Artist Visas

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2019 Westminster Hall

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) claims you as one of his own, but I believe we once had a conversation that established that your place of birth was in fact the west end of Glasgow, in the constituency of Glasgow North.

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman might be at risk of misleading the House inadvertently. I was in fact born in Rottenrow, which is in Dennistoun in the east end of Glasgow.

[Patrick Grady]

I stand corrected, but was there not a connection to the west end? [Laughter.]

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

This is not of direct relevance to the debate, but just for clarity I was born and brought up in Dennistoun in the east end of Glasgow. When I was four years old, I moved to Great Western Road in the west end of Glasgow. I went to school and university there.

[Patrick Grady]

There we are. It has been established. I apologise for inadvertently misleading the House, Mr Gray, but I am glad that I now have the privilege of representing an area where, once upon a time, you bestrode the streets of the west end of Glasgow, which is of course the site of much of Glasgow’s creative industry and vibrant cultural scene, which is why the issue of artists’ visas is so important.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) on securing the debate. This is not the first time that difficulties with the visa system have been raised in Westminster Hall, and it will not be the last. It might not be the last time that the Minister has to respond to debates on such topics, although we live in turbulent times. I welcome her to her post. She will have quite a heavy in-tray in the coming weeks and months, but the issue of visas will dominate it, and the speeches and contributions that we have heard from Members explain why.

I want to look briefly at the importance of the creative sector to the UK and Scotland’s economy. The reports that we have heard about illustrate a massive contradiction in Government policy. I want to dwell a little on the specifics of artists travelling from Africa because I have a personal interest and some experience there, and it speaks to the broader policy issue in general. I also want to look at the question of Brexit and its consequences for travel across the European Union.

The creative sector is, as we have heard, hugely important to the economy of the UK as a whole. We are just coming to the end of the festival season. Great cultural festivals include the Edinburgh festival, which is hugely significant and well appreciated and enjoyed. I am happy to continue the rivalry between whether bigger is necessarily better when we consider what Glasgow has on offer compared with Edinburgh. There are other festivals across the UK such as Womad and the festivals that my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith cited. I pay tribute to the digital engagement team for the way in which it reached out to other organisations and allowed their voices to be heard. I thoroughly recommend that all of the statements be made available to Members, perhaps through the Library, and that the Minister pays particular attention. My hon. Friend quoted from most of them, but I will draw the House’s attention to one or two comments from the various people who contributed.

The music director of the Shambala festival, an international festival of music and art, talked about the multi-faceted nature of the issues and the costs:

“We are often seeking performances from acts that may only have one or two shows in the UK. The costs for Visas for a large band are...spread over very few shows...Secondly, the application is a bureaucratic nightmare that takes a very long time to process and...includes the applicants having to hand over their passports for weeks”,

which, as was suggested in interventions, makes it difficult for the artists to do their jobs anywhere else. The artistic director of the Shubbak festival said:

“The current visa system is unsustainable for the artists we work with. Shubbak’s producers spent a significant amount of time, effort and costs to support artists in their process of visa applications. The forms are overlong and advice is often contradictory.”

Shubbak is one of the largest celebrations of Arab culture that takes place in the UK, particularly here in London.

It appears from the briefing that the quotes from the London international festival of theatre have been endorsed by a significant number of other people from the creative industries. As my hon. Friend said, countless artists are telling festivals and venues that they are reluctant even to accept invitations to come because of the draconian visa process, but they also suggest solutions:

“While we recognise the need for scrutiny...we suggest a number of key developments which...will help alleviate this situation.”

They include reducing the costs, faster processes, clearer information to applicants and opening more application centres. I will come back to that, but it is certainly true of the findings of the all-party groups on Africa, migration and Malawi.

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East spoke about Celtic Connections, a festival very close to my heart. I have taken part in its events for many years and I have good friends who perform in it almost every year. At this time last year, the director of the festival, Donald Shaw, a highly regarded musician and creative talent in Scotland and a real driving force behind the festival, expressed his frustration about artists who are not even willing to consider coming to the festival now because they know of the barriers that will face them. He said:

“These are top-class musicians who have been travelling around the world for over 20 years. Britain now has a very solidly-locked gate, certainly in terms of African visas. The whole thing undermines us as a Scottish festival with an international outlook.”

That is the contradiction: the United Kingdom says it is open for business—that that is the great thing about Brexit, which will take us back on to the world stage. They spend millions, if not tens and hundreds of millions of pounds on “Britain is GREAT” posters, which we see all over the place. Whenever we go overseas and visit UK embassies or see adverts taken out in aircraft brochures, we see “Britain is GREAT”, “Britain is open for business”, but then as soon as somebody applies to come here they are told Britain is not open for business; it is closed. There is a massive contradiction in policy and it is a huge act of self-harm to the economy, society and culture.

[Kevin Brennan]

What the hon. Gentleman says is absolutely right. Is it not also the case that not only are the restrictions draconian, but the Home Office deliberately runs its visa programme as a money-making racket? That is what it is.

[Patrick Grady]

Absolutely. It is particularly important to the creative sector when the operating margin for visas is so small. Most people go into the creative sector out of a love for their art, and to contribute to society and culture as much as to the economy, but if they are successful the margins can have a positive economic input as well. Yet the visa policy is driving that down and making it more difficult for people to make that economic, as well as cultural and social, contribution.

I am reminded of testimony from a very senior official in the African Union—a trade commissioner who came to speak to us at an event in the House of Lords. He was invited by the Lord Mayor of London, yet had to jump through hoops. He was asked for his wedding licence and for proof of his income, despite being effectively a diplomat. To be fair, he got his visa and managed to get here, which is better than some. He says that every time he flies out of Addis, he sees business class sections of planes going into Brussels that are full and business class sections of planes going into London that are half empty. That is a pretty stark demonstration of the visa policy’s impact.

I saw the impact myself recently, when I was in Malawi with the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and we visited the UK high commission. The first thing that we saw when we came in was a great pop-up banner saying, “Come to the UK and study on the Chevening scholarship.” Yet the night before, when we had met with local stakeholders, campaign groups and so on, we had heard stories of people who had applied for—and been granted—Chevening scholarships but were not getting visas, were being made to jump through hoops, or found that the visas were far too expensive.

Such stories are borne out by the joint report from the all-party parliamentary group on Malawi, the APPG for Africa and the APPG on diasporas, development and migration, which found that

“September 2018 Home Office quarterly statistics show that while 12% of all visit visa applications made between September 2016 and September 2018 were refused, the refusal rate for African visitors was over double this, at 27% of applications.”

There is therefore a particular challenge regarding visas for African musicians, business people, religious ministers and so on, much of which is down to the system, to the creation of a hub and spoke model, and to the attempt to outsource the applications to private companies and then to drive the decision-making process on to some kind of online, algorithm-based system, often based here in the United Kingdom.

Another story emerged from the same visit. The Information Minister from the Malawian Government could not get his fast-track visa approved in time; he was supposed to be in the UK while we were in Malawi. His visit was cancelled in the end because his visa did not come through in time, even though presumably the Malawian Government and Malawian taxpayers—or, indeed, Department for International Development money that helps to support the Malawian Government—financed his fast-track visa application, which was no such thing. Such incidents cause nothing but embarrassment for officials in the high commissions and embassies, who cannot do anything because the left hand seemingly does not know what the right hand is doing, and all the decisions are outsourced to Pretoria. At the same time, I echo the comments that my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith made about the incredibly hard-working staff both in the embassies and high commissions and in the visa inquiry teams, who are massively overburdened. That simply increases the expense, bureaucracy and contradiction.

Ultimately, if we want the visas, we have to make inquiries or get up and ask questions of Ministers, and the House of Commons Chamber becomes a kind of court of appeal for visas that should simply have been granted in the first place. None of these artists are coming here to abscond or so that they can live on the British welfare state or get jobs as Uber drivers. They are world-class musicians. They are travelling all around the world and are welcomed to other countries with open arms. Only in the United Kingdom—only in “Britain is GREAT” and “Britain is open for business”—are they told that they cannot come.

[Deidre Brock]

A number of us have been pursuing this matter for some time. It is interesting that every time we have asked Ministers to set out how many folk in the creative industries who have come to the UK have absconded, they cannot answer. I think the last time, they suggested that it would take too much time, and money perhaps, to find that information, but if the Government are so worried that people will abscond, why do they not know exactly how many people have absconded in the past?

[Patrick Grady]

Exactly—that is part of the issue. Perhaps the Minister can answer that question. People are counted into the country but very rarely counted out, so the statistics do not exist, but all the anecdotal evidence suggests that such people go back. It is pretty easy to tell whether a musician has absconded because if they do not turn up to their next gig in Germany, France or wherever they were going next on their tour, it is pretty obvious.

I suppose that brings us to the consequences of Brexit and the specific issue of visas for travel in Europe. At the moment, freedom of movement means that artists from anywhere in the European Union can travel to anywhere else in the EU without any hassle. That makes it cheaper, easier and better for reasons that we have already discussed, but if freedom of movement comes to an end—and especially if it comes crashing to an end on 31 October—everybody will be left in a state of chaos and cataclysm.

It is very important that the Government are working on that issue. A lot of organisations—we heard about the Musicians’ Union and the Incorporated Society of Musicians—have done a significant amount of work on both identifying what the challenges will be and suggesting some solutions. The ISM, for example, said clearly that

“the music workforce depends on EU27/EEA countries for professional work”.

It also said that

“the music workforce relies on UK-EU mechanisms to support and enable them to work”

and travel, and that already

“the impact of Brexit on musicians’ work has been widespread and negative”.

It therefore made a series of recommendations about what can be done. One of the most significant is:

“If freedom of movement rights cease, the Government must introduce a two-year, cheap and admin-light, multi-entry touring visa”

so that musicians, and indeed their musical instruments, can get in and out of the country as freely as possible, and the creative industry’s important contribution can continue.

As I said at the start, the Minister will have to get used to such debates. Many Members feel passionately about this matter, because our constituents and economies are affected, and in many cases we have personal connections to people who are affected as well. The visa policies and the experiences of artists, creatives and those in wider parts of society completely contradict the Government’s rhetoric on global Britain. In fact, what we are seeing, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East said, is a continuation of the hostile environment.

It is all well and good for the Government to say, “We’ve changed. The hostile environment is a thing of the past.” The lived daily experience of people who want to come to this country and share their creative talents and passions is that the hostile environment is still in place. That will change only when the policy starts to change and the administrative burdens are changed. That means easier processing, cheaper visas and a much more straightforward way of people applying and having their sponsors taken seriously. We hope the appointment of the new Minister will lead to some change, and we look forward to hearing what she has to say.