Kemi Baddenoch MP, Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, Treasury

Caroline Dinenage MP,  Minister of State for Digital and Culture, Department for Culture, Media and Sport

Dear Ministers,

I am writing to urge your Government to take immediate and far reaching action to protect the cultural and creative industries from the ongoing effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

It’s particularly crucial that the Self Employed Income Support Scheme (SEISS) is vastly improved to give proper support to all those affected. The situation faced by self-employed workers in these industries is desperate. It is likely that the cultural and creative sector will be amongst the last to fully reopen due to the difficulties of being able to satisfy the requirements of social distancing for workers and audiences alongside ensuring that their work, particularly in the live performance sector, is financially viable. Many in the sector make the majority of their living in just a few months each year, and will very likely not have worked since last summer and have no income prospects until this time next year.

Making the SEISS fit for purpose would be a lifeline for many of my constituents and the cultural and creative industries as a whole. In particular, the scheme needs to address the exclusion of PAYE freelancers who aren’t eligible for the CJRS; those whose earnings are a mix of self-employed incomes and PAYE; the newly self-employed, start ups, and small limited company directors; those whose profits are in excess of £50k, a cap which renders the scheme inconsistent with the upper limits of the CJRS; and parents and carers who have had recent gaps in their earnings because of pregnancy or caring responsibilities, bringing down their average taxable monthly profits.

Moreover, according to Equity, performers and other creative practitioners earn on average £10k a year from their work in the industry and so without an extension to the SEISS, will be unable to survive this crisis. They may be waiting until 2021 before their workplaces, including theatres, pubs and live entertainment venues are able to fully re-open, enabling them to earn a living. Now that the Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) has now been extended until October, they need a guarantee that the Self Employed Income Support Scheme (SEISS) will also be extended until social distancing measures are no longer in force and mass gatherings are permitted.

You will be aware that the Scottish Government has created a hardship fund specifically for self-employed people who fall through the current gaps in the SEISS and, in the absence of the improvements set out above, I call on you to follow their lead. But now is also the time to think about what the future of our economy looks like, and I would draw your attention to the actions of the German authorities, who have recognised that the cultural and creative sector is both of huge value and needs support over and above that already provided to the workforce as a whole, bringing forward a specific rescue package for the music and wider creative sector worth 50 billion euros.  We should be replicating this ambition in the UK, starting with the creation of a Cultural Sector Hardship Relief Fund to take action on grassroots theatres, arts centres, community pubs, any space that is a vital hub of culture and social interaction in our communities, and funded in part by redirecting the £122 million ear marked for the 2022 Festival of Great Britain – an event which will ring hollow if the heart and soul of the UK’s cultural and creative sector has been destroyed.

Investing in the future of the arts makes economic, as well as wider cultural and social, sense. In 2018/19, Greater Brighton’s performing arts sector directly turned over £329 million and employed 3,500 people. The wider economic impact of leaving the sector behind would be far greater - for example, the economic impact of Royal Pavilion, Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, Brighton Dome & Theatre Royal alone is assessed annually at £64m, whilst the overall creative sector including IT/software turned over £1.5bn and employed 16,000 people in 2018/19. If the freelancers, self-employed people and small limited companies on which the sector relies are forced to leave there will be a long-term negative impact for Brighton and Hove as one of the UK’s most vibrant city for the arts and culture, and our country will be poorer as a whole.

The effect of social distancing on music venues in my constituency and further afield is particularly keenly felt. 107 are considered at high risk in Brighton and Hove including, Green Door Store, Latest Music Bar, Komedia, The Prince Albert, The Pipeline. Measure to protect them need to be a priority for a live entertainment task force, yet theatres and music venues are currently being considered together with cinemas, libraries and museums. A dedicated taskforce could also be looking at the capacity for good community track and trace to allow performances to go ahead, as has happened in places like South Korea, creating clarity about what might be allowed in various future scenarios and giving the sector help to prepare. The capacity to plan ahead, and having the certainty and information needed to do so, is something I am hearing time and again from the sector should be a Government priority – and that there needs to be a consistent standard and set of benchmarks.

My city hosts over 60 festivals a year and is a hotbed of creativity. It is also leading the way nationally in widening access to the arts and unleashing the creative lives unlived in excluded communities. The energy, innovation and dynamism which define the cultural and creative sector cannot be allowed to die. I therefore want to express serious concern that the Government’s cultural taskforce does not include enough representation from people with understanding and experience of the arts – as home to the largest annual arts festival in England, Brighton and Hove is seeking representation on it.

The value of the cultural and creative industries can be seen all around us today, from the live streaming of theatre shows, to the performers leading choirs online. It is not a nice add on, or a luxury, it must be at the heart of our recovery. I would be happy to host a meeting between Ministers and city leaders to discuss the future of the sector and look forward to your response to the points I have made in this letter.

Yours sincerely,