The Libraries All Party Parliamentary Group has called, as a minimum, for every child in the UK to have a good library in their secondary school.

It really does make you wonder how people are allowed to waste time and money coming up with such drivel.

First, make sure there is a library in every primary school and a librarian who understands what children like to read and who knows how to excite and enthuse children’s appetites, to turn them into confident self-starting readers.

Then, and only then, when the children are literate and have become readers, make sure they have libraries in secondary schools.

Libraries in secondary schools that are full of children who have not learned to read past a page of text are going to be empty libraries.

Create readers when they are still full of enthusiasm and soaking up knowledge and habits and you will find we start to top those international education tables again, which is all that politicians really care about anyway.