Glenda urged the Government to think again about the massive cuts to local councils which may cause library closures.

Glenda spoke out in the Westminster Hall debate and emphasised the vital services that libraries provide: “For young people who are looking for work, are very confused by the benefits system and have no computer access of their own, the local library is the first port of call, because the equipment and the information are there, and highly skilled and highly trained people can help them.“Ministers are playing a blame game, trying to argue these cuts are about executive pay or backroom efficiency, but front line services are going to have to go because the savings required are more than can be saved through ‘stream-lining’ or efficiency measures”.

Finally, while acknowledging and welcoming the valiant efforts of volunteers, she called on the Government to acknowledge that volunteers could not cope with the complexity of running public libraries with no funding from councils. “The legal issues and historic building maintenance required, let alone the knowledge and expertise that library workers currently provide, cannot be sustained without Government funding, nor should it”.

Glenda condemned the “gothic novel that runs through the Conservative-Lib Dem Government and has been expounded by all their adherents, that our present economic difficulties are the exclusive responsibility of the previous Labour Government who spent excessively. Nothing could be further from the truth. The whole world went through a major economic crisis”.