Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps he is taking to support freelancers in the creative industry affected by the cancellation of events due to the covid-19 outbreak.

The Chancellor has announced measures to protect the self-employed. So long as they fulfil the criteria for these measures, freelancers and the self employed in the music industry benefit from these measures.

The Self-employment Income Support Scheme (SEISS) will support self-employed individuals (including members of partnerships) whose income has been negatively impacted by COVID-19. The scheme will provide a grant to self-employed individuals or partnerships, worth 80% of their profits up to a cap of £2,500 per month.

HMRC will use the average profits from tax returns in 2016-17, 2017-18 and 2018-19 to calculate the size of the grant.