Councillor Reuben Thompstone congratulates the committee he chairs for ensuring “full and frank participation” in the libraries survey (‘Ensuring full and frank participation’, Your Views, January 8), but neglects to say that the survey was designed to make people choose one of three bad ways to destroy the library service and that he and his Tory colleagues will ignore the results of any consultation that do not agree with their predetermined choice, as was seen at the meeting of this committee on January 12.

The only consultations these Tory councillors listen to are those on which they spend millions of our pounds to tell them how to privatise our services, to our detriment. And how dishonest to cite the £8,000 paid by Friern Barnet Community Library (FBCL) to a consultant without saying that it was to help FBCL win grants of more than £27,000.

The statistics on Denmark’s open libraries that Cllr Thompstone quotes are available in an article published online. It must have taken him all of two minutes to find. Barnet is not Denmark. Did the councillor or his colleagues do any research to provide a proper comparison? How many public libraries does Denmark have per capita? How many as small as 540 sq ft? How many schools have libraries? Do some real work, councillor, and then tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It’ll make a change.

Barbara Jacobson

Barnet Alliance for Public Services