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August 25, 2007
What Good are Culture Select Committees?
The Bookseller in the piece below observes that the Minister for the Arts, the DCMS and the MLA have no effective influence over the public library service - and therefore are a waste of taxpayers money.
I would like to add to that list the Culture Select Committee of the House of Commons.
At the end of 2004 they listened to masses of evidence and in March 2005 produced a really excellent report with important recommendations.
The DCMS and the MLA were scornful of it at the time and have proved their disdain by doing little and taking almost none of the recommendations seriously.Likewise recommendations made for professional bodies and officers of local government have been ignored. I twice heard senior officers of the MLA describe the committee as being out of touch with the modern idea of a public library- and was duly astonished
So what was the point? Will we all have to go through the same pantomime again at the end of next year-- just so that the officers and civil servants can play the same game of hide uinder the desk? Spare us the misery.
The members of that committee have done nothing whatsoever to follow up the matter-- so do we assume they never really cared about it in the first place?
Writing reports is not the way to manage public services. On their own they don't achieve anything.
The Select committee can huff and puff all it likes but they haven't put one extra book on the library shelves (but I have- quite a lot now)
John Whittingdale is now the chair-- but he has shown no interest at all in following up the words of his predecessor. I hope he plans the next hearing to be more effective.
Posted by Tim Coates at August 25, 2007 10:28 AM