The scalpel, not the axe

The latest fear is that public libraries will be seen as easy targets for those local authorities who are unable or unwilling to apply themselves to the difficult task of reducing waste while protecting valuable services.

It would certainly be ironic if libraries were made to suffer, given that, only this month, Culture Minister Ed Vaizey deemed them crucial to the Government's idea of the "big society" where communities play a bigger role in determining the shape of public services.

It would also be deeply short-sighted were libraries made to bear a disproportionate burden of the cuts to come, considering that they become even more useful during times of economic hardship.

Offering free internet access to those without computers, as well as providing a staple diet of books and newspapers, libraries come into their own during periods of unemployment. And the lifeline that their mobile service offers to rural villages, as well as isolated urban communities, becomes even more valuable.

It is crucial, then, that local authorities reject the easy option of taking an axe to their library services in the belief that only a small minority of regular users will be affected, or else use library cuts as a stick with which to beat the Government, claiming that harsh restrictions on central funding leave them with no other option.

For, in truth, councils have plenty of options. Indeed, it is not an axe

that they should be wielding, but a scalpel with which to shape a new model of local authority, one run for the benefit of its taxpayers, not its own employees, and where the wasteful spending of recent years is forever consigned to the past.

For the public will not accept library closures when it is clear that other options, such as shared services or use of volunteers, have not been examined. Though many local authorities have yet to realise it, the era of lazily thought out cuts and political shroud-waving, upon which councils have so often relied, is over.