Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Children (Performances) Regulations 1968 to streamline opportunities for children to take part in performances; to reduce unnecessary regulation; to clarify when a licence is required; to strengthen the emphasis on protecting children; and for connected purposes.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Children and Young Persons Act 1963, which, among other things, brought in a system of regulating child performances. That was a welcome innovation to promote the ability of children to pursue their talents and strut their stuff in a safe and beneficial way, and it resulted in a comprehensive set of regulations that came into force in 1968.
Fifty years on, that legislation needs updating. Back in the 1960s, we had only three terrestrial TV channels, whereas today we have hundreds of satellite and cable stations. “Britain’s Got Talent”, “The X Factor” and the explosion in so-called reality TV over the past 15 years or so were then just a figment of the imagination. The internet had not been invented. Ofcom was not regulating. Criminal Records Bureau checks were not being made. Jimmy Savile had almost been beatified. We therefore need the safeguards to be brought well and truly into the 21st century.
The ongoing revelations in the wake of the Savile allegations have made it all the more urgent to make this system fit for purpose and to ensure that children can pursue their talents safely. Parents need to be assured that their children will not fall into the clutches of predators, nor be exploited by over-zealous producers and broadcasters. Although in most cases we should ultimately trust parents to know what is best for their children, we need safeguards against the few particularly pushy parents who think their six-year-olds are emotionally robust enough to debut on a stage in front of millions of prime-time viewers or to do the rounds of those rather cheesy child beauty pageants that seem to have crept across the Atlantic.
I pursued this matter as Minister for children at the Department for Education, but was not able to persuade the powers that be to include it in the forthcoming legislation. I am hence promoting this stand-alone Bill today. However, I see no reason why it could not still be incorporated into the forthcoming children and families Bill. Much of the groundwork has been done and I believe that the provisions will be widely supported across the entertainment industry and across the political divide.
The last Government commissioned Sarah Thane, the respected former chairman of the Royal Television Society, to undertake an exploratory systemic review, which was published in March 2010. Following work that we had done in opposition, I picked up the recommendations in her excellent report. Within the Department for Education, I consulted widely through working groups of experts from across the entertainment industry, broadcasters, regulators, local authorities, amateur theatre groups, chaperones, children’s organisations, child psychologists, parents and many others. Although there are still some minor issues of contention, there are surprising levels of consensus. We are all agreed that the status quo is no longer viable. Subsequently, that has been profoundly reinforced by the revelations involving Jimmy Savile and others in the entertainment industry in particular, where the arrests continue apace.
The Government launched a public consultation exercise in May last year that ran until 3 August, but it has not yet reported. I believe that the recommendations in the Bill are clear, practical and proportionate, and that they will agree with the findings of the consultation, which we anticipate. I am grateful to all those who gave their time so willingly to inform that consultation exercise, and to Sarah Thane in particular for the immense amount of work that she has done and for her continuing support in carrying her work forward through my Bill.
The basic principle in updating the regulations is outlined in Sarah Thane’s report, which states that
“performing can be good for children and has the potential to develop a wide range of skills and talents”,
and that children
“must be free to express their talents and enthusiasm in a wide variety of ways, without the heavy hand of the state interfering where it is not needed.”
At the moment, the regulations are administered by local authorities, which are responsible for issuing licences to children who perform. The Bill does not propose to change that. The problem is that the regulations are interpreted inconsistently and are often followed or enforced randomly across the country. For many authorities, this is not a mainstream activity with a dedicated full-time licensing officer, so a budding child performer can effectively be discriminated against by postcode.
The regulations are too bureaucratic, so many children miss out on opportunities because the licences take too long to turn around. There is a requirement in some authorities that at least 21 days’ notice be given when applying for a licence, which makes many short-notice assignments completely impractical. In some cases, it can take considerably longer. Parents have written to me complaining that their children have missed out on licences because they have had to wait for the licensing officers to come back from holiday or because a production company has used an alternative actor who happened to live in an authority that was much more geared up for issuing licences quickly and without question.
Each year, an estimated 45,000 licences are issued to child performers, with some authorities issuing as many as 3,000 and some fewer than 100—a wide disparity. Many theatre companies, both commercial and amateur, have a policy not to include children at all, simply because doing so is fraught with too many problems. That cannot be right. We need fewer but better rules, as well as more guidance that is more appropriate, so that the resources are focused on ensuring that local authority officers are effectively monitoring the efficacy of the regulations and that licences are being used properly to help producers to develop effective safeguarding policies, rather than on processing the often inappropriate and excessive paperwork.
My Bill would reduce the occasions when full licensing is required but ensure that where it is required, it is proportionate and meaningful and everyone is held accountable for their ensuing responsibilities. There should be a presumption that licences will be issued unless there are strong grounds not to, but an onus on the employer or producer to identify and manage risk. Licences should be produced on a much reduced time scale, available online and sped up through the use of electronic databases and nationally promoted examples of best practice. There should also be greater flexibility in the terms of the licence, particularly in the case of filming, for which definitive time frames are not always possible. Surely the amount of work required of a child and the ensuing pressure, not the specific dates on which it can take place, is the more important consideration.
Many of those problems can be dealt with by updating secondary legislation, but there are matters that require a change in primary legislation, not least a viable and contemporary definition of what “performance” actually means. My Bill would provide that after further consultation with experts.
Fly-on-the-wall television programmes with no added level of risk need not be subject to regulations, for example when children are in a natural school or sporting environment. However, there is a particular concern when children are put in a contrived documentary situation, in which case the psychological implications need to be carefully considered. I could cite “Boys and Girls Alone” on Channel 4 some years ago.
Under the Bill, it would remain the case that licences were not required where the performance was arranged by a school, or where participation in an activity posed no greater risks than those faced by a child in the ordinary course of his life and he was not being paid.
We also need to make a greater distinction between amateur and commercial performances when it comes to requiring licences. There is a world of difference between children appearing in the amateur village panto surrounded by family members and neighbours, and those who tread the boards late at night alongside professionals, a long way from home, for money. My Bill would allow amateur companies to register with the local authority as an entity so that they can use children, rather than having to apply for an individual licence for children to take part. I know that many am-dram companies in hon. Members’ constituencies have complained about that for a long time.
Current primary legislation states that when a licence is required, it cannot be granted to a child under the age of 14 except when they are acting or dancing in a ballet and the part can be taken only by a child of that age, or when they are taking part in a musical. That is far too prescriptive and restrictive, and my Bill would remove that age and activity requirement. Instead, there should be protections reflecting broad age bands of children.
Although more flexible individual licences should remain for children under 13 who are paid to perform, a more sensible approach for older children taking part in one-off large productions—or, as I have said, for amateur productions—is an extension of the simplified approval process known as “body of persons approval”. That way, a budding village Cinderella will go to the ball rather than be thwarted by waiting for a licence that is taking ages to turn around, and a large regional youth choir that performs occasionally with scores of budding Kate Jenkinses will not have to compile reams of paperwork for each of its members.
I would scrap the so-called four-day rule, whereby if a child is not paid, a licence is not required for up to four days of performances in any six-month period. That is open to abuse. I would also set out clear national thresholds to ensure that those responsible for safeguarding the welfare of children, such as chaperones, have the appropriate ongoing training to do so. Would Jimmy Savile have succeeded in luring so many teenagers back to his dressing room if the chaperones had been there, on the ball and wise to the mesmeric charms of dodgy shell-suited celebrities? Many chaperones are doing a very good job, but there are no formal qualifications for the job and no nationally agreed standards, and my Bill would address that.
There are a number of other technical considerations in my Bill to counter existing measures that are quite simply anachronistic, obstructive and unnecessary. One deals with child earnings, because at the moment how they will be used has to be stipulated. Others deal with the requirement for a GP’s certificate, provided at great cost, which is unnecessary; with the requirement of 15 hours of tuition a week; and with the requirements on performing abroad. I would also ensure that the broadcasting code enforced by Ofcom complemented the terms of the Bill.
Overall, my Bill is intended to overhaul and streamline a system that is clearly now past its sell-by date, with opportunities for children to perform being greater than ever before. We need a system in which it is much clearer when licences are required, we need those licences to be available speedily, and we need proper enforcement and monitoring, consistently applied across all local authority boundaries. We also need greater professional status and recognition for the important work that chaperones do, subject to appropriate and proportionate standards and training across the country.
Just as excessive and inflexible Criminal Records Bureau and vetting and barring requirements drove valuable volunteers away from coming forward, so a well-intentioned but bureaucratic system of performance regulations has led to too many budding young thespians being deprived of the opportunity to take to the stage. Under my Bill, Cinderella will be able to go to the ball secure in her parents’ knowledge that she will benefit and be safe, and that every necessary precaution has been taken to deter shell-suited predators.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Tim Loughton, Mrs Cheryl Gillan, Meg Munn, Mr Graham Stuart, Dan Rogerson, Andrea Leadsom, Ann Coffey, Dr Phillip Lee, Henry Smith, Pauline Latham, Mr Robert Buckland and Mrs Eleanor Laing present the Bill.
Tim Loughton accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 1 March, and to be printed (Bill 118).