Enterprise and Culture Committee, 02 Sep 2003

Meeting date: Tuesday, September 2, 2003

Official Report 176KB pdf

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Legal Deposit Libraries Bill

I call the meeting to order and ask everyone to ensure that their mobile phones are switched off.

The first item on our agenda is the United Kingdom Legal Deposit Libraries Bill. I welcome the Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport, who would like to say a few words on the subject.

I thank the Enterprise and Culture Committee for the opportunity to speak on the Executive's memorandum, which relates to the Sewel motion to attain the Scottish Parliament's consent to the UK Legal Deposit Libraries Bill. The bill was introduced in the House of Commons on 11 December 2002. It is a private member's bill, but is supported by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. The bill had its report stage and third reading on 4 July; it was introduced to the House of Lords on 7 July. The DCMS expects the second reading there to be on 12 September.

The bill concerns the extension of legal deposit to include non-print material and imposes a duty on publishers to deposit publications in six nominated depositories. Those are known as the deposit libraries and include our own National Library of Scotland. Under section 15 of the Copyright Act 1911, a copy of each book or serial or other printed publication, published in the UK, is required to be deposited, free of charge, in the British Library. Under the act, five other libraries, including the National Library of Scotland, are entitled to receive, on request, one free copy of any book or any other printed publication published in the UK.

We wish to modernise legislation to extend the provisions of legal deposit to cover material that has emerged in recent years in media other than print—in particular, electronic and online material. That would cover internet publications, e-journals, CD-ROMs and microforms, thereby ensuring that all significant publications are collected regardless of the medium in which they are initially published. Such publications will therefore be preserved as part of the national published archive.

The National Library of Scotland has been very supportive of the bill and has been kept fully informed of its progress through the joint committees of which it is a member, along with the British Library and the other legal deposit libraries. To ensure that the National Library of Scotland retains the benefits of the current arrangements, the bill should extend to Scotland on introduction. There will be provision in the bill for the National Library of Scotland to continue with its current agreement to pass deposited legal publications to the Faculty of Advocates.

The Executive's memorandum sets out the background to the bill and the need for legislation. It comments on each of the bill's clauses that relates to Scotland. I recommend that the committee accepts the proposals in the memorandum.

As the minister said, this issue will be the subject of a Sewel motion, which Parliament will debate on 11 September. The committee does not have to make any decisions today; we simply have an opportunity to question the minister, should any member wish to do so.

The bill was introduced in December last year. Is there any particular reason why the Sewel motion has come to us nine months later, as opposed to nearer the time of introduction?

If we do not deal with this now, with a second reading due on 12 September, there will be an impact that could prevent the provisions from becoming law. The National Library of Scotland would not then be able to receive publications that would be useful to it. Bob Irvine may wish to comment on the delay since 2002.

The delay was caused largely by the shadow of the parliamentary elections in Scotland earlier this year. If I recall, the bill did not go through its first stages until earlier this year. A Sewel motion is not generally available until later in the proceedings.

As a matter of interest, is there an ideal point at which a Sewel motion should be introduced? The bill that we are considering will probably not be subject to huge amounts of amendment because it is not controversial, but in previous debates, the issue has been raised that, if a Sewel motion is passed that expresses the Parliament's general wish to be associated with a piece of UK legislation near the beginning of the process, and the bill is subsequently radically altered in its passage through the House of Lords or the House of Commons, what the Parliament assented to at the beginning will not be what we get at the end. Do you have any thoughts on that?

There has been a lot of discussion about the procedures for Sewel motions, but I am not aware of the conclusions that have emerged. The motion that we are considering has come at a relatively late stage in Westminster's consideration of the bill, which allows the Scottish Parliament to be fairly clear about exactly what the legislation is and what implications it has for Scottish bodies.

I do not have a question about the bill, which is a fairly uncontroversial and commonsense measure that will bring the legislation up to date. My question for the minister is, given that there is already considerable pressure on storage at the National Library of Scotland building 200yd down the North Bridge, what discussions has the minister had, or does he anticipate having, with Martyn Wade and his colleagues at the National Library about how they will cope with the implications of storing additional information, which will be an inevitable requirement of the bill?

That is a significant issue. We must have discussions with the National Library about how it will deal with the impact from within existing resources. We have given approval for the restructuring of the National Library's overall management structure. I hope that that move will release resources from within the library that can be put towards archiving and developing a much more outward-looking role for the National Library. The library must try to deal with the resource implications from within existing budgets and it feels that it can do so if it continues with the restructuring process in which it is involved.

It is significant that the minister has said twice that the cost of the changes will have to be met from within existing resources. The bill has financial implications as well as implications for storage capacity at the library. It is rather unfortunate that, when Sewel motions come before us, we do not have a financial memorandum that allows us to make a proper assessment of the bill's impact on the Scottish budget. Can you give us an idea of how much the bill will cost?

I do not have the figure for the impact on resources directly at hand, but we will respond to the committee on that.

Many major institutions must accommodate the changing circumstances, but the management of that change is up to each institution through its management structure and resource allocation. Institutions are preparing themselves for a different way of developing and enhancing library services and archives. The cost of those changes can reasonably be assumed to come from within existing resources. That is not an unreasonable request to make of any public body. Bodies should be able to do more, although that might mean that they do less in other areas than they have done in the past because the situation has changed. We must reflect that dynamic. The best people to make the judgment are those from the National Library, rather than us.

The point that I am trying to make is that it is a weakness in the Sewel motion procedure that we are not told about the financial implications of the bill. We are asked to agree to something that has a financial impact on the Scottish budget, without knowing whether we will receive more money through the Barnett formula.

There are only five deposit libraries, and I cannot see a per capita arrangement or a percentage arrangement working. We are being asked to agree that Westminster will legislate, but the absence of financial information, whether provided by a public body or otherwise, is surely a weakness in the Sewel motion system.

That is a much broader question and it does not relate to the issue of deposit libraries alone. If Brian Adam feels strongly enough about that matter, he should raise it through the appropriate channels. It is not unreasonable to assume that organisations can accommodate within existing resources changes in the way in which they archive material. There are no additional resources for the British Library either, so no distinction is being made between the libraries in the UK deposit library network. That is a broader issue about public spending, but the fact that we are asking people to do things differently, or to do other things, does not mean that there is a cost implication.

It seems very unlikely that there will not be a cost implication. If you are suggesting that the bill will not have a cost implication, that is fine and there is no problem, but I would have thought that it was important for you to come and tell the committee what the impact will be on the Scottish budget. If a minister comes before a committee with a Sewel motion and asks us to endorse changes, I do not see how we can do that when we do not know how much the changes will cost. I accept that that is not the procedure that is followed at Westminster, and I appreciate that there is no discrimination against the National Library of Scotland, but that is not the point that I am making. The bill has a financial implication, and I think that we deserve to know what that implication is before we agree that Westminster should legislate in that area.

We are not arguing that there is an increase in the Scottish budget to deal with that piece of legislation. That is an assumption that you have made, but it is not necessarily in the legislation.

My question is on the same point. I hear what Brian Adam is saying, but can the minister give us any idea of the time scale for the increase in the amount of material? Is it anticipated that, once the bill is passed, next week or whenever, there will be a huge influx of material into the library that will have to be dealt with there and then, or will there be a gradual increase over perhaps the next two or three years, some of which would have to be budgeted for next year and in subsequent financial years?

Again, I do not have that information directly to hand, but I shall certainly ensure that we give the committee some information on that when we can.

The committee might like to know that, last year, the National Library of Scotland received about 230,000 items of printed material and about 6,000 items of electronic material. It is expected that the amount of electronic material will rise in years to come and that the amount of printed material will fall.

Am I right in thinking that the bill simply conveys obligations on the publishers of such material, and that it is up to the libraries themselves to decide whether they want to accept it?

That is right.

Otherwise there might be some interesting consequences for the budget of the Irish Republic.

I should say at this stage that we have received apologies from Murdo Fraser and Jamie Stone.