Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Debate

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Department: Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport

Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport

Steve Brine Excerpts
Wednesday 10th March 2021

(3 years ago)

Commons Chamber
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Steve Brine Portrait Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
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I want to talk about the festival industry. The risks to events taking place this year revolve around uncertainty, even with the road map, a lack of working capital, and the ongoing absence of—much mentioned this afternoon—the insurance solution. Why does this matter? Well, it is a massive, successful, vibrant industry. There are an estimated 975 festivals in the UK each year. The sector generates £1.75 billion for the UK economy every year and supports some 85,000 jobs. According to UK Music, over 5 million people—our constituents—attended a festival in 2019, including me: Boomtown in my own constituency. As important as all the figures are, though, festivals are just good fun—remember when that was allowed?

So the Government’s road map was very welcome to our festival sector. As soon as we nearly had a vaccine, the industry was calling for a clear timeline outlining “no earlier than” dates, and step 4 clearly gives that to us. To be clear, festivals do not work with social distancing; it is just not possible. There is also the risk that they can safely go ahead this summer but the sector is not given enough time to prepare. The planning cycle is a critical factor. Festivals need an average lead time of six to eight months. The majority will make a call on their summer events in the first three months of this year, so right now is the moment. We have seen some take the plunge, such as Reading, Leeds and Boomtown, and others such as Glastonbury—with the heaviest of hearts, and breaking mine—call theirs off for a second year.

Let me touch on lack of working capital. Festivals clearly need the working capital to stage their event. It is true that some festival businesses have been helped by the excellent culture recovery fund, with very high stabilisation figures among recipients meaning that they will have sufficient funds to stage their events this year if they are allowed, but it is equally true, as shown by surveys among members of the Association of Independent Festivals, that 100% of those who applied to the fund and were not offered a grant do not have sufficient funds to stage their events. I say to the Minister that for round 2 of the CRF—I understand that we expect grants to be announced this month—we need the eligibility of festivals to be strongly recognised again and we need to help those who missed out in round 1. For many festivals without sufficient audience loyalty and brand equity to return beyond this year, if that happens, mothballing the event companies that they rely on for another year effectively means shutting down their operations, with a very real risk that they will not return.

A Government-backed insurance scheme is essential to the festival industry. I appreciate that insurance alone is not the sole barrier to kick-starting festivals, but organisers cannot enter into the usual planning for 2021 without an insurance solution. It is the key that unlocks this process. It is unfortunate that we have not yet managed to persuade the Government of the case for this. It is almost too late now for 2021, but I would like the Minister to make reference to the issue when he winds up.

This matters for all the reasons that I have touched on, but it matters right now when events, short of insurance, short of certainty and short of cash flow, are selling tickets to young people desperate for something to look forward to. We cannot have events—sometimes without a licence in place or even having contacted the safety advisory group of the respective local authority—selling tickets, often at £100-plus, on the promise of hope alone. That will do the vast majority of the industry no favours whatever, but in many ways it is a symptom of the situation that we are in.

Let us stick to the road map. Let us focus on the data and reward vaccine success with some fun this summer. With a fair wind, we may even—I know you look forward to this, Madam Deputy Speaker—see the return of Crouchfest. To borrow a phrase, that really would be back stronger.