Arts and Creative Industries: Freelancers and Self-employed Workers

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Thursday 15th June 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[The Earl of Clancarty]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what support they intend to give to freelancers and other self-employed workers in the arts and creative industries; and what assessment they have made of the case for a Commissioner for freelancers.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, this is an interestingly timed debate, not least because of yesterday’s announcement of the Creative Industries Sector Vision, about which I will say something later on. As theatre critic Lyn Gardner said earlier this month in the Stage:

“It is time to make more noise, more usefully, to support freelance creatives”.


We have received some excellent, detailed briefings listing the many and varying concerns of freelancers. As the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society says,

“For a long time, freelancers have faced systemic challenges relating to their work. There are multiple areas where focused government engagement would improve the situation of UK freelancers”.


I will try to go through some of those concerns and I look forward to the contributions from all those who have signed up to this debate. However, I say now that we also need a much longer debate on the whole area of atypical work, which over the last few decades has become less atypical.

Although freelancers make up 15% of the workforce, they represent about 32% of the creative industries, rising to 70% for the visual arts and 70% for theatre, while 80% of musicians are freelancers. I declare an interest as a self-employed artist, while my wife is a journalist who has worked both as staff on newspapers and as a freelancer.

The Arts Council says that:

“Without talented artists, technicians, designers, curators, producers, writers and other practitioners, our buildings, fields, streets, shelves, walls would be sorely lacking in creativity and culture.”


Freelancers, particularly in the arts, have been described as the backbone of the landscape. This is a particularly apt metaphor, with its sense of the strength and necessity of the sector but also its vulnerability. The pandemic very much highlighted that, with many workers forced out of the sector—a terrible waste of skills—because of patchy support that the Government provided at the time. Equity says that 40% of members received no support from the Government’s self-employment income support scheme and 47% of artists missed out, while many musicians did not qualify for support. In the event, I hope that that mistake would not be made a second time.

A major argument in favour of the appointment of a freelance commissioner is the lack of good data about a workforce of a diverse nature. As ALCS says,

“a dedicated commissioner would help to relay expert information and feed into government policies that will impact this valuable proportion of the workforce”.

One of the clichés of the freelance world for the wider public has been the tacit acceptance of the trade-off between freedom and security. Yet, if the trend in all work is towards more flexible working arrangements, something that many workers are demanding, is that trade-off acceptable any more in the modern world? Freelancers have very few of the employment rights and protections that standard employees have. The Incorporated Society of Musicians and BECTU ask that shared parental leave and statutory sick pay are extended to the self-employed. BECTU asks that Section 44 of the Employment Rights Act 1996 be extended to strengthen protection for health and safety. Job sharing, term-time working, career breaks and sabbaticals are other areas that BECTU believes should be looked at. Without effective protection, there is the concern that bullying and harassment will remain unaddressed because of the imbalance of power between freelancer and client. ISM’s second Dignity at Work report found that 88% of self-employed musicians did not report the discrimination they suffered, even when this was sexual harassment, often for fear of losing work.

Another area of concern focuses on tax and benefits. I believe my noble friend Lord Colville will elucidate concerns around IR35. One area that the Government could address immediately is the universal credit minimum income floor, which shuts out many actors and others because of irregularity of payment. I tackled the DWP on this a year ago in a debate on the Social Security (Additional Payments) Bill. I now address it to DCMS, which perhaps might be able to convince the DWP of the importance of these concerns. Since then, new research by Equity and the University of Warwick demonstrates that, of nearly 700 members, 41% of those subject to the MIF had gone without food or utilities and 5% had had to leave their homes. Furthermore, many self-employed people have been excluded from the cost of living payments by the MIF.

As actor Julie Hesmondhalgh said in an interview with the Guardian last month when talking about having once put on plays by novices, including Rufus Norris, in a basement:

“That would not have been possible if we were living under the benefits system that exists today, that absolutely refuses to accept artists as having a ‘proper job’”.


Heidi Ashton of the University of Warwick says:

“In the past, people from working-class backgrounds relied on social security in the early stages of their careers … due to the precarious nature of freelance work. Without this safety net people without other financial means are either leaving the sector entirely or face losing their homes”.


There may never have been a golden age for freelancers, but the experience under UC contrasts significantly with the former, more flexible social security system. I personally remember how useful the original enterprise allowance scheme was. Equity is rightly calling for the abolition of the MIF, but we also need a fundamental, wide-ranging review of the way in which the current benefits system affects the self-employed.

Similar concerns affect all freelancers who may also experience downturns in pay or work opportunities, which may be temporary, such as the dearth of current opportunities for unscripted TV work. If skills are not to go to waste, we need to look more closely at how we can support freelancers under these conditions, rather than simply leaving it only to the marketplace.

Another hugely significant area is payment. Late payment is the bane of freelancers, affecting many working in different areas, from artists and musicians to journalists and others. Payment rates themselves are a huge concern. A recent survey by Industria finds that visual artists who worked on a freelance basis on projects in publicly funded galleries earned on average £2.60 an hour for their work, compared to a minimum wage of £10.42. Although shocking, this is not surprising when one considers the significant cuts to government investment in the arts that have taken place over a long period, inevitably reducing pay levels for freelancers in particular but of course meaning devastating under-financing of the hugely important subsidised arts sector. The past 15 years have seen the Arts Council’s grant in aid shrink in real terms by 47%. Between 2009 and 2019, local authorities have seen cuts to funding of 37%, meaning that the Arts Council has taken on responsibilities that it did not previously have.

I have yet to look at the new sector vision in detail, but we need a vision for the arts as well as the already commercialised end of the creative industries—they are not quite the same thing. It is good if extra money is being found to help save our grass-roots venues, but my first impression is that a large part of the arts—for instance, the visual arts—is left out of the plan. Part of the importance of the arts is that they inform the wider creative industries. Increasingly, there is a growing sense that arts production should be valued for its innate worth over its commercial potential—however welcome that is to the Treasury. That is something that the Minister might ponder while he listens to the London Symphony Orchestra performing Messiaen tonight.

Much of my plea so far has been for greater support of freelancers, but I also want to strike a cautionary note: support is not the same as uncritical promotion. ISM has drawn attention to the worryingly increasing casualisation of some sections of the creative workforce; for example, visiting music teachers, who are moved to zero-hour contracts. The threat to BBC musicians is another case in point. I firmly believe that the BBC Singers should remain as properly salaried employees of the BBC. There are a number of reasons for that, including, as my noble friend Lord Berkeley of Knighton has pointed out, the question of who retains artistic control—the independence of which, I argue, is most secure, as it has proved to be, in a publicly-funded organisation free of commercial or other external interests.

There is no clear channel for dialogue between freelancers and government. The Creative Industries Council contains no representation by unions or societies which advocate for individual artists or creatives. A freelance commissioner would help to bridge that gap.

There is much I have not covered in detail: Brexit’s curtailing of opportunities for musicians and others; the skills shortage; the huge importance of arts education for the next generation of practitioners; the effect of the ongoing closure of art spaces, including music venues, which one hopes this extra money will alleviate; the disappointing closure of the University of Brighton Centre for Contemporary Arts, which feels too much part of the narrative of the degrading of the arts in higher education; and the structure of the workforce itself in terms of class background and gender. I look forward to some of that detail being filled by other speakers.

Arts Council England: Regional Distribution of Funding

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Thursday 15th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for his excellent introduction to this debate and to the noble Lord, Lord McNally, for originally tabling it. I wanted particularly to speak in this debate rather than last week’s debate because it is helpful to have a debate which concentrates, at least in theory, just on the arts rather than them being grouped with the creative industries, although last week’s debate was clearly very helpful for this debate.

I strongly support the Arts Council model of funding for two reasons: first, because public funding of the arts is a benefit to us all for the whole of society; and, secondly, because to enable that there should be a properly independent body that can make decisions about to whom and where funding is to be awarded without government interference. I emphasise “where” because that will inevitably affect “whom”. Yet last Thursday, the day of the arts and creative industries debate in this House, Darren Henley made it very clear in oral evidence to the DCMS Select Committee that the Arts Council was not asked but instructed—he used the word “instruction”, as indeed has Nicholas Serota—by Nadine Dorries to shift a considerable amount of money from London to the regions, in my view breaking the arm’s-length principle and resulting in the controversial cuts we are seeing to certain organisations.

I will ask the Minister again the question that the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Hudnall, asked in last week’s debate but to which she did not receive a reply. Does he think it is appropriate that the Secretary of State should instruct an arm’s-length body? The unhealthy result of such interference and uncertainty about where responsibility lies is the open but extremely understandable lobbying, of not just the Arts Council but Parliament, the Government, the press and the public that we are now seeing from organisations which not only feel hard done by but that the decision-making process is being levered by government, and the two things may be connected.

It may be that the Minister, if he does answer this question, will say simply that the Arts Council is an arm’s-length body, but unfortunately that is not how it is currently being perceived, as I hope the Minister will acknowledge. This needs to be properly and constructively addressed by all the concerned parties. I make these points irrespective of the particular decisions that the Arts Council has made, although all of us, perhaps more than usual, will have our personal views on these decisions, and I will come to mine in a moment. Meanwhile, it is worth pointing out that we have a new Secretary of State and the instruction was made by a previous one. However, there should never have been such an instruction if the Arts Council is to remain an arm’s-length body.

We should not forget that these concerns are taking place against the backdrop of long-term cuts to the arts, the necessary help given in response to Covid notwithstanding. In the last 15 years, the Arts Council’s grant in aid has decreased in real terms by 47%. Through Brexit, we have lost the funding from Europe, and central government grants were cut by 37% in real terms between 2009-10 and 2019-20. Some councils do not now spend anything on the arts at all. It has been reported that some councils are on the verge of declaring bankruptcy. Now, of course, we have the added stress of energy costs and inflation.

Unfortunately, the arts are going to be a long way down the list of priorities for many councils, despite local authorities being vital to many of our arts organisations, including museums and regional theatres, which are particularly concerned about their day-to-day running costs. The noble Lord, Lord Bassam, pointed out in a previous debate the necessary expenditure of specialist lighting for museums and galleries—one instance of something that cannot be got round. Irrespective of where you stand on austerity, these long-term cuts need to be reversed. In the debate last week, the noble Lord, Lord Howarth of Newport, made this pertinent observation:

“Fiscal austerity for the arts is not needed to salvage our economy. The DCMS budget for the arts and culture is indiscernible in the national accounts.”—[Official Report, 8/12/22; col. 280.]


I have argued for a long time that we can do much more to support artists across the whole country, but that should be done through an equitable funding model based on increases in funding, not through redistribution of the kind that the former Secretary of State insisted upon, which is surely a coarsening of the envelope of funding available to the Arts Council. This has led inevitably to the “invidious choices”—the Arts Council’s own term—that it has felt it has had to make. If £43.5 million is being made available to the regions—which is very welcome—why are these cuts still being insisted upon?

There is another significant consideration: the growing concern that the Arts Council, in the absence of other funding, is trying to take on too wide a range of projects. In particular, there is concern that through the Let’s Create strategy, it is losing its focus on what should be its core project—the funding of artists and arts production by professional artists—and shifting that focus instead to amateur community projects, particularly in areas of the country where cultural engagement is low, as the Independent Society of Musicians has pointed out. There is absolutely a place for such projects, and they should be funded, but the funding of professional artists and arts organisations should not be sacrificed in their favour. It is notable that the cuts over which there is so much current concern are aimed at organisations involving or directly impacting on professional artists and their co-workers.

Much of the focus on these cuts has been, quite rightly, on classical music and opera, but theatre and the visual arts have also been impacted. Here, there are also potential knock-on effects in terms of the production of new art. The Hampstead and Gate Theatres in London and the Watermill Theatre in Newbury, which have all had their funding cut entirely, all support new writing. Hampstead Theatre has said that it will not now be able to support its new writers programme, so I ask the Minister whether new new writers programmes are intended to be set up elsewhere in the country. If so, how will they be supported in the longer term? The danger is that removing funding from these flagship theatres, as the Writers’ Guild and playwrights themselves point out, will simply lead to more risk-averse programming, less commissioning and less new writing everywhere.

There are cuts to significant London gallery spaces. The wonderful Camden Art Centre—I am looking forward to seeing the Forrest Bess exhibition there—and the Serpentine Galleries are nationally important spaces which put on international work by visual artists. If these spaces are diminished, the whole country will be diminished in terms of the visual arts.

There is an ecology of mutual support between London and the regions, the great danger then being that if you hurt the arts in London, you will also hurt artists and audiences for the arts in the regions. Cuts in London will have a nationwide impact, and this will be true in the business sense as well. As the Heart of London Business Alliance said in a letter to the Financial Times last month:

“Central London’s dynamic arts sector and rich culture and experiences make the West End such a unique and special place, bringing in millions of tourists every year. Many of these visitors go on to visit other parts of the UK contributing £641mn to local economies in 2019. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that short-changing London is going to make us all culturally and financially poorer while making the UK a less attractive destination for visitors.”


London is not just the place that has historically received the most money for the arts. It is also the country’s centre of business and the major centre of higher education for the arts; and the galleries, theatres and concert halls there belong to the country as much as to London. For things to change radically from the present asymmetry, which I do not dispute, we need the cuts to grants for local authorities to be dramatically reversed. But local government across the country should also have strong revenue-raising powers, as regional government has in Germany, where there is a much greater spread of arts geographically.

There are brilliant artists, arts organisations and events across the whole of this country, but even in the digital age, the natural tendency remains for artists to gravitate to the big, powerful cities; artists and arts-producing organisations should be funded wherever they are. The former Secretary of State’s artificial arts engineering is not in the long run going to change this tendency, even as it frustrates the arts. The way forward is rather to empower our English regions and regional cities politically and financially to allow artists to thrive within them, and to be able to do so in the longer term.

Music Education

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Fleet, for the opportunity to speak in this debate. I welcome the Minister back to the arts brief and trust that the Department for Education will take careful note of everything said in this debate. I will talk about the plan but, as we have the Arts Minister in front of us, will also touch on arts funding. Indeed, both these concerns are closely related in terms of an ecology—as the noble Lords, Lord Black and Lord Berkeley, have talked about—and the value that we as a country ascribe to the arts, including music. My background is as a visual artist.

It is good that the plan has been a joint presentation between DCMS and the DfE. Some of us have argued for a long time that there should be greater communication between the two departments—long may that continue.

The plan has been welcomed on all sides. That is no mean feat. I congratulate the noble Baroness and her team on the expert panel on the hard work they have put in and on her comprehensive introduction. Much in the plan is admirable, such as the re-emphasis on school provision, including in early years, as has been mentioned, being clear what a music education should contain and the promotion of inclusivity, including children with special educational needs and disabilities. I also welcome what the noble Baroness said about teacher training in her speech.

Nevertheless, there are questions about how the stated goals can be delivered and the plan built on, including what it leaves out. I am grateful for the briefings we have received, but one in particular immediately caught my eye: that from the City of London concerning the views of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. I was struck that, while supportive of the plan, it said:

“The School’s view is that it … has too great a focus on in-school provision, despite no further resource being offered to develop this provision.”


In a way, this is not far off the point of the Independent Society of Musicians that funding is a key concern, although the ISM welcomes, as I do, the emphasis on schools. My worry is that, if there is a lack of commitment to further funding, we will fall somewhere in between the focus on music hubs and the focus on schools. The fact that this plan is non-statutory will exacerbate this. What are the Government’s long-term plans for funding this plan, both in schools and hubs?

I was against music hubs when they started, but it would now certainly be a shame if creative partnerships were to be sacrificed and jobs lost. However, as things stand, schools are not required to engage with hubs. What happens with academies? For maintained schools, local authorities are a key partner. Hubs may vary considerably in size and composition, something which formal competition between hubs will no doubt point up. Music hubs were started to address the postcode lottery, but so far this has been only partially successful. In the end, the prime focus must be back on schools if, to adapt Bob and Roberta Smith’s dictum, all schools are to be music schools. The plan acknowledges this.

We need to explode once and for all the myth that the EBacc has had no significant effect on the arts. The Government are very much in the minority in their belief in this. For instance, a 2017 University of Sussex study found that almost 60% of the schools surveyed highlighted the EBacc as having a negative effect on the provision, while just 3% thought the opposite. The Education Policy Institute identified the EBacc and Progress 8 measures as central to the downturn in the number of entries to arts subjects at key stage 4 between 2007 and 2016. In its briefing, the ISM refers to the music critic Richard Morrison’s piece in the Times on the plan, in which he says these measures have

“skewed the curriculum disastrously against music.”

The EBacc is a major obstacle not only to the delivery of this plan but to the delivery of all arts in schools. It is an obstacle that should be removed, though the plan does not address it.

A further problem is oversight. This year, the Fabian Society and the Musicians’ Union, in their joint report following and inspired by the plan, suggest setting up a national music service, with a national co-ordinating body. This is itself inspired by the Welsh national plan for music education and would be stronger than a board. A strong emphasis would be on music teachers, with good pay and conditions being crucial to delivery. Another significant aspect for which the service would be responsible is data gathering from music hubs, which is fragmentary and flawed currently. The arts premium should also be reintroduced. I support such initiatives, which would clearly aid delivery of the plan.

I turn to the question of arts funding more generally. Yesterday, I attended a remarkable presentation by Ireland’s Minister for the Arts, Catherine Martin, at the Performers’ Alliance All-Party Group meeting. She told us about her basic income for artists pilot scheme, which will last three years and cost €25 million. This scheme would cover hundreds of artists working in a variety of media, including music, the visual arts and literature, but what is particularly admirable is that it would not be assessed on outcomes other than how much it is deemed to have helped the artist concerned. I hope Ireland takes this further. The UK can learn something from this approach, which is about believing in the artist for the work they do and believing in the value of the arts.

There is a contrast here with what has happened to the Arts Council settlement in the last couple of weeks. The regions should receive more funding from the settlement, but I for one do not believe in levelling up if it means robbing Peter to pay Paul. As noble Lords have already mentioned, that is happening in London and elsewhere. The term “levelling up” says nothing about the size of the pot, which is certainly diminishing for artists and arts organisations in favour of community and other projects. There has been a lot of concern expressed in the press about these cuts, and with justification.

Instead, as a strategy for growth across the country and an incredibly cheap one, we should be investing more money in the arts, not less. I say this in the belief that, as others have pointed out, austerity is a political choice, not an economic necessity. The Government have not really grasped that the arts and creative industries are, or should be considered, a crucial part of the future economy of this country. That same argument can and should be applied to the arts in schools, including music, because it is from schools that the talent pipeline starts and the future emerges.

Arts: Energy Cost Support

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2022 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[The Earl of Clancarty]

To ask His Majesty’s Government, further to the rising cost of energy, what support they will provide for arts venues, museums, libraries and other community spaces.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Kamall) (Con)]

My department, the DCMS, has engaged with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to ensure that the energy bill relief scheme is supporting businesses and other non-domestic customers, such as arts venues, museums, libraries and other community spaces. The support provides a discount on gas and electricity unit prices applied to energy usage initially between 1 October this year and 31 March next year. DCMS continues to liaise with all the different sectors under our portfolio to support BEIS’s three-month review of the scheme to determine what support might be needed.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, the arts and cultural sector emerged late out of Covid and some spaces are still recovering. In terms of current problems, to take the example of theatres, threefold and more increases in energy bills are being reported, even allowing for government support. Apart from the clear concern of arts and community spaces about getting through the winter, what reassurance can the Minister give that they will not fall off a cliff edge at the end of March, bearing in mind that energy cost for many spaces is not all about heating but includes other significant year-round usage?

[Lord Kamall (Con)]

The Government fully realise that after March some organisations may need assistance. One of the reasons that we have a three-month review, which started in October, is to see how effective the scheme is and to look out for unintended consequences and perverse incentives.. After the review, we want to make sure that we target those organisations that really need help after March—some of the more vulnerable ones that we may not have picked up initially—and know how best to help them.

National Heritage Act 1983

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2022 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, for his comprehensive introduction to this debate. I am very much in favour of looking at this legislation, but with certain caveats. I wonder whether a more top-down approach is required, as has been suggested and is happening in other European countries.

It is clear to me that it is absolutely right that certain artefacts should be returned to their country of origin, or at least something close to it, and the Horniman Museum, for one, has made the correct decision with regard to the Benin bronzes in its collection, but it is important that if legislation is to be changed, those changes should be restricted to the question of restitution only. We really have to make that point.

In this respect, I am mindful of the concerns expressed by Robert Hewison in the Apollo piece referred to in the excellent Library note we have on this debate. It would be hugely worrying if legislative changes made deaccessioning in the more general sense easier, for all the many reasons that deaccessioning is such a fraught area. It is so much influenced by personal whim, faddishness, misguided ideas about tidying up a collection and, of course, funding concerns. Restitution is a separate issue, and that needs to be clearly understood. It would thus be helpful if the Minister could outline where we currently stand legislation-wise with regard to these concerns. As has been mentioned, it is about not just the National Heritage Act but the British Museum Act 1963 and the Charities Act 2022 as well. That would be helpful.

When we raise these concerns in the House, we are repeatedly told by the Government that it is up to individual museums to make decisions about their collections even if, as in the cases of the BM and the V&A, their hands are very much tied. We have reached the stage, in the words of Tristram Hunt, of there being a ping-pong between central government and museums that really needs to stop.

This is also a government stance in stark contrast to that of other countries, including Germany and France. President Macron has made it very much a personal mission to return ownership of many African artefacts, notably from the Kingdom of Dahomey to the country of Benin—not the same Benin as of the Benin bronzes, which come from an area in present-day Nigeria. This top-down approach, which in effect is a national policy, allows such restitution to be seen very much as an opportunity for dialogue and co-operation between countries. In this case, French money is being put into the building of a museum, meaning that the work is returned to a safe environment, there is training of curators and much more besides. To be fair, of course we have our own significant museum-run programmes, and I am very grateful to the British Museum for furnishing me with details on those, which include work in Benin City on the site of the royal palace we destroyed in 1897.

None of this of course makes up for the original looting of such objects or indeed the accompanying destruction, sometimes of a whole nation and culture, something which Russia is now attempting in Ukraine. It does, however, acknowledge the reality of a shared history for those artefacts, and that has huge importance in itself. France is proving that an exchange in ownership is no bar to co-operation. I believe that our Government should spell this out as an opportunity for co-operation rather than continuing contestation, which is currently the Government’s default mode in too many areas. I believe that the word “contested” should become an obsolete term. It is certainly clear from the latest YouGov poll on the Parthenon sculptures that public opinion has moved way ahead of the Government on that issue, with 59% in favour of return and only 18% against. The ball is very much in the Government’s court.

Repatriation of Cultural Objects

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

Again, my noble friend makes an important point. The reason that we have a legal bar on deaccessioning is to protect our national collection so that people—both those from the UK and the many visitors from around the world who come to our excellent museums—are able to see items from across human civilisation and see them in the great sweep of that wide context. Often, the debate about where things are physically located obstructs the more important purpose of museums, which is to continue to educate and inform people about items; that matters wherever they are. In the case of the Horniman Museum, the items that it has transferred legal title of will remain at the Horniman Museum for the foreseeable future.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, public opinion has changed considerably on this issue in the past few years. With regard to the national museums, should the Government not now consider it a duty to change the appropriate legislation—the British Museum Act and the National Heritage Act—to allow the British Museum in particular to come to a decision on these matters? Otherwise, its hands will remain tied, and that is surely unacceptable.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, I am mindful that I am as old as the National Heritage Act so I am always happy to discuss, as I do, with people in the sector their views on it. I do not think there is a case for further changes to the law. There are already exceptions to do with the spoliation of items acquired during the Third Reich and to deal with human remains that are less than 1,000 years old. I think the position that we have is the right one at the moment but I am always happy to hear representations.

Musicians and Creative Professionals: Working in the European Union

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2022 Grand Committee

Asked by

[The Earl of Clancarty]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to improve the ability of musicians and other creative professionals from the United Kingdom to work and tour in the European Union.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful for this opportunity to raise the concerns of creative professionals on touring and working in Europe. I thank the Government for extending this debate to an hour and a half. I am grateful for the briefings from the Incorporated Society of Musicians, UK Music, Carry on Touring, LIVE, the Association of British Orchestras, T&S Immigration Services, the Contemporary Visual Arts Network and the House of Lords Library. I am pleased that we will have contributions to this debate from across the Committee.

In practical terms, as the Incorporated Society of Musicians and others have been at pains to point out, this is, above all, about trade. As such, it is something we should all be concerned with. In pre-pandemic 2019, music alone was worth £5.8 billion, almost five times as much as the fishing industry at £1.4 billion—which is also, one has to say, now sadly suffering the effects of Brexit. Live music is a key aspect of music, making bands’ reputations abroad and stimulating sales. According to the Featured Artists Coalition, in 2019 UK acts played four times as many gigs in the EU as in the US.

It is great to have live music and the arts more generally back and largely up and running on our own shores, with Glastonbury, the Stones, Adele, the Proms this month and much more to look forward to. While I suspect that most of the focus today will be on music, concerns about working in Europe are being felt across the creative industries. I will touch on the visual arts, which is my own background. I ask therefore that the Minister looks carefully at the new Arts Council-funded report, International Connections, produced by a-n and the Contemporary Visual Arts Network, which makes some important recommendations. I ask him to look carefully as well at the forthcoming All-Party Parliamentary Group on Music report, Let the Music Move, addressing similar concerns for the music industry. It would be excellent if the Minister could attend its launch in Parliament, on 19 July.

The trade and co-operation agreement was a no-deal for services, including the arts and creative industries. It has been imperative from the outset that the Government take mitigating action to drastically improve the situation for the arts in the face of this no deal, but the reality is that 18 months have passed and little of substance has been achieved.

Moreover, the Government have tried to paint a picture that is far better than reality. LIVE says it remains

“deeply concerned about the impact of Brexit on the UK’s live music industry.”

We are already now hearing the practical problems musicians are having, such as that of the band White Lies, which in April had to cancel a booking in Paris because its equipment was still waiting to clear customs in the UK. The Government must stop harking back to whatever they say was offered to the EU; that is history. Through whatever mechanisms are available, and I know that other noble Lords will talk about that in more detail, the UK needs to reapproach the EU to effect those changes that are urgently required. As TCA negotiator, the noble Lord, Lord Frost, himself has admitted that the Government have been too purist in their approach. We need a rethink and a reset. It is, after all, the future of our performing arts and more that is at stake.

Cabotage remains one of the most significant problems. The industry is grateful for the dual registration fix, but it is only a partial fix and does not address operation under an own account. Furthermore, it shifts this specialist haulage industry to Europe, which, as UK Music points out, will in the longer term cost this country business and jobs.

Most immediately, there remains a massive problem for those unable to use the dual registration services. The Association of British Orchestras says the situation is disastrous for orchestras, many of which run their own purpose-built vehicles. To give one example, the truck owned by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, costing £250,000, purchased partly through an Arts Council grant, will be a total waste of money if we do not negotiate a cabotage exemption with the EU. This is urgent. The ABO proposed that a solution for own-account operators might be presented at a forthcoming UK-EU Specialised Committee on Road Transport meeting. Will the Government act?

It is urgent too that we negotiate a visa waiver agreement, which a cabotage agreement could also be part of. Visa and work permit regulations within Europe are complicated. We have not agreed a single bilateral agreement with the EU, although two countries, Spain and Greece, have relaxed their visa rules for the UK, which I understand merely brings the UK in line with US acts who have toured those countries visa-free for decades.

ISM last year proposed a bespoke visa waiver agreement, which was shown to government officials. Legal advice confirmed that such a proposal was legally workable without being incompatible with the UK’s ability to take back control of its borders; none of this was questioned by the Government. But the Government, for reasons known only to themselves, have not followed up this constructive proposal, which is backed across the board by the music industry. Again, urgent action is required.

The problems presented by carnets and CITES are likewise problems of both cost and red tape. There are two groups who will be most affected here: on the one hand, orchestras, for which costs may spiral; on the other, those starting out, including bands and individual musicians, who will not have the resources of artists such as Elton John and Ed Sheeran to carry these extra significant burdens. Again, we have to negotiate with the EU a cultural exemption to the cost of ATA carnets and CITES as well. On the question of CITES, I ask the Minister what news he has over whether St Pancras will become a CITES designated point of exit. Eurostar is a hugely important route. Again, a sense of urgency is required.

ISM has also drawn my attention to a couple of recent developments around CITES that will emerge at CITES COP 19, which I hope the Minister is also aware of. ISM supports the new proposals from the US music industry to ease and provide exemptions from CITES permits. Will the Government support those proposals? Will the Government oppose the proposals from Brazil for a new designation of Pernambuco, the wood used in making bows, which, while well-intentioned, would significantly and detrimentally interfere in the legal trade in bows? This is important.

In the debate on dual registration in Grand Committee on 13 June, the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, rightly raised concerns about merchandise, the importance of which can be too easily underestimated. UK Music notes that the band Squid cancelled dates in Spain because of the costs both of carnets and of the movement of merchandise between the UK and the EU. Another band has stated that such costs, including the requirement to VAT register, meant that it missed out on £2,500-worth of merchandise on its last tour of France. These are significant losses. Will the Minister look at what is yet another make-or-break worry for musicians?

I will mention briefly traffic in the other direction. A concern that Steve Richard of T&S Immigration Services raises is that of the mishandling of incoming bands by UK border staff, including, for example, them being given wrong information about passport stamps and being sent through e-gates, making the tour technically illegal. These are common occurrences. There are now concerns about adequate staffing levels, but the better training of UK border and other airport staff to deal with musicians and crew is required.

The concerns of visual artists exhibiting work in Europe post Brexit has, up to now, been relatively overlooked, yet there exists the same confusion and paucity of information as afflicts others in the creative industries. Shipping and other costs, red tape and the sheer complexities now involved have already this year been responsible for artists cancelling their participation in exhibitions in Europe, as I heard this week at a Zoom event organised by Arts Infopoint. International Connections recommends better representation for the visual arts, including on the TCA domestic advisory group, of which LIVE and UK Music are already members. The report also recommends the appointment of a freelance commissioner, which would allow further representation for arts and creative workers.

I have not by any means covered all the many concerns that the music sector is raising, let alone those of other creative industries. But perhaps the most disturbing is the extent to which the pipeline of talent will be affected by the curtailment not just of opportunities for young artists touring but opportunities for jobs, such as for opera singers, dancers and many others who are now shut out of work in Europe because they do not possess an EU passport.

As the pandemic, we hope, recedes, we have reached a point at which we are taking greater stock of the effects of Brexit. Nevertheless, the good sense of what the industry is now asking for speaks for itself. What is needed now from the Government is a much greater urgency in addressing these concerns and ultimately finding solutions.

Loneliness Strategy

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

Family is vital, not just in this area but across so many areas of social policy and the Government’s work. We know that peoples’ family situations can have an impact on their experience of loneliness. We are looking to improve the evidence base to understand the challenges that people face through loneliness, including the impact of their family situation. We have brought together experts and academics in the tackling loneliness evidence group to identify what areas we need to look into further, and what research should be done, to see how we can address the remaining evidence gaps.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, the Government’s idea of a socially connected society is a good one, but do they recognise enough, or recognise at all, the key role that poverty plays in disconnecting society? Has the Minister seen the recent study by UCL and the University of Manchester which found that older people in the poorest sector of the population in England were more than twice as likely to feel isolated as those in the richest, and that this was true both during and before the first lockdown?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The noble Lord makes an important point which links to the Government’s wider work in levelling up to ensure that people of all backgrounds, across the country, have access to the services and the opportunities that they need. The levelling-up White Paper set out clear ambitions to improve peoples’ well-being, their pride in place and sense of community, and to create opportunities across the country. We know that connected communities provide people with opportunities to develop strong social relationships, and this is an important point. We will continue to explore opportunities to embed loneliness in the Government’s thinking on our important work on levelling up.

Cultural Objects (Protection from Seizure) Bill

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 18th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Strathcarron, on his maiden speech, and I hope that we will hear more contributions in this particular area of his expertise. The visual arts are of course a feature, in various ways, in creativity and commerce, and together they are a sometimes underrated but hugely important part of our creative industries.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey of Didcot, for introducing this debate and taking the Bill forward. I am sure that all of us here are perhaps planning to visit or will have been—perhaps not recently enough—to exhibitions containing significant work on loan from other countries. It is great that we can have exhibitions again, although I for one will certainly be wearing a mask to visit, until cases are right down.

I am a great believer in the worth of cultural exchange in the wider sense, and engaging with exhibitions is an important aspect of that: it is a way of connecting with other cultures and periods through objects, including artworks, that we would not otherwise have the chance to see in this country. In addition to the list of the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, this could also include British art that has been dispersed around the world but brought back for exhibition. It is worth bearing in mind that this will also include contemporary art, which can now be very valuable, with there perhaps being a potential for the seizure of that as much as older recognised treasures. The last exhibition that I visited was the brilliant Hokusai exhibition at the British Museum—“Hokusai: the Great Picture Book of Everything”. All of the original drawings have been purchased by the BM, which is one way to solve the problem.

This is clearly an excellent Bill, designed to instil confidence and trust in lenders and facilitate exhibitions, supported on all sides of the House during what was a very good Second Reading debate last year, in the Commons. I have a couple of questions for the Minister. The first is very basic, and there may be a straightforward answer to it. It is simply this: why does there have to be a fixed period of time in the first place in which seizure cannot take place? Once a museum has been approved, following the high standard of checks that it will need to make around provenance and so on, why does there have to be a cut-off point and therefore a necessity for this Bill? Of course, the Bill will very helpfully extend that original one-year time period further, if required, but perhaps the Minister can explain that. I ask this question not just as a matter of clarification but because we now live in very uncertain times indeed—more uncertain perhaps than when the Bill had its Commons Second Reading, in September. There is now arguably the increasing potential for cultural objects not to be returned for a long period, depending on where they might be lent from.

My second question relates to the approval of museums and galleries to participate in the scheme. I counted 39 public museums and galleries on the approved list published on the Arts Council site, as the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, said. This is actually one more than the government website, which lists only one of the two Scottish museums, giving the Hunterian but not the National Galleries of Scotland, which are both on the Arts Council site. It has been 15 years since the original legislation, and 39 feels still quite a smallish number, although many of our major museums are on that list. However, they are mostly from England rather than the devolved nations—Wales and Northern Ireland do not have any approved museums at all, which seems strange. Is this because some museums have yet to apply because they have not yet felt the need to do so or are even unaware of the scheme, or have some applications actually been turned down? It would be interesting to know what the department’s view on that is. Perhaps the Minister can clarify its expectations about extending the list, if that is a concern.

A similar argument applies for Wales and Northern Ireland for inclusion in this extended scheme. Has anything changed with regard to Wales and Northern Ireland since Report, when they were excluded from the Bill? It would be helpful to know whether there has been a development on that front. It seems a shame that this legislation could not apply equally across the whole of the UK, even without as yet approved museums.

A museum’s desire to exhibit art and artefacts from other countries presupposes their existence, and it is distressing when we hear about the destruction of cultural property. The Minister will of course be aware of UNESCO’s huge concern about the threat to Ukraine’s artistic and cultural heritage, and we know that art has already been destroyed and cultural sites targeted, on top of the appalling loss of life that we have seen. I thank the Government for their written reply to my question on this last week; in it, the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, outlined some of the action that the DCMS has been taking with regard to this. It would be helpful if the Minister could say a few words about this.

I wish the Bill success and again congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, on steering it through this House.

Young Audiences Content Fund: Replacement

Earl of Clancarty Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, we are looking at that wider context. The Government have committed to ensuring that viewers and listeners benefit from a modern system of public service broadcasting that remains relevant and which continues to meet the needs of audiences, now and in the future. That is why we announced the strategic review of public service broadcasting so that we can do that. The evaluation of this fund will feed into that wider strategic review so that we can see the best way of delivering what everyone wants.

[The Earl of Clancarty (CB)]

My Lords, the whole point of a pilot is to test the water and find out what works and what does not. If it does not work, scrap it, but if it does work then keep and develop it. This scheme was successful, as the Government themselves admit, with the programmes funded winning awards and being sold around the world. To simply say that there is to be an evaluation while closing the scheme does not seem like a good enough answer.

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

My Lords, the funds were set up using unallocated funding from the 2010 licence fee settlement to pilot contestable funding in priority areas of public service broadcasting provision. Although this and the equivalent fund for listeners performed well, any further investment of taxpayers’ funding will need to be assessed against the evaluation of the funds and future public service broadcasting needs, informed by our wider strategic review. DCMS and the fund administrators will conduct a full evaluation of the pilot against its fund criteria, including quality, innovation, additionality, provision for every part of the UK, diversity, the boost to new voices and plurality, and the reach of audience.