Live Music Bill [HL]

Baroness Randerson Excerpts

Friday 4th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson]

My Lords, I must begin by thanking your Lordships for the warmth of the welcome that I have received here. I wish in particular to thank my sponsors, the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley and Lady Finlay of Llandaff, both of whom have provided me with valuable advice. I also thank the staff of this House, who have been unfailingly helpful and have, quite literally, steered me in the right direction on many occasions—indeed, I think that my fitness has improved since I came here because of my needless laps of the Building and fruitless climbing of the wrong stairs.

I speak in this debate with a mixture of emotions: pride, humility and considerable trepidation. I am one of a growing number of Members of your Lordships' House who have been Members of the devolved Assemblies and Parliaments. In my case, I remain a Member of the National Assembly for Wales, but only for the next four weeks.

It has been a great honour to represent my constituency of Cardiff Central for the past 12 years. Cardiff is a beautiful city with a strong and distinctive culture. Of course, there have been, and are, several Members of your Lordships’ House from Cardiff. However, I believe that I am the first Liberal or Liberal Democrat Peer from Cardiff since DA Thomas, who was briefly MP for Cardiff in 1910 and became Baron—later Viscount—Rhondda in 1916. He survived the sinking of the “Lusitania”, so I hope that I have survival skills here.

I am, of course, a member of a political party, the Liberal Democrats, which until recently was in opposition for many years. I believe that it was my noble friend Lord Ashdown who once said about those years in opposition, “The first 60 years are the worst”. However, we have in the mean time been part of coalition Governments in Scotland and Wales. Indeed, I was honoured to be the Welsh Minister for Culture from 2000 to 2003, and it is that experience that I shall draw on in today’s debate.

As an historian by training, I am more than a little intimidated by the history and traditions of your Lordships' House. In contrast, in the Welsh Assembly, we have literally been creating our own history during the past 12 years. Speaking on the day when the votes on the referendum on further powers for that Assembly are being counted, I hope that there will be the opportunity to create even more tradition there.

Noble Lords will be pleased to hear that one of the disciplines that I learnt in the Welsh Assembly was that of brevity, so I shall proceed rapidly to the topic of this debate—I thank my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones for bringing forward the Bill today.

I come from what is popularly known as the land of song. However, the Licensing Act 2003 has made it considerably more difficult for that for that song to be heard by an audience. As Minister, I introduced a culture strategy, Creative Future, which emphasised the importance of music in the cohesion of communities and for our tourist industry and economy in general. We planned to increase opportunities for professional musicians, and to reinvigorate amateur and semi-professional community music organisations such as choirs and brass bands. We planned to strengthen the infrastructure of small venues for the performance of all types of music. However, the Licensing Act 2003 proved a hindrance to those ambitions.

Your Lordships will be well aware of the reputation of Welsh National Opera and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. What your Lordships might not be aware of is that those renowned organisations also tour extensively in Wales, in small groups to small venues—to churches, village halls, schools and youth centres. They are funded by the Arts Council of Wales to do so to inspire our young people, provide community cohesion in deprived areas and provide entertainment in rural areas that get very little else by way of entertainment. The Arts Council of Wales has a very well established and highly respected scheme called Night Out, which helps to fund professional organisations in community buildings.

However, these initiatives have had to work against the grain of the Licensing Act. The time, cost and bureaucracy involved in getting a licence for a small venue when you are likely to hold only two or three such events a year is simply not worth it. Remember, those venues are almost invariably run by volunteers, who have neither the time nor the expertise to go through that bureaucratic minefield. Geographically, Wales is 80 per cent rural and characterised by a network of village and church halls. The entertainment that they can host has been curtailed by the 2003 Act.

Your Lordships will also have heard of the National Eisteddfod. That internationally famous music festival is underpinned by a network of local festivals and eisteddfodau. The national youth Eisteddfod, the Urdd, holds preliminary competitions in every part of Wales and almost every school participates. The tip of the pyramid, you see, is underpinned by a very wide base. It is the community venues that provide the opportunities for a performer’s first step in performing music. Without that first step, they will not take the second, which is to consider earning their living that way. This means that you lose your source of income for creative industries and the cultural tourism sector suffers. Those are enormously important to the Welsh economy; approximately 5 per cent of the economically active workforce works in the cultural sector in Wales. In Cardiff, that figure rises to 13 per cent.

Like the rest of the UK, Wales has suffered from the reduction in the number of premises licensed to sell alcohol that have sought a licence for live music. There has been a reduction to about one-quarter of those premises seeking a licence. That means that the opportunities are very much lower for those wishing to participate. Many of those licences, as my noble friend has indicated, already contain other restrictions. Therefore, I urge your Lordships to look at the evidence very carefully. The live music scene appears to flourish, but it is the upper end and the middle that are flourishing; the small-scale venues are suffering and declining. As the poorest part of the UK that is often overwhelmed by the culture of its much bigger neighbour, Wales has a particular need to develop its own culture and identity, and has suffered disproportionately from the impact of the Act.