No to privatisation: Demand full funding

The British Library faces a funding crisis and privatisation – and it is workers and the public who will pay.

The British Library is a national legal deposit library for the UK and a legal deposit library for the Republic of Ireland. This means it is legally mandated to collect, preserve and give access to every book published in those jurisdictions.

In April 2013, this mandate was expanded to include digital publications like electronic books, journals, newsletters and papers, as well as content published on the web.

This massive expansion required more resources, infrastructure and people. However, it came with no additional funding!

The British Library is an arms-length body and a large percentage of its funding comes from Grant-in-Aid. But, due to inflation, this has been cut by successive governments. The Library has had to work with less funding year-on-year.

These cuts left the Library in a vulnerable position when it was changing its HR platform, and personal data was left in non-secure storage during the transfer.

In October 2023, the British Library went offline when a Russian-associated ransomware group demanded £600,000. As a publicly funded organisation the Library wasn’t able to pay the ransom, but was equally unable to have insurance to cover this type of attack as the government is its guarantor.

This meant that all staff and some customers had personal data published on the dark web. Three years on, staff are still paying the personal cost of this attack. During the summer, a large number had money successfully taken from their bank accounts by fraudulent direct debits.

Funding

The government has failed to cover the cost of the rebuild, which is estimated at £7 million, approximately 40% of reserves. Since the cyberattack, the government hasn’t increased funding to the Library, despite it generating revenue for the economy through the research and business activities it supports. Instead, the British Library has had to dig deep into its reserves to cover running costs.

But instead of launching a public campaign to demand the funding from the government, senior management and the British Library Board have decided to start the privatisation of this national institution.

It was announced to readers on Wednesday 21 October that three of the science reading rooms will close to make way for a third party to run the reading rooms as a flex office space.

Using the Victoria and Albert Museum as a model, the Board is transferring sections of the service to third-party operators, without proper consultation – starting with security staff, with very little notice. Although the staff will be TUPE-protected (meaning they keep the same pay and conditions when their employer changes), as they move on they will be replaced by cheaper labour. Staff have expert knowledge of preserving and making the national collection accessible to the public. A two-tier system will put that at risk.

This strategy is in direct conflict with the Labour government’s claim to want insourcing. Privatisation will cost more in the long term, and increase the risk to the security of the national collection.

The British Library is legally mandated to preserve the nation’s memory through print and digital publications. It’s about time that the government properly funded this activity and bring it back to being a world-leading library. For far too long the goodwill of staff who have dedicated their lives to the British Library has been exploited.

Unions in the library must put up a united fight!

• PCS, which alongside Prospect organises workers in the British Library, has triggered a dispute