THE Culture Minister was sharply criticised yesterday over the Government’s neglect of public libraries.

Announcing a Love Libraries campaign, David Lammy found himself fielding questions about their closure and the decline in the number of books being bought for them — as well as what the campaign amounted to, given that it entailed no extra spending. The writer Christopher Hawtree, who has led a successful campaign to save a library in Brighton, ridiculed the idea that people had to be urged to love books. “That doesn’t need to be fostered,” he said, calling for the Government instead to reverse the fall in library book stocks.

Stocks have dropped from 105 million a decade ago to 84 million, and reports suggest that libraries in Lancashire, Cumbria, Devon, Buckinghamshire, Surrey and Hertfordshire are to shut.

Describing such reports as exaggerated, Mr Lammy said that, among various funds, £80 million of lottery money was to be invested in libraries. He did not mention that not a penny of the £80 million would be spent on books. Campaigners are dismayed that the money will instead pay for buildings to be adapted for “services” such as Citizens Advice Bureaux, crèches, mother and toddler groups and t’ai chi and fitness classes.

Mr Hawtree rejected plans to turn libraries into “one-stop shops for council services”, and another author asked Mr Lammy whether libraries were any longer about books.

Last month the minister’s office admitted that he had misled MPs by saying that stocks had increased last year. The Bookseller has accused him of presenting platitudes to the Commons about his love of books, yet having “no new money to offer, no new plans to unveil and no announcement to take over libraries from incompetent local authorities, which he has the power to do”.

The Love Libraries campaign is being promoted as “a new vision of a 21st-century reading service” by an “alliance” that includes the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council and the Reading Agency.

It will involve the transformation of Newquay Library in Cornwall, Coldharbour Library in Gravesend and the Lending Library in Richmond. Retailers’ expertise is to be used to remodel the interiors so that they become “models of a future library service”.

The Richmond library, one of the oldest in London, was built in 1880. A listed building, it is nevertheless said to suffer from clutter and a confusion of layout. The “transformation” will involve using “zoning” to address the differing needs of users — “from the peaceful browser area to the ‘quick’ take away section at the front of the library”. New technology will be used to improve “the borrowing experience”.

The alliance has also published a survey of public attitudes to libraries.

A spokeswoman for the alliance confirmed that there would no extra money for the libraries. She declined to disclose how much M&C Saatchi was being paid to promote the campaign, but confirmed that it involved public money.

SPINE CHILLING

54% of people said that they did not have a good reason to go to a library

14% think libraries are dreary and old fashioned

35% were unaware they could borrow at least six books at no cost

42% had not visited their library in the past two years

22% had never visited their local library

340 million visits last year

330 million books borrowed

Source: Muse survey of 1,000 adults

Explore Books

• Book Extracts

• Book Reviews

• Books Group

• Audio Books

Times Recommends

• The 100 Best Books of the Decade
• The Times picks the 50 best paperbacks of 2009
• The conversation: James Ellroy