How the government can bring back festival cheer
One of the problems with the pictures of Margaret Keenan making history through being the first person to receive a vaccination against Covid-19 is that it’s encouraging people to think everything will be back to normal in, let’s say, May for argument’s sake.
It won’t, of course, and even to move in that direction will require a measure of government action. Take the live events industry, which has lost nearly £60bn worth of business as a result of the pandemic with 90 per cent of this year’s festivals cancelled, sports being played out before empty stadiums if at all, venues with their backs against the wall through being shuttered since March.
The consequences of another year like this would be devastating for both, the industry and the economy. And it could happen even if the vaccine allows measures such as social distancing to be eased to allow
events to go ahead. Promoters face a huge issue with organising them through their inability to secure pandemic insurance cover. They can get some that protects against, say, an Adele cancelling because she loses her voice or a cricket match getting rained off, or an artist’s kit getting pinched.
It’s the stuff covering them against pandemic-related cancellation that they can’t get, and it’s not just Covid-19. It’s any pandemic. Including, say, a late breaking flu outbreak or even, perish the thought, Covid-21. The London insurance market has already lost billions, with claims still coming in. It can’t afford to risk a repeat and so it can’t play ball, or the guitar, or, take your pick.
With cover needing to be secured months in advance, this is putting events that people hoped the vaccine might allow – the London Marathon, say, or Glastonbury – at risk. It has prompted a cross party group of MPs, peers and organisers to write to Oliver Dowden, the culture secretary, with a workable solution under the auspices of the Let LIVE Thrive campaign. This would involve the government stepping in to play the role of insurer of last resort.
Wait, what, you may be saying at this point, is this another appeal for money? Hasn’t Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, done enough with his arts bailout scheme? But this isn’t that at all. The insurance would be sold on commercial terms through a scheme modelled on the one created to cover businesses in London against terrorism in the 1990s and the early 2000s when the IRA’s mainland bombing campaign led to the industrywide withdrawal of terrorism cover.
Faced with a potential economic crisis, the government stepped in to play the role of insurer of last resort. Insurers forwarded premiums to an industry-owned mutual which the Treasury stood behind. It’s still running. It has paid numerous claims but, crucially, the taxpayer has never been called upon to fact. To the contrary. Pool Re has, in fact, delivered a handy return to the exchequer. Some 50 per cent of premium income, and 25 per cent of any profit, goes into the Treasury’s coffers. That amounts to roughly £1bn since the scheme was started.
The principle has been extended to other areas where commercial cover has become so expensive and restrictive that it’s basically unaffordable or has simply been withdrawn. An example would be Flood Re, which covers at-risk properties built before 2009 and could also be adjudged a success.
I understand one of the problems that’s been raised in opposition to the scheme in government quarters is the fear that it may constitute state aid, which is ironically amusing given that the UK’s apparent desire to have the freedom to offer it is responsible for one of the roadblocks in the EU trade negotiations. If they fail, and there’s a good chance they will, how is it a problem at all?
But such a scheme would not amount to state aid, nor would it constitute a subsidy, nor would it amount to anything that hasn’t been done before under the current rules the UK operates under. You can, in fact, file it under the heading of a “throughly good idea” which the signatories, including DCMS Committee chairman Julian Knight and Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey recognise, a road map to putting a huge and important industry back on the rails. But there’s another reason for the government to act. It would deliver something that’s been sadly lacking of late: joy.
Ministers surely ought to be able to recognise the potential benefits they could reap from standing behind joy. Mr Dowden should therefore pay heed to the letter and act upon it. Being the man who opened the gates to the restoration of post-pandemic fun could ultimately prove to be quite the feather in the ministerial cap.