Creative Sector

Lord Strasburger Excerpts

Thursday 4th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strasburger (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Featherstone on securing this debate and on her inspiring opening speech. I also welcome the noble Lord, Lord Spencer, to this House.

I will focus on one crucial part of the creative sector’s income: what it earns from paid engagements, multi-country tours, residencies and international shows inside the European Union. The Prime Minister is fond of describing everything as “world-leading”, but if he were to take any interest in our creative industries, he would find that, here at least, that epithet is richly deserved. The imagination, ingenuity, endeavour and financial performance of our creative industries are second to none. They nurture our souls and, as our ambassadors, they bring peoples together all over the world.

We should be very proud of and grateful for the cultural joy, hard cash and soft power that our musicians, dancers, actors and fashion industry and all their teams of background staff deliver for our country—or, I should say, did deliver until the Covid pandemic struck early last year. Since then, the industry has been in hibernation, or worse. Venues have closed and tours, festivals and exhibitions have been cancelled. Performers and their staff have had to switch careers to survive; many will be permanently lost from the industry, along with their talent and experience.

You might expect that the creative industries would be celebrating the beginning of the end of our battle with Covid, which of course is far from over. Some venues have reopened, live performances have restarted and the cash tills, or these days the card machines, are back in action. However, a vital revenue stream, accounting for roughly half of many companies’ income, has been wiped out at a stroke by the Government’s trade deal with the EU. Previously, performers and their crews could work and travel around Europe without any friction or costs. Now, they are faced with mountains of red tape, crippling costs and impossible logistics. If they were to embark on a tour visiting, say, 20 venues, their trucks and vans would now have to return to the UK after just two stops.

Artists had been assured that this would not happen. On 21 January last year, Nigel Adams, then a DCMS Minister, told the other place how important easy touring is for the creative industries. He said:

“It is essential that free movement is protected for artists post 2020.”—[Official Report, Commons, 21/1/20; col. 57WH.]


He was right. That is precisely what the EU offered: a cultural visa waiver scheme. However, inexplicably, the Government rejected it, and instead proposed something completely inappropriate. It is intended for businesspeople travelling to meetings, not artists plying their trade and being paid for it. That was the end of it. The British Government never raised the subject again, and the trade deal was signed without including any mention of our second-largest industry, for which it was the worst possible outcome: a no-deal Brexit.

Our artists now operate on far worse terms than for those from Tonga. For many companies and staff, it is the final nail in the coffin after Brexit. The worst affected are younger performers and crews, and those with embryonic careers, who need income from Europe to survive and the experience that comes with international touring to develop their talent. The Government are in denial about their role in this catastrophe. Until they admit to themselves that they should have accepted the EU’s generous offer, we cannot make any progress. They need to abandon their preposterous excuse that a visa waiver scheme would somehow breach their manifesto commitment on taking control of our borders. Performers come here for a few weeks to ply their trade, then go home. They do not represent any threat whatever of uncontrolled immigration.

We must go back to Brussels and negotiate a cultural visa waiver scheme as an addendum to the trade agreement, without the need to reopen the existing treaty. Only then can our second-largest sector emerge from the darkness of the Covid winter into a spring of renewed success on the world stage. Unfortunately, the new Secretary of State postponed her meeting with Sir Elton John, which should have taken place this morning and at which he would have urged her to grasp this nettle. However, I remain hopeful that her strength of will and fresh perspective will enable her to fix this urgent problem.