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Shadow culture secretary Ed Vaizey has said that a Conservative government would introduce a new programme, "Renaissance for Libraries", to identify weak authorities for improvement and establish a system of library inspection. He also said the Tories would bring in a voluntary Library Charter.
Speaking at the London Libraries Conference yesterday (5th March), Vaizey said that libraries were suffering from "a crisis in leadership, in some local authorities, and particularly in central government" and that the latest Labour-initiated library review "simply wastes time". Tories would abolish the Advisory Committee on Libraries (ACL), he said, and instead bring in a new library development agency to be established through the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA).
This would run a programme to train local authority cabinet members, help weak authorities improve, identify good management structures and establish library inspection. The shadow culture secretary also said the Tories would introduce a voluntary Charter for Libraries and Reading for local authorities, "to act as an incentive to many local authorities to look carefully at their library strategy and aspire to achieve Charter status". Conservatives would also bring in a national library card, allow library users to borrow books from any library in the UK.
Vaizey stressed that a "library without books – lots of books – is not a library". "It is in books that writers make and have made the most intimate communication. In this format we deal not just in information, but in the subtleties and graduations of life and experience."
Vaizey added: "I know that many people would like to see the responsibility for museums and libraries separated and separate services for museums and libraries established. It might well be a neater solution in the future and I am open-minded on this. But the need for action is urgent, and I do not want to waste the first 12 months of a Conservative administration reorganising a quango instead of getting down to the job."