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Library Services

Of course. There is no doubt about it. One of the new libraries that I mentioned does exactly that. My council, under a Labour Government, did everything as Labour dictated in order to make the best use of community facilities and become as efficient as possible. That is why we were awarded beacon status. The community members coming forward are ambitious. They want longer opening hours and further innovations. I am confident that New Cross and Crofton Park libraries in my constituency will be saved. They will certainly have my continued support. The council has received 10 expressions of interest from organisations wishing to take on one or more of the library buildings and run library services from them. It seems like a great success in the making, but we must remember that front-line library jobs will be lost, perhaps forever. Most importantly, community effort can be maintained only with council support and council tax payers' money. The installation of self-issue technology will be essential to the operation of the libraries, and that is likely to cost about £59,000 per building. The council's outreach unit will probably be required to contribute more than 100 hours a week to servicing the outreach offer. The cost of Lewisham's service was already the lowest in inner London, and the cuts will bring it down to just over £14 per resident. Thanks to the Labour Government's investment, a new library is due to open in Deptford later this year. But what lies ahead? The cuts being imposed by this Government on Lewisham are already destroying other services. The Deptford job centre has been closed and a second employment advice service, Opening Doors, faces closure as a direct result of the cuts in Government grant. As my hon. Friends the Members for Wigan and for Hampstead and Kilburn (Glenda Jackson) have pointed out, it is the young and the unemployed in particular who need library services if they are ever to stand a chance of getting a job and a future career in the present climate. I am proud of the way in which my community is endeavouring to meet the challenge of library closures, and I hope that the new ways of working will help us meet other challenges, too. However, let no one be in any doubt that this is not a panacea. None of us is going to become a volunteer brain surgeon very soon, and I doubt and would be surprised if many of us would volunteer to change incontinence pads. Whatever we may learn and/or achieve with our libraries in Lewisham, we will still face a Government who are bent on destroying our communities and their prospects.