§ Mr. MaudeTo ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport how much money his Department has spent on the digitisation of educational material for libraries in each of the last three years. [36207]
§ Mr. Chris SmithNone. The management and development of the core public library service is the responsibility of local authorities. The Government have announced that the New Opportunities Fund, as part of its educational remit, will provide £50 million of Lottery money to support the digitisation of lifelong learning and educational material which is held to a great extent in public libraries. This will support the development of new IT-based services, additional to the existing core library services.