Musicians and Creative Professionals: Working in the European Union

Lord Jones of Cheltenham Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Jones of Cheltenham (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for securing this important debate on this slow news day. My brother is a rock musician who has worked with some of the industry’s finest, including Joe Brown, Michael Schenker, and the great Russ Ballard and Bob Henrit, who were in Adam Faith’s Roulettes in the 1960s, before moving on to Unit 4+2, Argent and, in Bob’s case, The Kinks.

I asked Russell, one of our most successful songwriters, for his views on the new challenges of touring Europe. He said this:

“I worked extensively around Europe in the sixties and suffered all the bureaucracy of border controls. Carnets were the bane of our lives. These were lists of instruments in the truck, guitars, keyboards, drums, amplifiers and mixers which often had to be unloaded, taken out of their cases and checked against the carnet, to make sure these long-haired, unwashed, hooligan types were not smuggling alcohol, cigarettes or some other substance that the border officer could give in evidence for his promotion.


Obviously, every musician wasn’t unwashed or a hooligan, and every border guard wasn’t always looking for promotion. However, being stopped at borders was a pain. Unloading a lorry, sometimes in the snow, was time-consuming. When, in the early seventies, we became part of the EU, it was like discovering a new planet. It looked the same, with the same officials at the borders, but it was a new, wonderful experience, enabling us to get to gigs on time. We thought we’d died and gone to heaven.


Most MPs are too young to know what it was like back then and how things improved when we joined the European Union. I am planning a tour to Germany in October—but complying with the new regulations reminds me of the bad old days. It is manageable for people like me, but for performers on the margin of financial viability, Europe is now off limits.”


They are the words of Russ Ballard.

Failure to take concrete action will cede a live music market where UK artists have historically been dominant. UK Music’s latest report, This Is Music, showed that 2020 was very difficult for the music sector, and it is hardly any better now.

Before the pandemic, music was a driver of growth across the UK, being worth £5.8 billion in gross value added and employing almost 200,000 people. The GVA of the sector grew by 11% in 2019, employment grew by 3% and the value of exports by 9%, far above the economy as a whole. EU member states are a vital market for the UK’s £2.3 billion-worth of music exports, particularly live music, and the European Commission admitted in 2019 that UK acts dominate the European panorama.

Another problem, as we have heard, is merchandise. Many acts are finding that they are falling foul of customs rules when they attempt to sell merchandise in the EU alongside their live tours. Additional duties and the requirement to VAT register can obliterate margins for the sale of merchandise. Tankus the Henge has said that the additional costs meant it missed out on £2,500-worth of merchandise sales on its last tour of France. A range of artists, including The Anchoress, have stated that postage costs for small businesses like theirs looking to make individual item sales to EU-based customers have spiralled, often making individual sales uneconomic and hitting another revenue stream for emerging artists.

A carnet waiver agreement between the UK and the EU is absolutely vital. Can the Minister give us any hope on this? Let us not forget that this filipendulous Prime Minister—if he still is Prime Minister—promised to work flat out to resolve these issues, but nothing has improved. It was the usual bluster. The Government must sort out this European touring catastrophe so that our musicians can regain the ability to learn from musicians there, who can also learn from musicians here, enhancing all our lives.