8 minute read
MPs
MPs’ round-up
Historically, an advantage of being set in a group of small islands floating free from the western coast of mainland Europe has been easy access to the rest of the world. Put together a decent navy, and you’re good to go scurrying off around the globe, bringing back spices from India, tea from China, oils from West Africa or bubonic plague from Gascony. Being that precious stone set in the silver sea also offers a ready route to market for anything produced at home. In the past, that’s meant coal shipped off to mainland Europe, woollen textiles carted as far afield as the Americas and, indeed, parliamentary democracy exported sometimes rather forcibly into the hands of other nations. And arguably our most successful export continues to absorb the rest of the world The UK’s influence has been built - and today primarily rests - on its cultural influence. Britain’s creative imagination from football to fashion, poetry to photography, has not only been readily embraced abroad but has allowed our merchants of ideas to reach the parts that others have failed to reach. But now our creative thinkers have been stopped in their tracks. Yes, leaving the European Union has given the Government a unique opportunity to shape our future. To define ourselves in our own image from soup to nuts. I see nothing more than golden horizons and glittering prizes ahead. But for one sector, this panacea is still out of reach. While the Government has forged trade deals with almost 70 countries, including the EU, worth three-quarters of a billion pounds, it’s pulled up short when faced with the fence separating the music industry from touring the European Union. Impenetrable piles of red tape in the guise of cabotage, carnets, visas and work permit charges mean that UK musicians and artists – and their vast entourage of crew and supporting workers – have, since January 2020, been prevented from properly entertaining the continent. In many ways, the pandemic has kept the problem shielded from view. But, as covid begins to recede, like the tide going out, we can see who has been swimming without their bathing costumes. A desperate situation is revealing itself. It’s no exaggeration to describe the UK’s music industry as world leading. Domestically, in a good year it’s worth some £5.8 billion to us and keeps almost 200,000 people happily employed. Figures which, by way of contrast, vastly outpace our steel and fisheries industries combined. The industry is a showcase for Britain abroad. Shining a spotlight, often quite literally, on the homegrown talent we have for decades exported for the joy of the many-headed, and thereby extending the cultural influence and the soft power it induces into the hearts and minds of billions. Given these incontestable facts, my expectation was that Lord Frost would have had the music industry at the top of his headed paper as he sat down with his team of crack negotiators opposite their EU counterparts. And, similarly, I assumed that the EU would be dripping with enthusiasm to ensure not only that their disparate peoples should maintain their regular dose of musical enlightenment, but also that their own artists could tour the UK unimpeded. But I was wrong. Before he chucked in the towel, Frost must have lost that headed paper down the back of the sofa before heading to his meetings, preferring to save his energy for the long battles over Northern Ireland and, of course, our fisheries. A deal for the creative industries has been left undone. I’d need a few hours to describe the ludicrous complexities around cabotage and carnets: the movement of trucks, equipment, instruments and workers across the EU and the unworkable restrictions placed on touring musicians. Cabotage rules were designed to prevent Russian trucks from dumping goods in the EU. They’re now being used to prevent UK musicians spreading pleasure across the EU. Visa rules were designed for migration and trade, not entertainment and cultural exchange. They are being misused. From trance DJs to pop start-ups, from rock icons to symphony orchestras, tours have been cancelled, concerts delayed, and audiences left bereft as the UK’s touring cash registers fail to ring. The EU market is crucial to the UK’s creative arts industry. It’s our largest market and, in addition to the unfettered joy we bring to the continent, without it we would all be the poorer. Economically, artistically, culturally and diplomatically. There are six EU Member States that may require work permits for musicians and performers for any shortterm commercial music performance in their countries: Croatia, Greece Portugal, Bulgaria, Malta and Cyprus. Portugal is a huge overseas market for UK musicians, with Croatia being especially important to DJs. Spain has recently been liberated from this list, as visa-free touring has just been agreed, but this is too little and too slow. If the EU are unwilling to reopen the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, the Government needs to grasp the mettle, lasso the representatives of each state, sit them down and hammer out agreements based on common sense. As the chair of the AllParty Parliamentary Group for Music, I’m chairing an ongoing Inquiry into all these issues. It’s been a revealing journey so far. The picture emerging is one of an entirely unnecessary ordeal, destroying our colossally successful, world-beating industry. And it’s simple stuff to fix. No splitting of the atom required. Just sensible reciprocal agreements. As legendary concert promoter Harvey Goldsmith told the Inquiry, this could all be sorted out over lunch. Let’s not undermine our position on the international stage and lose British jobs and talent. We’re not exporting bubonic plague, we’re exporting pleasure. So I ask the Government, let’s dig that lost paper out of the sofa, get that lunch booked in, and get our incredible creative industry back on the road.
Somerton & Frome MP David Warburton
MPs’ round-up
Putin is fundamentally opposed to western democracy
Widespread power outages in our area from Storm Eunice were surely the worst since the 1970s. I will be pressing for a plan to improve the resilience of the network. On top of all our woes we now have a Putin shaped crisis in eastern Ukraine as the wretched man unilaterally recognises two ‘republics’ of Luhansk and Donetsk as independent, sending ‘peacekeepers’ to prop up the territories. This is a violation of the Minsk peace agreements and of international law. Putin has form in destroying the prospects of the Russian people, previous in Syria, Georgia, Crimea and the Baltic suggests he is fundamentally
MP for South West Wiltshire Dr Andrew Murrison
opposed to any form of western democracy and the international rulesbased order and is intent on reviving the supposed glories of a Soviet, even Tsarist, past. Whether Putin will just consolidate the breakaway so-called republics or push beyond the Dnieper to Kiev and beyond is unclear. Given his bizarre and tendentious ramblings on the non-existence of Ukrainian statehood (see his latest speech and the 5,000word essay he wrote in the summer) we might conclude that he is after the lot. However, the implications of such a move for Russia would be severe. Occupation would spark insurgency and not just from Ukrainians. Islamists from Chechnya, Libya, and Syria have been known to fight against proRussian forces in Ukraine since 2014. One is left thinking that this is the latest in a series of Russian regime miscalculations and one that will have dire consequences for the long-suffering Russian people. There is some good news, however – that is the lapsing of covid restrictions. I commended the Prime Minister before Christmas for holding his nerve in lifting covid restrictions when it would have been easy to do the reverse amid omicron and do so again now. The vaccination programme has been massively successful in reducing hospitalisation, particularly ITU admission. I also called for the mandatory vaccination of healthcare workers to be rescinded given the evidence. I’m pleased that has now happened.
We are dealing with a Russia that knows no bounds
In November 2013, I remember being in Chicago and seeing a considerable protest with yellow and blue flags. It brought attention to the situation in Ukraine and the Crimea. On Thursday last week, a similar protest occurred outside my office on Whitehall, opposite the Cenotaph. It was a moving protest by hundreds of Ukrainians again, but this time it was a protest for the British Government to come to the aid of their families and their country. I stood at the window and watched the first proper and moving protest on Whitehall since I was elected, not least when they sang their national anthem ‘We will lay down our souls and bodies to attain our freedom’. I receive almost daily briefings from the Foreign
MP for West Dorset Chris Loder
Office on the latest. And I can tell you this is a very serious situation that poses many mid- and long-term risks to us. Russia has lied on countless occasions. Ukraine surrendered its nuclear defence on the promise from Russia that it would never be invaded. The Russian ambassador told the Foreign Secretary that Russia would not invade Ukraine - but of course they have, with full force. I fear that our government’s efforts to reach a diplomatic and political solution will not be possible. Russia has also told Sweden and Finland not to consider NATO membership as there will be political and military consequences. The French Navy has intercepted a Russian ship in the English Channel on Saturday and we know that there are Russian submarines in the North Atlantic and some close to our waters with considerable capability. But we are dealing with a Russia that knows no bounds: becoming closer with China, with vulnerable countries such as Latvia, Estonia, maybe Belarus and others a logical follow up - and many people from that region will say they’ve feared this day for a long time. In Ukraine, on the television, we’ve seen real courage from citizens taking up arms, in a way we would liken to the Second World War. I find that very moving but makes me feel we should do more to help an innocent democracy. However, direct involvement will trigger a third world war. We’ll have to contend with Russia likely provoking our reaction in the coming days and weeks. It wants us to react. It has provoked us for many years. We’ve not been strong enough to stand up against it previously – but we shall have to reconsider our stance going forward.
