Arts and Creative Industries: Freelancers and Self-employed Workers

Baroness Bull Excerpts

Thursday 15th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bull (CB)]

My Lords, the creative industries rely more heavily on freelancers than any other sector and that leads to greater precarity compared to the wider UK workforce. I want to highlight how this impacts on two groups: disabled artists and freelancers with parental responsibilities.

The number of working mothers freelancing in the sector increased by 79% between 2008 and 2016, but 2020 saw a 51% fall in female freelancers against a 5% decline for men. Even without Covid, the freelance infrastructure penalises working mothers and parents. Freelance women who experience pregnancy discrimination have fewer protections and less support. They rarely enjoy maternity cover and return to work more quickly after childbirth. Self-employed parents cannot access shared parental leave and pay, as the current system provides maternity allowance only for self-employed mothers, a system described by one woman as

“the worst administrative burden I’ve ever encountered”.

It is not surprising, then, that the sector average gender pay gap for creative freelancers is 37.4%.

I turn to the issue of disabilities. Freelance incomes inevitably fluctuate, but if a disabled artist’s income briefly exceeds the threshold for a given benefit, they risk losing that benefit and destabilising a carefully negotiated support package that is vital to housing, living costs and daily assistance. There is a discriminatory policy gap, in that the unpredictable income that is integral to freelancing is at odds with the stability required to maintain disability benefits. Will the Government consider a grace period for disabled freelancers when income briefly exceeds thresholds, so that benefits are not immediately cut? At the very least, better guidance is needed on how freelance income affects benefits so that intermittent income does not disrupt the entirety of a delicately balanced support package.

Freelancing is often described as offering flexibility and choice, but in many creative careers it is the only option. This reinforces demographic barriers and inequalities, limiting the diversity of the creative workforce and therefore the perspectives that we see on stage and screen. The Government need to do more to address the distinctive needs of this sector. Without it, we are all the poorer.