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September 5, 2007
Is it legal?
My good friend the Chief Librarian of Upper Downberry in Sodshire has kindly sent me the 'Invitation to Tender' sent out by the MLA this week for a framework agreement for public library supply.
The law, as readers of this blog, most certainly know, says that Local councils (called Library authorities) are responsible for the provision of a local library service. Of course they can subcontract any part of this work they wish, but that does not remove the responsbility.
Yet in this ITT the MLA is offering to subcontract responsibility, for example, for stock selection for the public libraries in the UK to its own 'strategic partner'
How would that be legal when currently the onus of such subcontracting lies with councils? Is the Act of Parliament to be amended to name the MLA as the body responsible? I doubt it. Are local councils supposed to give a blanket endorsement to the actions of the MLA?
Who is in charge of these things at the MLA? Has their board given approval to this ITT? Is it in their minutes? I can't find it. Do officers of bodies like the MLA just take the law into their own hands? The persons named in the document are Denislava Ivanova, Matthew Bodley, Paul Lander and Andrew Stevens- do they have the legal authority to amend the law of the land? I thought that was what Parliament did. Or are we in a different kind of democracy now?
Step foward Mr Plod-- -or better still-- wake up Mr Ed Vaizey and do your job. Otherwise we have to rely on the valiant efforts of those noble journalists who have followed this subject from the outset and appear to do the work that MP's are elected for. The problem with 'the ball of publicity' as Lillie Langtry once said, is that 'once it starts rolling, one never knows where it will go'
Posted by Perkins at September 5, 2007 3:03 PM
Comments
Tim,
I think two separate issues are in danger of being confused here.
I understood the process would be that each individual local authority (if they so wished) would establish its own relationship with the Strategic Partner (once it has been established).
The ITT is inviting a player to come forward and establish itself as the strategic partner on the basis of a likely (viable?) minimum number of local authorities buying into its services in the first round.
This suggests to me that the responsibility for the local library service still lies with each local authority, which will be doing no more than subcontracting certain supply and processing services to the strategic partner?
Where I think you may have a point is whether the MLA has the necessary powers in law to act as the instigator of the Strategic Partner model in the first place. It is, after all, an advisory body. I do have concerns that it may be acting beyond its terms of reference by going out to tender for a contract out of which is expected to emerge a monopolistic supply structure which is bound to have a huge effect on the present fragile library supply market - not to mention the technology which supports the supply chain.
I thought we had grown beyond the economic belief that monopolies and nationalised industries are efficient supply models!
Posted by: Philip at September 5, 2007 5:05 PM
Philip
Thank you very much for this-- you have put much more succinctly what I was trying to say.
The questions are
1. whether MLA has the right to spend public money acting on behalf of local councils- in pursuit of the creation of a further body.
2. about the effect they may well have on the normal competitive market of the suppliers-- and what right they have to do that.
I agree with you.
tim
Posted by: tim at September 5, 2007 5:53 PM