22/04/2012 Sunday Politics South East

And in the South East - writing a new chapter - one of our councils

wants some libraries to be staffed only by volunteers, but will it

Apology for the loss of subtitles for 1729 seconds

I'm Julia George and this is the Sunday Politics in the South East.

Coming up in the next twenty minutes: Smart government thinking

or dumb student bashing? How changes in immigration rules could

damage the region's international education sector.

With me in the studio today is Immigration Minister and

Conservative MP for Ashford Damian Green and Labour's Baroness Maggie

Jones who lives in Sussex. Shepway District Council came under fire

last week from environmentalists for planning to build a new housing

development when worries about water supply are running hot with

the South East officially in drought. Shepway has over 3,000

people on its council housing waiting list and plans to build

around 8000 new homes by 2035. So what should we worry more about -

shortage of water or shortage of housing? Should we stop building

houses in the south-east, Baroness, seeing as we have a short term of

water shortage? We need to have a proper planning process to decide

where these houses need to be built. If you allow individual councils to

decide, then there could be a risk of building right across the south-

east of England, so there needs to be a plan for where the houses

should be and how these scarce resources like what it would be

used. Water needs to be taken into account under the planning

proposals and sustainability? Sustainability has been bandied

about too often without people being honest about what it means.

Sustainable development is lovely, I support it, but if you talk about

water in the context of sustainability, he mean people

being able to put the water back that they have used. We will run

out of resources quickly. Damian Green, it has been raining hard on

and off all week, this is not a drought in the global sense, are we

getting hysterical because of our language? It is a drought because

there is a less rain in the south- east of England. We generally do

have issues with water supplies. We need to build more houses, we need

to preserve the water supplies and do better at resiting and have more

water meters, but I fundamentally disagreed that you need a big

central plan for housing. It is better for housing growth to be

decided at a local level by local communities that know best what the

committee can sustain. This drought is not going away quickly, we will

be back to lead to very quickly. The jury seems to be out on Prime

Minister David Cameron's Big Society initiative, but one local

authority seems to have taken the message to heart. In Surrey, the

County Council wants to replace paid staff in 10 of its 52 local

libraries with volunteers, claiming it's the only way it can afford to

keep them open. But earlier this month the High Court called this

decision 'unlawful' and will make a further ruling in May on how the

Council should act on its library Libraries have been around for

centuries, but their future is uncertain. Like everything in the

public sector, if they are feeling the pinch. Across the south-east,

different councils have different plans for the libraries. Kent

county councillors making funding cuts and reducing the library

budget by �4 million. East Sussex is investing money. �12 million

invested in new libraries in the next few years. However, Surrey has

a different process. It has 52 libraries but the county council is

laying off existing staff at 10 of those, one fifth of the total and

run them with unpaid volunteers. Surrey County Council says getting

volunteers would save it �380,000 a year. The Government is keen to get

local people to play a bigger part in helping their community - the

big societies. Surrey's plans play into this. But there is a lot of

local opposition. This library in East Sussex Surrey is one of the

10th. To say that the locals are incensed is exactly what they are.

We have some part-time library staff, as follows volunteers are

concerned with necessary back-up, we contemplate we need between 50

and 70 volunteers. We need them to give the same level of service. It

is just not feasible. It is potty. Plenty of other Surrey residents

also do not like the plans. Taking something that is needed by the

local community, I don't think they should. They should not touch it at

all. If it could work but I would rather have trained people that

repaid to do the job. Id might lead to the libraries being shut down

and going completely. A campaign group in the locality to cancel to

the High Court. In be started this month, the court ruled that the

plans were on life for. -- unlawful. It covered training for people with

special needs and other issues, and there will be another hearing next

month for the court would decide what happens next. The chairman of

the group said it was difficult to see that the training outlined

comes even close to properly addressing these issues. The Lib

Dems on Surrey County Council are also opposed to be changes.

familiarity of seeing the same professional librarian every week

is part of the benefit of a local library. Obviously with many

volunteers and a different person every week, that would be less of a

benefit for this. I think that these plans should be abandoned and

they are completely flawed. They are not wanted by local residents

and I am certainly pressing the administration to abandon these

plans as soon as possible. Is this the big society? Not my idea of the

big society. I think people should genuinely volunteer and not be

forced into these roles. If the county council cannot get

volunteers, does it closed the book on the big society in Serie? --

Surrey? Helen drew reporting. Joining me now is Surrey County

Council Cabinet Member for Community Services Helyn Clack.

Real inspired by the big society? We wanted the ball 52 libraries

open when other counties have to close. -- we want to keep all of

the 52 libraries. They represent 7% of all of the use of libraries, but

the communities want to keep them open, so we're doing this by

getting in volunteers. If you want to save �380,000, why not spread

the burden, a cut of �7,000 each? Some of the libraries are reaching

communities across the county. My local library in Dorking is

quadrupling the amount of people that have joined it and provide

services for lots and lots of families as well as ordinary users.

We need extra staff to cater for increasing numbers. It is not a

question of one size fits all, we need to cater for the larger

libraries, but we need to maintain all of the community libraries or

so. But he made the point that some only represent 70 % of usage, some

as be even 1%, some people need to close these libraries?! We think

this is a brilliant idea, we do have to make local cutbacks, and

Surrey county council is looking at �2 million in the next two years,

but we have consulted the local people and they have said that a

baby deal of the local library, please do not close them, so we

have developed a plan to use local volunteers. You described it as a

brilliant, in the reported was described as potty, flawed as not

wanted, you have an administrative nightmare, more people than staff,

if they need to be managed, and a High Court pointed out that you

need a better training scheme for a best. Do you regret the decision?

No, this was about it technicality that the Cabinet decision was not

properly informed of the work that was being carried out. We have

volunteers at all parts of the society and professional people

working as volunteers and retired people working as volunteers. There

is no reason why they shouldn't be properly trained and supported and

be able to help. Stay with us, Baroness, you do not approve of

volunteers, the items were set out coherently. A librarian is a

professional job and takes three years to qualify, it is not just

about stamping books, it is a range of services. Is this insulting to a

professional librarian? And have to say around the country, the good

libraries already work with foreign tears, but to replace one role with

another is the wrong way to go. -- with volunteers. There is a role

for professional volunteers and reading groups and issues like this,

but the essence of a librarian's job as a professional, scaled the

job and it cannot be learnt overnight. Damian Green, an example

of the big society at last, just a shame it means people losing jobs!

A approve of what Surrey county councillors trying, and it is

depressing to hear a litany of objections about training and that

sort of thing, there will be intelligent, committed to local

people desperate to keep their libraries opened and have a chance

to keep them open. The amount of opposition is depressing. People

often say, what does the big society mean? It means you might

have a local library where you would not have won otherwise

because people are prepared to volunteer and give up their time

and expertise to have their local community. An endorsement from a

Government Minister at there. We couldn't have the Immigration

Minister on without doing an item on the subject and the big story at

the moment is student visas. The South East has a thriving

international education sector which turns over an estimated �270

million a year, with Brighton and Hove alone generating a whopping

�122 million. But new changes to visa applications making it more

difficult for foreign students to stay in the country after finishing

their courses could damage this successful export industry,

according to English UK, the body representing foreign language

schools. It says that some of its members in East Sussex and Kent

have already lost up to 92 per cent of their longer term overseas

students as a result of the government's new rules' How real is

this concern and what's the long term effect likely to be on the

UK's �14 billion international education sector? It is not just

English UK, the panic is spreading to the universities, and the

President of the University of Sussex said it will damage the

international student market and we are sending out an unwelcome

message that we run the risk of losing valuable students and a

valuable export industry to countries like Canada, America and

Australia, or why run that risk? The biggest single loophole of an

immigration system that was widely agreed as chaotic and that of

control over much of the last 10 years was at the student visa

system. It is about two-thirds of the immigration total into this

country and the changes to which people are objecting artist of

students from staying here for up to two years after finishing their

degree to Love Parade job. They have the absolute right to stay for

two years. -- after finishing their degree to look for a job. We have

said you can stay here if you were offered a graduate level job. These

people hanging around living on benefits, in the court we looked at,

of the total of long-term students year, roughly speaking, only one-

third of them work in graduate level jobs. Another third were in

unskilled jobs and one-third were not employed at all, so the vast

majority of them were not going to graduate level jobs. I thought the

bigger agenda was bogus students. If you close that down and you said

in a recent in into view, if that was the big issue, why not if the

universities are saying that everyone talking about this as this

is a real risk, this is potentially the economic future, some of the

best universities in the country we have got, they are frightened, what

is your message to them? They should not be frightened because

genuine students coming to study at Jenny when institutions will not be

threatened at tall, and it would be a shame to scare mongering around

this. -- genuine institutions. The bogus students, we have done a lot

to close down that loophole and that is very important, but all of

my immigration experience is when you close one loophole, another one

emerges and in any case, at a time when unemployment is starting to

come down, at a time when one in five UK graduates is unemployed, to

say that what we want is a system that encourages foreign students

not to come here to study, but to hang around for two years after

their degree just to look for work seems to be ludicrous. The reality

is you have to do things that are economic the damaging because you

have at haggard that was said by David Cameron on immigration

bringing it down from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands and

the easiest target is students. -- you have a target set by David

Cameron. It is not true that every student that come serious economic

the beneficial to the country. We want to attract the brightest and

the best, we want more than our fair share, but we cannot do that

by saying we will let him any body at all. What every level of subject

they are studying, what every level of academic achievement, and if

they really want to come here to work rather than study, people that

come as students, their principal aim must be to study and not to

come here and look for work for years and years which is what

happened in the past. Baroness Jones, I know you're worried about

the University of Sussex and their future, other countries have gone

down this route of removing foreign students from the overall

emigration had relations, then this way there is no reason to

artificially try and bring numbers down. Other countries do not

include them, is this the way forward? Can I say, it is important

that we deal with the question of bogus colleges and bogus students.

When we were in power with Labour, we were equally emphatic about this,

but I think we are sending the wrong tone by what we're doing at

the moment. We are making applicants feel as if they are

potential criminals and we will be using students to the likes of

America, Australia and other places around the world that are much more

attractive to them. It is not just about the economics of them coming

to pay for the cause, paying for the jobs that they create, but

there is a longer term benefit in terms of the contribution to

research and when they go back to their countries, they take a very

strong message about the UK, the ethos, the UK values, and it is a

long-term benefits that we encourage students to come here.

This is all embedded in immigration numbers Siraj a cat separates Itsu,

and Labour consistently failed on the immigration policy and how it

worked. -- embedded in immigration numbers here and it is a separate

issue. I have always thought that we needed control and limitations

on immigration. We took steps in the past and we have supported a

number of things that the Government has done so we are not

soft on immigration. We need to be more welcoming to people to come

here and the truth is, applications are going down from overseas

students and we're losing down in the global battle for Education.

The Thank you. Now, a weekly round- up with our political editor,

Louise Stewart. The aviation Minister has suggested

for the first time that Manston Airport in Kent could have increase

capacity in the south-east. She reiterated her opposition to a

third Rana -- runway at Heathrow. Ken Clarke hailed the success in

backing the bright and decorated reform Europe's human rights court.

The Dean of Canterbury Cathedral has accused the Chancellor of a tax

rate on the nation's heritage. He has warned of the major delays to a

multi-million-pound programme to repair a medieval buildings. And at

Chapeltown winery you can get red wine, white wine and even if a

fruit derived alcoholic beverage from sources outside the EU. The

MEP Nigel Farage raised the issue in the European Parliament after he

was told that Argentinian grades could not be sold as wind in Kent.

It is interesting to think about Manston suddenly being discussed,

is the same move forward, Damian Green? A credible alternative to

Boris Ireland? Yes, with the whole review that the Justice Secretary

would you have aviation in the south-east, it puts Manston in the

mix. -- the aviation secretary. It has the high-speed rail link and if