Covid-19: Music Sector and Creative Economy

Lord Clement-Jones Excerpts

Thursday 23rd April 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran]

I thank my noble friend for his question. We recognise the financial challenges which small venues face, particularly those in London that might not benefit from the relief to business rates because they have a rateable value above £51,000. We are grateful to the Music Venue Trust for the work it is doing to gather evidence from the sector, and we will use that to inform our plans as we move forward.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

As the Minister will know, and the noble Lord, Lord Black, and other noble Lords have highlighted, the music sector and other live arts performance has been extremely badly hit by the coronavirus lockdown. We have discussed current support for the sector this morning. Will the Government give serious consideration to financial incentives to stimulate and promote UK music and other live performance production after the lockdown, especially in view of the recovery period that will be required?

[Baroness Barran]

The noble Lord is right that the recovery period could be longer for these sectors than some others. As I said, we are working very hard to understand the evidence on this. Giving evidence to the Select Committee yesterday, the Secretary of State said that we have not reached the end of the road in our thinking. We are listening, analysing the evidence and working on where we should focus our support.