Launch of Publisher’s Association Report “Turning the Page”

As a Co-Chair of the All Party Parliament Group (APPG) on Publishing, I was delighted to attend the launch of the ‘Turning the Page’ report by the Publishers Association, who also act as Secretariat to the APPG. The event was held at the House of Lords on 28 April 2025.

In the foreword to the report Baroness Gail Rebuck DBE and I raised the crisis in children and young people’s rates of reading for enjoyment. I have previously raised this in Parliament, at the pre-recess adjournment speech in December 2024 to raise these concerns  the National Literacy Trust’s evaluation on its Libraries for Primaries campaign in 2024. 

Baroness Rebuck, Perminder Mann and Rob Biddulph spoke at the launch and are pictured with Dan Conway CEO at the Publishers Association. 

I was pleased to see in the “Turning the Page” report that the Libraries for Primaries campaign will have raised nearly £13 million, including book discounts, established 1500 libraries or designated library spaces, trained approximately 3000 teachers and support staff and distributed 628,000 books in primary schools. One of the key recommendations from the report is for the Government to partner with the Libraries for Primaries campaign to deliver universal primary school library provision. 

Other recommendations include:  aiming to create a culture of reading and increasing engagement in reading; the Department of Education to ensure that the national curriculum prioritises reading for enjoyment as well as reading skill development and for the Government to convene key stakeholders to discuss how to respond to the crisis in children’s reading rates. We also said goodbye to Perminder Mann as Chair of the Publishers Association and to say thank you for her work and good wishes for her new post. 

You can find the report here: https://www.publishers.org.uk