Category: Speeches

Andy McDonald – 2021 Comments on Employment Tribunals

The comments made by Andy McDonald, the Shadow Employment Rights and Protections Secretary, on 11 March 2021.

The Government’s failure to tackle the Employment Tribunal backlog has meant working people are waiting years for justice, leaving them unprotected at a time when they most need protections.

With almost half a million outstanding claims, many workers could be deterred from making claims and will end up being denied the pay, annual leave and other rights they are entitled to.

The Government must put forward a real plan to relieve this backlog without watering down rights in order to ensure that workers are not at the mercy of bad employers. Without rapid action, rights in the workplace will not be worth the paper they’re written on.

March 11, 2021
Jack Dromey – 2021 Comments on EU Import Checks Being Delayed

The comments made by Jack Dromey, the Shadow Cabinet Office Minister, on 11 March 2021.

This chopping and changing of rules by the Government smacks of ill-preparedness and incompetence.

They have had years to prepare for this but can’t stop missing their own deadlines. It is no wonder that the Trade Secretary herself has warned of chaos.

The Government need to pull their sleeves up, listen to businesses who have been desperately coming forward with practical solutions, and get this sorted.

March 11, 2021
Ed Miliband – 2021 Comments on Cumbrian Coal Mine Plan

The comments made by Ed Miliband, the Shadow Business Secretary, on 11 March 2021.

After months of pressure, Ministers have finally been forced to act.

The truth is that this mine is terrible for our fight against climate change, won’t help our steel industry and won’t create secure jobs.

The saga of this mine is a symptom of a government that isn’t serious about its climate ambitions and refuses to invest at scale in a green future to provide the jobs that workers have a right to expect.

The Government must now block the mine and focus instead on real solutions to secure the long-term future of UK steel – and create low-carbon jobs in Cumbria and across the country with a proper green stimulus.

March 11, 2021
Caroline Nokes – 2021 Speech on International Women’s Day

The speech made by Caroline Nokes, the Conservative MP for Romsey and Southampton North, in the House of Commons on 11 March 2021.

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), who does so much in this place to champion women.

Last year in this debate, we were not learning how to run a Parliament remotely, and none of us had ever considered being able to contribute to a debate while admiring the cobwebs on our own light fittings. In the spirit of celebration, I am going to think of uplifting things to start with, such as the sheer fact that this centuries-old institution has learned to flex and change—to adapt to Zoom and remote voting.

I thank the Chair of the Procedure Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), for having driven that agenda forward. We have seen more women contributing more often in Commons debates—more female voices in our Chamber, whether physically present or not—and that I celebrate. We have seen stunning contributions and campaigns from women right across the House and across Parliament, making desperately needed amendments and improvements to the Domestic Abuse Bill. We have seen women outside Parliament, such as Kate Bingham, who ran the vaccine taskforce determinedly, making sure that we got that roll-out.

We have heard from the Secretary of State for International Trade and Minister for Women and Equalities, my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), about her support for the normalisation of flexible working. That could mean so much to women, and I look forward to an employment Bill coming forward that champions that.

But it is impossible for me to turn my contribution today into an unabashed celebration. It is not going brilliantly for all women—not here, not anywhere. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) will speak later, and I know that she will have had to update that hideous, depressing list she is going to read out to add the name of Sarah Everard, so tragically killed while just walking home. Overnight, we saw an outpouring of stories from women about keys, headphones, clothes and sticking to lit streets. We all know the reality is you will probably not be attacked by a stranger, but the fear is there and the fear is real.

On this International Women’s Day, let us champion all women—gay women, who do not need conversion therapy; trans women, who want to be treated with respect and fairness. Remember, they are the ones most likely to suffer domestic abuse.

I wish to reference the work of the Women and Equalities Committee and its report on the gendered economic impact of covid. That was reinforced yesterday by the publication from the Office for National Statistics confirming that women have indeed suffered a greater economic impact from the pandemic—more likely to be furloughed than their male colleagues; more likely to be employed on a part-time contract and not entitled to statutory sick pay; less confident that they will not be made redundant.

We no longer have to look at health policy in the round because of the announcement this week of the women’s health strategy and the call for evidence, but apparently we still have to look at economic policy in the round and cannot accept data from the ONS that women have been harder hit economically. We will not get a female employment strategy, and I do not celebrate that.

March 11, 2021
Harriet Harman – 2021 Speech on International Women’s Day

The speech made by Harriet Harman, the Labour MP for Camberwell and Peckham, in the House of Commons on 11 March 2021.

I thank the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) for securing the debate, and I agree with every single word that she said in her excellent speech.

This International Women’s Day debate comes in the shadow of the menace of male violence against women. I am sure we all feel the same as the Home Secretary, who said that she is “deeply saddened” by the developments in the Sarah Everard investigation, and we all hope against hope that we will not hear the news that we all dread. But at the same time as the sadness, there is real anger among women at the threat that they face on a daily basis. That is not to spread alarm; it is to spell out the reality.

Here we are, in the 21st century, in a country where women and men expect to be equal, but we are not. Women, particularly young women, are terrified of the threat of male violence on the streets—men who try to get them to get in their car, who try to get their number, who follow them, who film them, who will not take no for an answer. Every young woman, every day, walks under this threat, so they adopt myriad strategies just to get home from work in the dark—choosing the busiest route, even if it is longer; keeping their keys in their hand; trying to go with someone rather than alone; getting a friend or their partner to map their location on a phone app; phoning on the way home so that they know they are expected.

Women will find no reassurance at all in the Metropolitan Police Commissioner’s statement that it is

“incredibly rare for a woman to be abducted from our streets.”

Women know that abduction and murder is just the worst end of a spectrum of everyday male threat to women. When the police advise women not to go out at night on their own, women ask why they have to be subjected to an informal curfew. It is not women who are the problem here; it is men.

The criminal justice system fails women and lets men off the hook. Whether it is rape or domestic homicide, women are judged and blamed—“Why was she on a dating app?” “Why was she out late at night?” “Why had she been drinking?” “What are those flirty messages on her phone?”—and men find excuses, raking up her previous sexual history in court to try to tarnish her character and prejudice the jury. Let us hear no more false reassurances; let us have action.

Next Monday, we will be debating in this House the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. That is the chance for the Government to banish the culture of male excuses from the criminal justice system and, instead of blaming women, start protecting them.

March 11, 2021
Maria Miller – 2021 Speech on International Women’s Day

The speech made by Maria Miller, the Conservative MP for Basingstoke, in the House of Commons on 11 March 2021.

I beg to move,

That this House has considered International Women’s Day.

It is a privilege to lead this International Women’s Day debate on behalf of members of the all-party parliamentary group on women in Parliament, who put forward the application. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for its continued strong support for this debate as an annual event.

I want to start by sending my thoughts and prayers to the family and friends of Sarah Everard, who are going through such a painful time. Her abduction has sent shockwaves across the UK. Sarah did everything to avoid danger. Let us be very clear: women are not the problem here. For many women, this news story will bring back memories of threatening situations they found themselves in through no fault of their own, sexually harassed on the streets when walking home from meeting friends, receiving anonymous threats of physical violence on social media, or sexually assaulted in plain sight in rush hour on public transport on the way to work. Many choose not to talk about this and not to report it for fear of not being believed or taken seriously. But the research shows that these sorts of events are part of women’s everyday lives, and that is why what happened to Sarah Everard feels so very close to home.

The shocking findings of the report published yesterday by the APPG on United Nations women show that virtually all young women have experienced the threat of sexual violence in public spaces and, indeed, that three in four women of all ages have experienced sexual harassment. Although the raw facts may show that it is rare for a woman to be abducted, the experience of young women is that the fear of sexual harassment, or worse, is ever in their mind, whether on a night out at the pub or after threats to their physical safety on social media, while for the one in six women who will be stalked in their lifetime, the fear of attack is very real.

So rather than telling women not to worry, listen to our experience. Understand why so many women relentlessly campaigned in this Chamber for change to make women feel safer by stopping the harassment and threats of violence in the first place. We should not accept a culture of violence towards women, we should not be complicit in covering it up, and we need to give women effective mechanisms to report what happens in order to expose the scale of the problem, call it out publicly, and punish those who perpetrate this culture of fear.

Reflecting on the past 12 months women have gone through in terms of their response to the challenges presented by coronavirus, at home women have been prominent in delivering on the frontline of health and social care, with two women professors, Sarah Gilbert and Catherine Green, helping to pioneer a global solution to the pandemic. In the US, Kamala Harris has become the first woman to be elected Vice-President of the United States, shattering another glass ceiling in the political world. Even closer to home, you, Madam Deputy Speaker, became the first woman ever to hold the role of Chairman of Ways and Means, bringing your infinite wit and wisdom to that important role.

While we acknowledge these significant milestones, the pandemic has brought existing inequalities into sharp focus too. Women have faced pressures in balancing work with home schooling and childcare. Domestic abuse cases have spiralled—up by 83%. When it comes to job losses, women have faced a heavy toll, with those aged 25 to 34 facing the highest unemployment rise. The Government’s mission of levelling up is very relevant to women. To mark International Women’s Day 2021, my message and hope is that a focus on levelling up for women is in place now more than ever before, both here in the UK and across the world.

We have record numbers of female MPs, yet still men outnumber women two to one in positions of power. A 50:50 Cabinet would help to ensure that women’s voices are heard where they need to be—right at the heart of Government. This week, as part of a whole host of International Women’s Day celebrations, we heard from the parliamentary archivist, Mari Takayanagi, about the remarkable contributions of early women MPs and the huge impact they had on law-making—how they spoke out 100 years ago in this place about the most sensitive of crimes against women, like FGM. These stories of courage can be seen in the work of women elected to this House today—women like my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), whose courage means that we have world-leading domestic abuse legislation and the Modern Slavery Act 2015, a blueprint for others across the world.

We need more women aspiring to become Members of Parliament, so I warmly welcome the Women and Equalities Committee’s inquiry looking at the actions taken on gender equality in the House of Commons. I hope that we can conduct a second gender-sensitive audit as soon as possible, with a body identified as being responsible for putting its recommendations into practice.

Above all, we need 2021 to be the year that we finally grasp the nettle of online abuse, which so badly affects women, particularly those in public life. We need the forthcoming online harms Bill to be more than a set of regulatory guidelines. We need laws that make it clear that online abuse is a crime, particularly with regard to posting intimate images online without consent. A safer, more respectful environment online will also lead to a kinder politics; I really believe that. In the meantime, let us stand up to those who gratuitously abuse women online—particularly women MPs and journalists—to help make sure that more women choose to stand for election and be leaders in our media too.

Women face barriers here in Westminster, but the same is still true of other sectors—in healthcare, for instance, where women account for more than three quarters of the workforce yet fewer than half have leadership positions. An out-of-date workplace with a presenteeism culture does little to support women, particularly when they have had children, so it was helpful to see the Birmingham Business School conduct research through the pandemic to show that flexible working can improve productivity. We need as a nation to adopt flexible working as standard, as part of levelling up for women and delivering a truly modern British workplace shaped around the whole workforce. We need to look closely at what Parliament should retain from the last 12 months of changed ways of working, so that we can play our part in modernising our workplace too.

In levelling up, we need to provide pregnant women and new mothers with better protections to stop them being pushed out of work simply for being pregnant. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has shown that one in four pregnant women felt discriminated against in the last year. Outlawing pregnant women from being made redundant, as Germany has done, would help to stop so many women falling out of the labour market into low-paid work when they have children.

In this mission of levelling up for women, our voice on the global stage will be just as important. The Prime Minister has been a long-time advocate for girls’ education as central to levelling up for women across the globe. As the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office considers its new role, including championing international development through open societies, we need to continue to take forward this principled commitment to girls’ education, alongside the UK’s internationally acknowledged role in outlawing the other inequalities and abuses that women face—for example, abuse in conflict zones, forced marriage and the lack of a host of other basic human rights.

With the UK leading the G7 this year, there is a truly unique opportunity for our country to show leadership on the global stage in promoting gender equality. The UK Government ratifying the International Labour Organisation convention on violence and harassment—the first international labour instrument that recognises the right of everybody to work free from violence and harassment—would be an act of leadership and an appropriate start. Let us celebrate an astonishing year for women and call for a commitment to level up for women across the UK and across the globe, for a fairer society for everybody.

March 11, 2021
Jenny Jones – 2021 Speech During the Domestic Abuse Bill

The speech made by Jenny Jones (Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb) in the House of Lords on 10 March 2021.

My Lords, I agree with every word that we have heard so far, and I have signed all three of these amendments—I think that they are superb and have been carefully and expertly drafted. It is deeply unfortunate that the Government have not adopted them as part of their unusually co-operative approach in this Bill.

The need is very clear: the deeply sad Sally Challen case was only one proof point of the lack of legal protection available for survivors of domestic abuse. Women get a terrible deal in the criminal justice system. Most are there for non-violent offences, and many are there for really minor things like not paying their TV licence. However, sometimes, violence does happen, and, where that is related to domestic abuse, there needs to be a sufficient legal defence to recognise the reduced culpability.

It is obvious that judges and, sometimes, lawyers do not understand coercive control and other abuses. The excellent report from the Centre for Women’s Justice, which the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, referred to, is called Women Who Kill—I will give a copy of the executive summary to the Minister afterwards to make sure that he reads it. It lays out the response of the criminal justice system to women who kill abusive partners and the way the law itself, and the way it is applied, prevent women from accessing justice.

Women who have been abused by the man they kill are unlikely to be acquitted on the basis of self-defence. Of the 92 cases included in the research for the report, 40—that is 43%—were convicted of murder. Some 42—that is 46%—were convicted of manslaughter, and just six, which is only 7%, were acquitted. The use of weapons is an aggravating factor in determining the sentence, and the report found that, in 73 cases—that is 79%—the women used a weapon to kill their partner. This is fairly unsurprising, given women’s relative size and physical strength and their knowledge of their partner’s capacity to be violent.

However, as other noble Lords have pointed out, this contrasts with the legal leeway given to householders if they kill or injure a burglar. Therefore, we need legislative reform to extend provisions of householder defence to women who use force against their abuser. It is discriminatory to have a defence available to householders defending themselves but not to women in abusive relationships defending themselves against someone who they know can be dangerous and violent towards them.

In the week that Sarah Everard was abducted and, we suppose, killed—because remains have been found in a woodland in Kent—I argue that, at the next opportunity for any Bill that is appropriate, I might put in an amendment to create a curfew for men on the streets after 6 pm. I feel this would make women a lot safer, and discrimination of all kinds would be lessened.

However, once convicted, women’s chances of successful appeal are extremely slim. Society’s understanding of domestic abuse has come such a long way, even in the last few years, yet a jury is forced to apply outdated ideas of self-defence, such as responding to a threat of imminent harm, which have no relation to the realities of domestic abuse.

The Government have said that they are persuaded on the issue but will

“monitor the use of the existing defences and keep under review the need for any statutory changes.”

I simply do not believe that that is true. It is not appropriate for the sort of crimes that we are talking about. As such, can the Minister please tell me which Minister is charged with this review, how many civil servants are involved and when will they report?

March 11, 2021
Damian Collins – 2021 Speech on the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport

The speech made by Damian Collins, the Conservative MP for Folkestone and Hythe, in the House of Commons on 10 March 2021.

The Government have provided substantial support for the cultural, sporting and creative sectors since the start of the covid pandemic. This has been welcome but also essential, as many organisations within these sectors rely on revenue from tickets and events to survive. Through no fault of their own, they have been required to close, and the cultural recovery fund, in addition to the funding to support sports and TV and film production, has helped many important bodies to keep going that otherwise might have closed for good.

However, we now need to focus on the road ahead, through to the lifting of the covid social contact restrictions on 21 June and beyond. The coronavirus has challenged the whole of our society, but it has also exposed further weaknesses in sectors that in some cases we already knew about. The point has been well made about the need for pandemic insurance for the events industry. Events and live performances have already become incredibly important to the music sector, because the remuneration that artists get from on-demand streaming services is relatively low, but these events will not take place unless an insurance scheme can be put in place.

This is not just about events that could be held this summer; it needs to be done on an ongoing basis. It could be some time before the industry has any certainty, because new variants of covid might require further restrictions on the capacity of audiences and therefore restrict the viability of the event itself. Just as, several years ago, the Government partnered with the insurance industry to create Flood Re to minimise the risk of flood insurance and reduce the costs, we need a similar scheme to help to make insuring live events viable and reduce the cost to people putting on those events.

In football, the lack of a strong national governing body for the sport that is able to ensure fair dealing in financial matters has been badly exposed. Many football clubs were in great distress before the pandemic struck. Clubs in the championship division of the English football league were routinely spending more than they earned each year on players’ salaries alone, and were running a financially unsustainable model. There has been no real recognition of the impact of the covid restrictions on professional football. The money within the game has not been enough to solve all the problems, and the support that has been given is minimal. Many clubs continue to rack up large debts. At the moment, a lot of the football league is being run on unpaid taxes. It is believed that the amount of unpaid taxes owed to HMRC by football clubs could be in the hundreds of millions of pounds. We need a proper financial regulator for football to ensure that clubs are run on a sustainable basis for the long term, but in the short term we may need to look at how some sort of financial assistance can be given to those most in distress. Clubs outside the premier league are largely community assets, and they need to be run in a sustainable way.

I want to make two other points briefly. The last 12 months have exposed just how influential disinformation and hate speech on social media can be, particularly in relation to anti-vaccine campaigns to undermine confidence in the vaccine and spread conspiracy theories about the pandemic. It makes the bringing forward of the online harms Bill this year so important for the Department, and we must also ensure that there are proper resources for Ofcom, as the regulator, to ensure that there can be proper auditing and inspection of the way social media companies respond to campaigns of disinformation and hate speech, and other speech that can cause harm through social media networks. We have been talking about this for many years and I am glad that the Bill is coming, but it is also an imperative.

Finally, the pandemic has also had a big impact on the advertising industry and broadcasting revenues from advertising, just as other media have struggled with revenue from advertising. There is no guarantee that this money will bounce back, particularly as audiences are increasingly diverting their attention to online services—social media to receive news and on-demand platforms to view content. Increasingly, many people spend time not watching broadcast material at all, but playing games and doing other things online. This potentially undermines the public service broadcasting model in this country. I welcome the fact that we have the PSB review, but we need to understand that the long-term impacts of rising production costs for television due to the impact of Netflix and Amazon Prime and of declining advertising revenues because of switching audience attention are fundamentally changing the market, and if we have media that—

Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)

Order. I am afraid we do have to move on.

March 11, 2021
Kevin Brennan – 2021 Speech on the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport

The speech made by Kevin Brennan, the Labour MP for Cardiff West, in the House of Commons on 10 March 2021.

It is a pleasure to follow the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Solihull (Julian Knight). Although we are on different political sides, those of us who serve on the Committee are in complete agreement on these issues.

Last week, when we debated the cultural and entertainment sectors, I made a few points on which I thought the Government could act in the Budget. The first related to the plight of freelance musicians, artists and others who have been excluded from the Chancellor’s criteria for support. I pointed out that in Wales some funds have been set aside for support, but that what we really needed was cross-UK action from the Chancellor. The Chancellor has done the very minimum in his Budget, by simply recognising that it has been so long for some of the excluded—that is, the newer self-employed—that they have now become eligible for the self-employment income support scheme. He has done nothing to support those excluded by his arbitrary criteria. He has decided that they are to be treated as second-class citizens. It is deliberate and unjust, and it will not be forgotten by musicians, artists and others who have been snubbed.

My second point was on the need to help to restart the live music sector with, as the Select Committee Chair said, a Government-backed insurance scheme. Our Committee wrote to the Chancellor to call for such a scheme and the response from the Government was a classic example of blinkered Treasury thinking. The insurance market cannot provide the cover needed for festivals because of covid uncertainty. The Government say that they have an irreversible plan for reopening; were they to underwrite a scheme, that would show confidence in not only live music but their own pronouncements. If their own words turned out to be true, they would never have to pay out anything.

Other countries have taken similar action, with much lower vaccine roll-out rates, and of course it is being done for film and television. For the want of a tent peg, many festivals will have to be collapsed this summer. That is the Chancellor’s second failure of policy and action. As the Select Committee Chair pointed out, there are now opportunities for the scammers and outlaw companies such as Viagogo to take advantage by once again ripping off people who want to buy tickets for events that might never happen and might never exist.

Thirdly, the Chancellor should have announced a scheme to ensure that musicians and artists could resume touring in EU countries. I note the launch of the “Carry on Touring” campaign’s website today. On social media today I saw the case of someone called Ed Lyon, a classical musician who has just spent six weeks and £945 to obtain a work permit for Belgium. Previously, in normal times, he could have just hopped on a train. The Chancellor is utterly complacent about the loss of export earnings to UK that this continuing fiasco will bring. Lord Frost is now his Cabinet colleague. Why has he not been told to do the job that he so abjectly failed to do in December when he delivered a no-deal Brexit for artists, musicians and their ancillary support industries?

This Budget, despite some investment, did not do nearly enough to save jobs and support growth in the creative industries—the sectors with the fastest growth potential. It has left freelance workers out in the cold, it has thrown a summer of music into a muddy field of uncertainty and it has closed the gate on touring for our creative artists and musicians. Far from doing “whatever it takes”, it has taken away the opportunity to create.

March 11, 2021
Julian Knight – 2021 Speech on the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport

The speech made by Julian Knight, the Conservative MP for Solihull, in the House of Commons on 10 March 2021.

This pandemic has highlighted just how widespread the responsibilities of the Department are: from our rich coastal communities that rely on tourism, to the world-renowned theatres, galleries and museums of our cities, our festivals and music events. They are all significant drivers not just of tourism spending, but of domestic spending. DCMS also has oversight of the charity sector, which has been ravaged by this pandemic.

Across the DCMS space, this has been the hardest hit of any sector in the economy. It was among the first to close and is likely to be the last to reopen. Covid is almost designed to damage the sector because it relies on the close interaction of people.

Many DCMS businesses are incredibly complex and, in the past, have not relied heavily on Government support; they have just got on making money and employing millions of people. This means, though, that the Treasury is perhaps less familiar with the intricacies of their work than with other more regulated businesses and industries such as financial services. It also means, to be frank, that there is less knowledge about how best to support them as we recover.

Before the pandemic, Britain’s DCMS sectors were some of the fastest growing, with the creative industries growing at three times the rate of the UK economy as a whole. The creative industries alone contributed over £115 billion to the UK in 2019. That is equivalent to £315 million almost every day, which is a phenomenal contribution. We have world leadership in many of the sectors, including games, music—we have 9% of global music sales—and, as I will return to shortly, festivals and live music events. Covid-19 has meant that most of those sectors have been shuttered for almost a year, with several months yet before they are able to reopen under the Government’s road map. The Prime Minister’s road map set out dates that can now be the target for entertainers, producers, technical staff and audiences alike to get their shows back on the road, so to speak.

The DCMS sectors are estimated to account for over a fifth of the UK economy. Without the growth from those sectors, the UK economy would have been in recession for three of the last four years; yet DCMS spends less than 1% of total Government spending. Although it has some very fine Ministers and officials, it is still seen as somewhat of a Cinderella Department within Westminster. That should not be the case, because those sectors are crucial to our aspirations for global Britain.

Approximately one third of our creatives have been unable to access any Government support during the pandemic, apart from universal credit. It has been difficult for them to meet the rules of the Treasury support schemes due to the fact that they may not have enough evidence of past income to prove what they need. Those excluded are still excluded, and I have to say that many of them are in a very desperate state indeed today.

The culture recovery fund, which the Minister will no doubt refer to, was incredibly welcome, with its £1.57 billion for the arts, but that money was less than half what the sector said that it needed. The second tranche of money is coming to the end of its allocation while thousands of creative businesses remain unable to operate, whereas the tranche of money announced in December still has not been fully distributed. There are question marks over the pattern of distribution, which my Committee will raise with the Arts Council on 12 April. There is a feeling that perhaps those with the sharpest elbows—those with the biggest names—have benefited the most.

I am hopeful, though, that the welcome extra £300 million of investment into the culture recovery fund that was announced in the Budget will mean, effectively, that some of the harder-to-reach community organisations that may not have benefited from the first tranche of cash will be able to benefit in the months ahead. They will help to rebuild our cultural recovery from the ground floor up. It is, however, probably still not enough to see our world-leading arts through the pandemic and post-pandemic period. It is therefore vital that the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport gets the recovery right, and continues to provide sector-specific tailored support to those industries, which must be given the support and certainty to reopen as it becomes safe to do so.

There are questions to be asked about the support that those sectors are getting from DCMS, and how best it ought to be directed. For many months the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee has been arguing for a number of measures, be it an extension of VAT relief so that companies are in a position to sell tickets and benefit from it, to the expansion of reinsurance schemes to cover live events, live performances and the music festival season.

It was a relief to see in the Budget last week that the Chancellor listened, and that an extension of the VAT cut has been announced. Undoubtedly, that will be the push needed over the summer for many of our hospitality and tourism businesses, which have suffered so greatly, but for cultural events and exhibitions alike that may not be enough. To benefit from the reduced rate, they must be able to sell tickets and, up to this point, events have not been happening.

For live events truly to survive this season, the reassurance of a Government-backed insurance scheme is key. It is estimated that a £650 million insurance scheme for live events would allow more than £2 billion of activity to go ahead. That is thousands of jobs across the country— 975 festivals. I know that everyone thinks of them as basically a bunch of kids in a muddy field in Glastonbury, but that is an outlier; we are talking about festivals of small, medium and large scale in all our constituencies across the country. We all know people who appreciate these cultural events—the way they feed into our cultural bloodstream and their vital importance to our way of life.

While there is any possibility of events being cancelled, the industry relies on Government-backed insurance. There is market failure; no one in the private sector is covering covid. The industry cannot survive without a second summer season in a row. It must be said that the live events sector, in which we are world leaders, is near vanishing point. I was pleased to see the extension of the film and TV production restart scheme, giving producers the confidence to return to production, yet the same confidence is key for live events to be able to survive.

At this juncture, I want to flag to the House an important matter that is increasingly coming to my attention. The uncertainty surrounding the live events sector and the increasing desperation of consumers to enjoy themselves once again is leading to the potential for real consumer detriment, with the sale of tickets for events that will not take place or have no possibility of taking place at full capacity.

I am increasingly getting reports of individuals who say that they are hosting a festival but have no permission to do so yet, yet they are selling tickets on the promise of live entertainment in the future. Even if they later have to cancel that festival, there is every chance that they will still make some money, because many people may not ask for their money back as a refund. I alert the House that, without the surety of an insurance scheme and getting everything in black and white, there is an opportunity for potentially less scrupulous individuals to make money out of our hopes and ambitions for a great summer.

That is without even looking into the tremendous knock-on effects on the local economies of places that play host to live events. As I referenced earlier, Glastonbury generates over £100 million for the south-west, but more generally, in all our constituencies, for every £10 spent on a live music ticket, £17 is spent in the local economy. Essentially, without the creative industries and live events, there will be no economic recovery from the pandemic.

The UK is poised to host COP26 later this year. The world will be watching on as we host that great event. It is key that we get the pilots up and running. The National Exhibition Centre, one of the largest organisers and hosts of events in the country, tells me that without the pilots—without ways of testing covid-security, access into events and the way they are organised, and without trying to get individuals re-involved in the supply chain—there is every chance that COP26 will be like the austerity games, the Olympic games post the second world war; they will not be the jamboree that the Prime Minister hopes for, because we do not have the wherewithal. We are losing muscle from these sectors, and we need to replenish it in short order. I therefore urge the Government to get a handle on this and to ensure that the pilots go ahead as quickly as possible—a date of May is mentioned to me as essential—to ensure success at the back end of the year.

The cultural and creative sectors are one of the UK’s greatest exports, but they do vital work in our communities too. Even among those institutions that will survive the pandemic, such as the Royal Shakespeare Company, there is likely to be a reduction in outreach programmes. Similarly, with another significant underspend in the National Citizen Service, poor and minority ethnic children, already worst affected by the prolonged closure of schools, will be those worst affected by a lack of outreach programmes and access.

Social mobility stands to suffer significantly as the arts and performance struggle. In normal times, Britain’s cultural and creative sectors are world-beating, thriving growth sectors; without significant support in the recovery, the damage of covid-19 will scar these industries for years to come.

Finally, I wish to touch on EU visas. Creatives and those in all the parts of the sectors covered by DCMS, including the games industry, performance, music, theatre and cultural events, are frankly bemused at the current arrangement—or lack thereof—with our partners in the EU. In effect, the industry has had a no-deal Brexit. Many Members represent fishing constituencies and we have spent a lot of time and bandwidth talking about that; however, we did not settle the issue of access for our creative people, in respect of whom we had an economic advantage over the EU and with the EU prior to departure. That is a major oversight.

We now face the prospect of having to go to each country in turn to negotiate visa arrangements individually. As yet, we do not know precisely what our asks are, which I find quite incredible considering our huge balance of trade surplus in the creative sectors. We really must ensure that individuals are able to travel as freely as possible and to take their equipment with them through cabotage. After all, the sector is all about people. It is about some of our most creative people—people who represent Britain on the world stage and make our lives better. Although the Government have offered a lot of support over the past 12 months—I acknowledge that—we cannot take our eye off the ball now. More work needs to be done and we all need to put our shoulders to the wheel.

March 11, 2021