Music Venues

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, when you find yourself slightly further down the list of speakers, you look at your briefing notes and suddenly realise that most of your points have been mentioned. Therefore, I am afraid that I will repeat some of the points that have already been made.

I have danced to the music of the band of the noble Lord, Lord Colwyn. Indeed, I remember that my wedding was greatly enhanced by the spontaneous spotting of accents in the room and the way that the music followed them. The sight of people in morning suits dancing reels will stay with me for quite a while. However, as noble Lords have said, we have lost 35% of our smaller music venues. That means that one in three has gone. Clearly, these venues are under pressure. This is not the result of intentional policy but a classic case of Murphy’s law as the pressure on these outside bodies is leading to them being squeezed. If we are not going to subsidise them, we have to make the system work for them. I think that my noble friend Lord Foster pointed out that we should bring together the various parts of government and make them work together because it is clearly in nobody’s interest to lose these venues. Some people will say that such a step is in their interest if it is to their perceived personal advantage. Nimbyism will always be present, but if we adopt something like the agent of change principle, surely we can put this in a sensible context.

Who has not chortled over their cornflakes at newspaper articles about people who move next to pubs then complain when customers leave them after closing time or who, better still, complain that the cows in an adjacent field moo? We need to state that if you move somewhere where a venue is already in place which is deemed to be good by the vast majority of people, you will have to live with it or make changes to your property that allow you to live with it. It is not beyond the wit of man in the modern world to install sound insulation in a property. The person who moves into the property should take on that responsibility. It is important to get that across.

On business rates and so on, we must encourage local authorities to think about the venue. What does the economic activity going on there mean to the local area? Are people spending money in it and does it provide employment? The figure may not be exact, but another statistic which has been mentioned is that more than 117,000 people are employed in this sector and deriving an income from the music industry. These venues make a contribution to local restaurants and other bars in the area. They do not stand by themselves, and surely that must be taken into account. You will get the odd venue that goes a little bit rogue and possibly needs some intervention to deal with it, but most of the time they are peaceful, law-abiding institutions to which people go to enjoy themselves. Ensuring that people appreciate what else is going on is vital to this.

It has been suggested that we should have what I think are called “night mayors”. I love the idea of the first prominent person to hold that position. The cartoonists will have an absolute field day. I think the expression “night tsar” was used, which is a wiser way of putting it. It is probably necessary to have someone to co-ordinate leisure activities and the economic activity that goes with them because there are competing stresses on how all this is implemented. It is important that people are made aware of this. We all know that the world is focused on us, and we are all very capable of losing our peripheral vision when it comes to changing situations. Making sure that we understand that music venues and the leisure activities that result from them are part of a wider economy would probably be the best thing we could do here.

There is a great deal of good will around this, and much legislative change has already taken place, but when the noble Earl comes to respond to the debate, can he give us an idea of how the co-ordination is being handled, how guidance is being produced and then pushed down to local authorities, and what help is being given to enable them to reach out themselves? This will cross boundaries for local authorities, so how will it be done? That is important because we are in danger of getting rid of something which is of great benefit all round. Whatever problems there are, they will be as nothing compared with the damage that will be done to a whole sector of our creative economy.