public services, particularly those for education and health care, and less posturing by self important politicians. At almost every election since then he has admitted that despite huge increases in expenditure little progress has been made towards these aims and he has requested more time to do the job.
Politicians (both national and local) should be very close to the management of public services like libraries but in our system they don't get "under the skin" of how they work and what is right and what is wrong. That is why public services don't improve: they have no leadership derived from the political system and no leadership from anywhere else. No one accepts responsibility and acts accordingly. No one says "I shall make sure the public gets value for the money they pay." The public have to be the most important "stakeholder". Those who manage the service have always to endeavour, in a professional way, to read the public mind. Purposes have to be clearly defined, otherwise efficiency is not possible
The public services are far more costly than any national or multi- national corporation and yet the management structures are unclear, responsibilities are not identified, activity and expenditure is not measured and the people who run them are not trained. The expenditure and the performance is not attended by the same public scrutiny as the smallest quoted public company: they should be. The habit of "reshuffling" ministers whenever there is a remote political crisis, is utterly destructive and exactly the opposite of responsible management.
The public library service is an obvious case. The funding comes from one ministry, but responsibility to Parliament (and the people) lies in another. Monitoring is carried out by a third and the actual management is carried out, with no meaningful connecting link to any of these by 206 local councils.
This arrangement, despite its complexity, could work if the appropriate, wise and experienced people were in the key positions; however the DCMS, which is the department which accounts to Parliament for this £1.2bn pa expenditure actually has no senior person who is responsible for public libraries. They have no data about the performance of the service; they only receive information about the service from a private body once a year, 18 months after the event. Until recently when they were forced by campaigners like me, they were not used to studying what that data says. They have, for example, no idea at all at the moment, of which libraries are likely to be opened or to be closed: even though this has been a subject both in the press and Parliament. They have no idea of how the service has performed since March 2005.
They operate a subsidiary "Non- governmental body" (and that is an extremely misleading expression: the MLA would not exist if the government hadn't set it up) which in turn has no ability to gather information and does not assess the performance of the service or identify actions that should be taken on the basis of any material information at all. At the current time the MLA is promoting ideals for the library service which are exactly the opposite of the values which the Minister is expressing in speeches. Instead of reconciling their approach, both parties simply deny the difference in the hope that the public can't or won't read what they have said
Local council library services are run with extremely variable quality of management and no help, management training or sense of direction of the kind that is needed for improvement. They have little analysis of performance and expenditure presented in a manner which either councillors or the public could understand. This has been the finding of endless reports, including particularly several by the Audit Commission and last year's Select Committee of Parliament. Nothing has been done as a result of any of these: which is in itself a clear failure of the structure of our public service.
I doubt if there is a council in the country which has made a serious attempt to address to the recommendations on public libraries made in Audit Commission reports since 1998, the Select Committee report of 2005 and the PKF report of 2005. When one asks how effectively these matters could be addressed in a council, one is generally told that councils have no effective method of taking in advice other than that which is home-grown; even if the advice is obviously sound and helpful. "Councils don't work like that" is a pathetic excuse that is so often used to explain manifest incompetence, miscommunication and inefficiency.
Public services won't improve until these matters are addressed properly and in a detailed manner. It is true that libraries would be used more if they had more books, were open longer and were welcoming buildings; but they will fall again into decline if we don't at the same time remove the problems that caused their decay in the first place.
We have not yet begun to solve the problem that was posed in 1997: which is to give value and quality in return for the large expenditure the public makes. That is not fair and not acceptable, and that is why the need for action is now extremely urgent. The public were right to say what they did on Thursday. I agree with them.
Posted by Perkins at May 7, 2006 9:45 AM