Live Events: Government-backed Insurance

Bob Seely Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney). I agree with one of the critical points that she made, which is about people involved in the arts, and support to the arts, having fared particularly badly in this pandemic. That has been an issue of real regret.

I thank the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone), my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) and the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) for leading this debate, and I agree very strongly with the points they made. I will not speak for too long, because I just want to echo some of those points, specifically in relation to festivals on the Isle of Wight.

The Isle of Wight is effectively Britain’s festival island; we are home to a new festival almost every weekend, over and above the significant, major festivals that we have hosted, such as the Isle of Wight festival and Cowes Week, which is the biggest sailing event in the world. Festivals contribute significant value to the island’s economy, although their value is wider than just economic. They support extensive supply chains, local businesses, equipment hire and similar areas of the economy. They also support the island’s visitor economy, such as shops, bars, restaurants and accommodation, and they also help local farmers to diversify their incomes. The funding and spend of almost all the smaller independent festivals also go directly into the local economy, employing hundreds, if not thousands, of people. As well as an economic impact, they also have a significant cultural impact on the island.

As has been pointed out, festivals are year-long endeavours; as soon as one festival is finished, those involved are already planning next year. A year’s worth of effort goes into something that is mostly only a weekend long. While other elements of the hospitality industry, such as pubs and restaurants, can turn off and on during lockdown—however inconvenient that is—it has been very difficult for the festival and arts industries to do that.

The hon. Member for Cardiff West eloquently explained why Government-backed insurance—pooled reinsurance, to use the term that was used in the IRA days—is a very good idea, and I fully support it. Given the long lead times, we need to help, and we need to give confidence to festival organisers, so that they know that their work will not be wasted. It is likely that festivals will be able to go ahead this summer, with all the new mitigations in place around testing and the vaccination process, so I do not quite understand why we cannot have a pooled reinsurance scheme, which could be relatively cheap but help to kickstart this element of our arts and entertainment industry.

What concerns me is that every day we are in lockdown, it costs us a minimum of half a billion pounds in lost economic output and cost to the Treasury. If we can come out of lockdown only a few days earlier, we could be billions of pounds better off. A very small percentage of that money could be used to provide a scheme of pooled reinsurance for festivals—not only on the Isle of Wight, but across Britain. As everybody who has spoken in the debate has said, we need those festivals for people’s mental health and for the enjoyment of arts, culture and music, including the music festivals that we have on the Island. We badly need those in our lives again, because we have missed them in the last year. As well as helping our economy, they enrich our souls.

I hope very much that the Minister, who I know is absolutely passionate about her role, can see her way to working on the Treasury a bit harder, so that we can have some kind of pooled reinsurance scheme to support all the great festival businesses and all the jobs that they support on the Isle of Wight and throughout the United Kingdom.