British Library Board (Power to Borrow) Bill

Second Reading

Moved by

That the Bill be now read a second time.

My Lords, I do not propose to detain your Lordships long. This is a very simple Bill that has been entrusted to me, which runs to the full extent of two clauses. Before I move to the Bill, I refer to my register of interests, including my work for the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society.

This Bill has come from the other place, where it was ably stewarded by Bim Afolami MP. Without wishing to turn this into an Oscars speech, I briefly express my gratitude to Rob Field of the British Library for his help in preparing my remarks as well as to Cheryl Shorter and Mark Hicks at what we must now refer to at length as the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

I am very much looking forward to the speeches from noble Lords, in particular from the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, who was for many years the chair of the British Library when I was a simple junior Minister sitting at her feet, and from my newly ennobled and very old noble friend Lord Hannan, who 30 years ago used to do my photocopying. I say to him that, if he does not have at least three quotes from Shakespeare referring to reading and libraries in his three-minute speech, I will be extremely disappointed.

As I said, this Bill is extremely uncontroversial. Its two clauses simply repeal a provision in the British Library Act 1972—the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, who is also due to speak, was there when it was going through Parliament—which prevents the British Library from borrowing. I am told by officials at DCMS that the reason why the provision was included in the 1972 Act is lost in the mists of time, despite their archaeological work—the noble Lord may be able to shed light on that.

This Bill will put the British Library in the same position as the rest of our national museums. I was lucky enough as Minister for Culture to push forward granting greater freedoms to our national museums. That included the power to borrow and to spend from their reserves and other flexibilities. I was certainly not around at the time—although, again, the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, will recall it—but it is hard to believe that 40 or 50 years ago our museums were treated as subsets of government departments, with huge restrictions. I am pleased to say that, whatever one’s view of different Governments, more and more freedoms have been granted to our museums and they have flourished as a result.

This simple Bill will allow the great British Library to have the same level of freedom as its counterparts. Once the Bill is passed, it will be able to borrow from a Treasury pot of £60 million that is made available annually and has so far been used by seven museums. It is important to stress—I do not think that any of your Lordships would take this view, but it was raised at Second Reading in the other place—that this is not a Trojan horse or some Machiavellian scheme by the Government to allow the British Library to borrow money so that they can cut its grant in future. It simply provides the flexibility and freedom enjoyed by all our other national museums.

My Lords, I was indeed the chair of the board of the British Library, so I declare that as an interest. Indeed, I was in the role in 2013 when the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced a four-year pilot package granting a number of freedoms, including the freedom to borrow, to the national museums and galleries following a report by Neil Mendoza—now the noble Lord, Lord Mendoza—which recommended these freedoms. As we have heard, they became permanent in 2015.

I am not sure that the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, ever sat at my feet; I think I actually sat at his when he was a Minister. I thank him very much for bringing into the House this Private Member’s Bill following the completion of its initial stages in the other place, where it received cross-party support. The exclusion of the BL in 2013 was, in my view, an anomaly, so I am really delighted that this is now rectified in this Bill by a small amendment to the British Library Act 1972. I am confident that it will have the same cross-party support here as it had in the other place.

I am very grateful for all the positive things the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, said about the BL, because he had more time; I have only three minutes. It is a great national institution. It is one of the largest and most influential national libraries in the world. Its vast collections are international, and through digitisation it is working to make some of its truly valuable collections, including rare manuscripts, available to readers around the world. It has made a start, but the amount of further work to be done is daunting.

I want to say just a bit about what it does in the UK. It runs a fantastic exhibition programme, which in recent years has ranged from a celebration of the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta—which the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, will remember well—to Harry Potter. Its many exhibitions, small and large, have attracted thousands of visitors to the BL beyond its readers, who use the library and its collections to have the resources they need to carry out research.

My Lords, it is a very real privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone. She was a very distinguished chairman of the British Library and did much to enhance it, and we are all in her debt.

I regard my noble friend Lord Vaizey with a degree of affectionate envy today, because I have the Bill that has languished at the top of the list from our ballot last year and is never going to be debated in this House unless I draw a high place in the next ballot. But he has done a service in bringing this Bill before us.

I am by nature against anomalies and for flexibility, and the Bill does away with a quite extraordinary anomaly. When you look at all our other great museums and galleries, it is right that this, one of the greatest institutions of its kind in the world—if not the greatest library in the world—should enjoy these simple benefits, not least because it is itself a marvellous lender. I speak with very real experience, because I was responsible for organising a couple of major exhibitions in Lincoln in 2015 to commemorate Magna Carta and in 2017 to commemorate the great Battle of Lincoln. We borrowed a number of our most significant things, including the Luttrell Psalter in the first exhibition. I had nothing but help from Claire Breay, who heads up medieval manuscripts, and her colleagues, and I pay tribute to them. Those who are lenders should be able to be borrowers too—and, of course, they do with their own exhibitions.

My noble friend is right that I was present when the original Act went through in another place. However, I am very sad that our noble friend Lord Eccles is not able to be here today. His father was very much the godfather of the British Library, and I know that our noble colleague is inordinately proud, and rightly so, of what his father achieved. I shall never forget the great opening ceremony and the series of other ceremonies that followed the opening of the library. Although there were views about its architecture, it has established itself as a quite marvellous institution, and it deserves every possible help from government.

My Lords, it is a huge privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. I refer to my interests as a present member of the board of the British Library. It has been a great pleasure to listen to the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, who was such an inspiring chair of the library when I first joined the board.

I certainly support the Bill, which was so eloquently introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey. As has been said, it corrects a past inconsistency and brings the library into line with other major museums and galleries. The ability to borrow will be a useful additional tool for the British Library board and indeed a very timely one. For these are very exciting times to be on the board of this vital national asset. It is that buzz of being in the right place at the right time. The British Library is certainly about heritage—old books are wonderful things. However, it is also about cutting-edge research, digital and data, encouraging entrepreneurs, supporting communities through the public library network, and global collaboration. It has a key role in our 21st-century knowledge economy.

These are exciting times indeed. However, they are also difficult times. Like everyone, the library has been coping with Covid and the lockdowns, endlessly finding new ways of doing things. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the dedication and hard work of the staff at every level in rising to meet these unprecedented challenges. However, the light ahead is there. The library is fully engaged in focusing on how it can support this country’s post-pandemic recovery and renewal. I commend to the House the library’s strategic statement of intent published in October last year, Living Knowledge for Everyone. As has been mentioned, we have ambitious plans in London, in our existing campus at Boston Spa, and in creating a new presence in the centre of Leeds. This is a major programme to create jobs and businesses, to foster innovation and to invest more widely across the country. I take this opportunity to thank the Minister and all her colleagues in DCMS for the support and encouragement the Government are giving to the library in realising those plans.

My Lords, this week I had great pleasure in joining Mary Robinson, chair of The Elders, and Nick Merriman of the Horniman Museum, at an event with the UK Committee of the International Council of Museums. Our focus was on museums and libraries as thought leaders in the battle against climate change. Dr Merriman made the point that while they are often thought of as custodians of the past, in fact their key place in our society is as inspirations for the future. As someone who, I should perhaps declare, holds a reader’s ticket for the British Library, I have always found it to be that.

Six years ago, I took part in an event inspired by the artist Monica Ross, a recitation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the British Library foyer— a very public exhibition of the importance of rights that, even then, were obviously under threat. It was a case of looking backwards to past success and forwards to the need to defend it. In 2008, the library held an exhibition entitled Taking Liberties: The Struggle for Britain’s Freedoms and Rights. That was the first public place where I encountered the argument that I have used very regularly since: that universal basic income, guaranteeing the dignity of the right to the essentials of life without the need to rely on charity, was a logical place for human rights doctrine to reach.

That the British Library is a crucial international resource for the nation is a statement of the obvious. It must be properly funded by the nation to ensure that it can keep up its comprehensive collecting remit and an ability to share the riches thus collected. I hope that is an uncontroversial statement, although in the age of continuing privatisation it needs to be said. An idea that was one day radical and way out there, contained only perhaps in a flimsy short-run magazine deposited in the stacks, may one day be a crucial seed that germinates to solve a problem and enrich the national fabric.

My Lords, I declare an interest as another former chair of the British Library.

As has been acknowledged already, there is no rational reason why the BL should be excluded from a source of finance that is available to other great public institutions. However, the government scheme itself is questionable. The very essence of a project that is funded by borrowing is that it should earn a return. Hence, borrowing will inevitably push the BL towards a more commercial approach to the provision of its services. Could the Minister explain how that fits with the library’s mission statement: to

“make our intellectual heritage accessible to everyone, for research, inspiration and enjoyment”?

In this context, what commercial activities do the Government have in mind, and will the Minister reaffirm the assurance asked for and given by the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, that government will not consider borrowing in any way as an alternative to the grant in aid?

One of the great success stories of the past 15 years has been the growth of the BL’s business and intellectual property sector. As the then chair of the BL board, I opened the first centre in 2006, taking over two reading rooms previously dedicated to access to patents. Now they are fully accessible online. As we have heard, the initiative has spread, with 10 centres opened in London and 15 around the rest of the country, and now there is a plan for further expansion. This business and intellectual property centre national network provides entrepreneurs and SMEs across the UK with free access to databases, market research, journals, directories and reports, backed up with seminars and business advice. The whole package is worth thousands of pounds to a start-up. The result: in the past three years, the network has helped to create 12,000 new businesses. Can the Minister assure the House that the Government will continue to support the BL in building on that remarkable success and continuing to provide these services free of charge?

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in this debate, and I congratulate my noble friend Lord Vaizey on the excellent way in which introduced the Bill and, indeed, on all the work he did as a DCMS Minister.

Literacy is everything. Just look to our prison population to understand what transpires when we fail people in that respect. When I say literacy, I mean across the sweep, including financial and digital literacy, and I congratulate the British Library on everything it does, understanding the breadth of what we mean when we talk about literacy.

Does the Minister agree that the British Library has such a crucial role to play when it comes to the levelling-up agenda: yes, in its fine building at Boston Spa, yes in the excellent plans for Leeds city centre but, more than that, with its hub and spoke model, which positively impacts people right across the country? When it comes to accessibility, will he confirm that the British Library does everything to attempt to make the collection and the materials accessible to all, not least disabled people? Indeed, when we look to the fabulous business scheme already mentioned by my noble friend Lord Vaizey, it is very positive that almost 20% of those who avail themselves of the business service are disabled people—almost one-fifth, compared to a national average of just 2%. Can my noble friend say some more about some of the opportunities which the British Library will have available to itself through this borrowing which would not be available under the current grant-in-aid arrangements?

In conclusion, the British Library is such an excellent example of our soft power. I believe the Bill would serve it, and through it, us, so very well. The British Library is a vital vehicle for levelling up, literacy and learning, for part of our Covid recovery, helping communities up and down the country, businesses to start and the build back better agenda. The British Library: the word.

My Lords, I, too, support the Bill, and I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, has picked up the ball rolling our away from the other place. This is my first opportunity to welcome him to our Benches. It is wonderful to have such an enthusiastic and knowledgeable supporter of the arts with us.

I should perhaps declare an interest here, in that the British Library bought from my family the manuscripts of my father, Sir Lennox Berkeley, and we are very happy that they are cared for, expertly catalogued and curated, so I have some experience of dealing with the library from this end, and its expertise is exemplary and admirable. The British Library is a bit like a pulsing octopus, and one of the tentacles extends to Aldeburgh, where my father’s letters and papers relating to his work and the life he shared, early on, with Britten have been acquired by the Britten Pears.

Such outreach can be so constructive and inventive. We must not forget that running libraries, galleries or other arts organisations is a business. I would say to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, that, having been on the board of the Royal Opera House and run three festivals, I know that if you do not treat artistic organisations as a business, you are in real trouble. All these institutions, like the BL, need the ability to borrow. To take just a small example of wanting to acquire a rare manuscript, the timeframe may be narrow, and other would-be purchasers may be snapping at the heels of the seller. I take the point made by the Minister in the other place that borrowing from the state is probably the best financial route, but this should not totally exclude commercial borrowing, and I do not think it now will.

I also endorse the plea from the Opposition in the other place that the Bill not be used as a reason for in any way reducing the government grant to the library, and I ask the Minister whether she would endorse the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, that Machiavelli is not at work here.