Welcome to this morning’s meeting of the Culture, Media and Sports Select Committee, where we are opening the door to oral evidence for our inquiry on major events. We will be examining the challenges facing the events that are highlights of our cultural and sporting calendars each year, and how the industry can tap into new opportunities for growth and collaboration. We have received a huge amount of written evidence, submissions from people and organisations across the country, for which we are super grateful. We have a fantastic panel of witnesses for our first evidence session on this. We are joined by witnesses from some of the umbrella organisations who represent the biggest events across the country. We have Nick Bitel from the Major Events Organisers Association. We have David Tremmil, the Vice Chair of UK Events, and we have Jon Collins, the CEO of LIVE. Welcome to all of you. We have already spent plenty of time with Jon talking about the plight of our smallest music events in our grassroots music venue inquiry, but now we are also delighted to be able to move him to the other end of the scale to look at our major events as well, so welcome to you all. I remind Members to declare any interest before they ask their questions. I will kick off with a pretty general question to all of you, and I will start with you, Nick. Looking at the golden thread that links major events together, some of the events we are talking about are diverse, but what are the shared challenges facing the sector?

First of all, thank you for inviting us to take part in this. I would say that one of the overarching issues is that the Government have tended to look at major events through the lens of the bid for events, the Olympics or the World Cups or those sorts of things, and then the annual events, what we would see as the crown jewels, the Wimbledons of this world and things of that nature. We do not have a single point of contact. We do not have a one stop that we can go to. We are forever dealing with various parts of Government. For my sins, I am an occasional lawyer and one of my clients is UEFA. I acted for UEFA at the last European Championships when they were in nine countries, one of which was Britain. It was a stark contrast that in Britain we had to deal with virtually every single Government Department, whereas for other countries on that nine-country roster, you would have a single point of government contact, so that is one. Lack of co-ordination, I would say. In one of my other hats we put on large-scale sports events at the London Marathon. One of them was an event called RideLondon. We dealt with 15 local authorities, four police forces, four different ambulance authorities, lots of different health trusts, and every single one of them you are having to go to separately. There are lots of multiple SAGs. It becomes quite wearying sometimes, the number of meetings you have to go to get these events on. The other thing I would mention is transport issues. Our transport is again quite diverse, quite fragmented, as are the utilities. You find the same roads being dug up five, six times by different people. For the Olympics, there was a special section within the Olympic Act that said that notice had to be given before we did that work. We do not have those sorts of things to protect the regular major events. One of the things that we have been asking for is a major events Bill, a major events Act, as we see in other countries. That is the thing that you would put in there along with greater protection for intellectual property. There is a range of issues. I will leave others to add some more. I have more, but I will stop there maybe.

All right. We are passing the baton in our sporting analogy to David. What golden threads can you add?

Recognition is the biggest. We contribute a lot to the economy, and sometimes that gets completely lost. Having a formal recognition would help, because I think then everybody understands how much we do contribute and what areas that comes in. I would say, for us, that is one of the biggest things. I would add into that regulation with local authorities. That is also a problem for us, the inconsistency there with legislation and how that works. I echo exactly what Nick said there, but I would add those in. Recognition is the biggest part, and this will help elevate the recognition that we need.

Jon, the same question to you: what are the golden threads that link major events together, but also what are the unique challenges that face music events?

Thank you. I would agree on the recognition point. We are world class at what we do—we know that—whether it is putting on a huge sporting occasion, or it is the best festivals that we have globally or the biggest artists who are choosing to either come to the UK or they are from the UK and they are playing at our stadiums and outdoor spaces. We have had recognition from the Government in the industrial strategy and then the creative industry sector plan that says that we are part of the engine of growth for the next 10 years and barriers to that growth will be removed. The frustration is whether that is fully recognised by all Government Departments and acted on by all Government Departments. You lose momentum when it touches the bigger Departments of state, like the Home Office and the Treasury, and then we get into challenges around costs and bringing talent into the country. That is another thread that we all share.

That is interesting. Then, back to Nick and David, are there any particular distinct challenges that face specific cultural or sporting events?

One I would mention is that a number of our members—and indeed my own events at the London Marathon—are not venue specific. We have roving events like the Open, which moves from venue to venue, and then we have road-based events, things like the London Marathon, the Tour of Britain, and, although they are not members of ours, you have things like the Notting Hill Carnival and Pride, and it is sometimes difficult to see the Government’s understanding of those. We have had quite difficult conversations with the Home Office on Martin’s Law and how it would interact with those types of legislation. I have a meeting later on today—as I know others do—with the Home Office on police charges and, again, how that will affect road-based events. That is not just our type of events. It may be the Portobello Road market or the Columbia Road flower market or county shows that shut roads. We seem to fall between two stools on those types of events.

Thinking about you guys on how new Government legislation actually impacts a different type of event.

We see it quite a bit in legislation. I have no arguments with legislation like an employment Bill. There was no consultation about what the effect on zero-hour contracts would be on the event industry, and they have a different type of profile because you are doing one day here and another day there. The additional cost there would be to onboard people, and say, “Well, actually you are only working that one day. It is a one-day contract” and take them on again for another day at another time in the year. It is things of that nature that I don’t think there is that deep understanding of the needs of our industry, and especially not an industry that is not full-time stadium based.

David, anything to add to that?

Probably high costs. That is a major problem for us here. When you are looking at global competition outside, looking at the UK, the UK is an expensive place to do events. Sometimes that can get missed and Government Departments need to understand that. It is so important. Our members run on a very tight profit margin, so when they are not consulted and, all of a sudden, costs go up and they have no control, it is a major issue for us. It makes us less competitive, so that is a major problem. When you are looking globally, everybody else seems to understand it and they put a lot of support into that. With the UK, or certainly England, it just gets left behind. We just pick ourselves up and carry on.

Thank you very much. Damian, do you want to come in there?

Yes. Nick, can I pick you up on what you were talking about there on employment? What do you think will be the effects of the Employment Rights Bill on this sector?

Well, we have not seen the final version of it yet.

How much more change are you expecting?

We will see. Certainly, from what we have seen so far, it is the industry, for instance, you take something like the R&A who put on the Open and also the Women’s Open, you would employ people for those two events. You would not employ them year-round, and so you are having to onboard then off-board, and that all adds cost. We are seeing more cost. Also, with our supplier base, we are already facing supply issues, especially in the security industry. A lot of us are saying that this will add to the cost there quite significantly, we believe.

Are you able to quantify in any way the cost effect?

All we are told by our suppliers is that there will be a significant increase. We have not been told how much as yet. Jon, I don’t know whether you have found this at all.

We have similar challenges. For example, with arenas we have busy parts of the year and quieter parts of the year. If we are told to calculate after 12 weeks, “These are the hours that you need to commit to giving to that person”, well, it is quite probably unrepresentative of what the next six months looks like. We are still trying to figure it out. Often we have to try to navigate our way through systems that are not designed for us. On that issue, we are looking at: well, will we have to slim down our roster and have fewer people because we will make these commitments? We cannot inflate the wage bill by making commitments right across the current number of people we retain. Another example is with visas. We are having real difficulty bringing people into the country at the moment. You need a certificate of sponsorship for your visa. Technically, you are supposed to know whether that person is getting the minimum wage. So, when Taylor Swift is coming into the country, we are supposed to know that she is definitely getting minimum wage.

I think I can give you some reassurance, Jon.

Indeed, and whether Bruce Springsteen is on the company pension scheme. Well, we cannot—

That I am not so sure about. Just to—

Before you continue, just bear in mind that we have a question later on about the impact of upcoming legislation.

In which case, Chair, I shall defer to that moment.

Just call me Mystic Meg, as if I could tell what was supposed to come out of his mouth. Can I ask one more question before I hand on to Cam? In an ideal world, if we were to sort out all of these things, the right support, the right legislation, the right cutting through the bureaucracy, what more could the UK events sector achieve if it was given the perfect scenario in which to flourish at its full potential?

There is some infrastructure that is needed. We are not particularly well off for large-scale conference facilities. We have NEC and ExCeL, but they do not even feature in the top 10 in Europe. There are limitations with what we have, but there is a lot more business out there to win, both in the event space and in exhibition and conference space.

Jon, on music, could we achieve more?

Completely. We know that there is the demand domestically. Only 10% of people don’t think about going to live music. Internationally, we had £10 billion on music tourism last year. That is domestic and international added together. As we have talked previously, there is a contraction in touring at the moment. Part of that is because of the cost and the complexity of bringing people in and putting shows on in the UK. If we can ease pressures, you will see more shows in arenas and you will have more festivals.

Yes, and David?

I echo that completely. We know we are a powerhouse, so if we are given the right tools, absolutely, we can make a big difference. We just need engagement. If everybody engages with us and understands our industry, we can certainly fill the coffers for you. Absolutely.

Excellent. That is what we want to hear.

Speaking of filling the coffers, UK Events state that major events deliver £62 billion to the UK economy, and the National Arena Association states that £1 million is spent in areas surrounding events that attract 10,000 spectators. With that context, David, your evidence highlighted the lack of a standard industry classification code for the events industry. Can you tell us why that is so important?

It is really important for us. Recently, the DBT consulted with us and we updated 19 SIT codes. What it does is it aligns things—the Government will understand the money and the areas that are in the industry. If you are looking at, say, events and you are looking at festivals, it makes it easier for them to see where we have challenges and there may be areas that we can help to boost. It is important for us to make sure that everybody understands the value of our industry, and that is the only way of doing that. We have just submitted 19—we did with the Business of Events and MIA and Beam. Therefore, that has gone out, and we have another consultation I think in March, so that will come back to us. Hopefully, they will take us on board because it covers everybody from venue finders to AV suppliers. It brings everybody together under the one roof, which is easy for you then to see the value of what we are as an industry.

Thanks, David. Jon, I can see you nodding along there, and in fact I think Nick might want to come in as well. Do either of you have anything you would like to add to that?

What I would add is that in sport, we use Sheffield Hallam for economic benefit analysis, and certainly that UK Sport has an overarching contract with it. That tends to measure only direct monetary benefits. One of the things that our members are keen on is trying to measure and get what is understood by the non-monetary benefits, things like well-being. If I take Ride London, an event that I used to put on, the evidence was that it got 30,000 people back onto their bikes cycling regularly, so what is the benefit of that to the nation? We had 1.1 million people apply to take part in the London Marathon next year. Those are people who are enthused to take part in exercise and running. Again, that has a well-being benefit. That is not recognised or measured in a consistent way.

Yes, and soft power aspects. Jon, any other thoughts?

My thoughts immediately went to when lockdown hit and the Government were looking to understand the value of the different sectors and how they were being impacted, and our sector suffered because the vast difference in the SIC and SOC codes that people were using meant that it was not immediately obvious what we were worth. I totally agree. We need to try to find a way of rallying around a small number of codes. I have a concern from the industry side as to how we marshal all those thousands of businesses to do that. I don’t know if you have any further thoughts on this, David, but some assistance from the Government side to corral those codes into a smaller set so that we have more visibility as to what we are worth.

You may have answered my second question there, Jon. It was coming to you anyway. The Government will be looking for more creative ways to harness the same information.

Yes, that is the challenge, isn’t it? Did you have anything on the SIC and SOC?

No.

I know there is a campaign called We Make Events that sprung up during lockdown. It has spent years trying to get the industry to sit alongside two codes. It feels to me a bit of a Sisyphean task: will we ever get to the top of that mountain? Whether there is something the Government can do to help on the codes or whether there is something we can do on—I guess for most of your events, Nick, there will be an economic impact assessment that is done after the event, and for most festivals there will be. I know the larger arenas have done that as well, so you can see that the O2 Arena has generated X-amount for the local area over its time as a venue. Whether they could be the building blocks that we could use to calculate value.

Thank you. Anything you would like to add to that, David?

No.

That is what we like, everyone speaking from the same script.

The most recent one, the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act, no one quite knows what that will mean for the event industry as yet. There will be a layering of costs as a result. How widespread and what it will be, we do not know because we have not seen the regulations yet. We do not know what the SIA will require, but it will be. We have potential for police costs. As we know, that is being consulted on at the moment. The Employment Rights Bill, and tourism tax, which has just been given the go-ahead. A lot of our events rely to some extent on overseas tourism, and will that make Britain less attractive? Will it mean that people want to spend less money because the cost is higher? Then we have some strange ones. We have things like the accommodation legislation, legislation licensing on restricting short-term lets, where some of these events are going into places that are not well served by permanent hotel accommodation. I think of things like the Open going into Royal Troon, where there were not enough hotel rooms in the area to deal with, so you would be looking for short let. Again, if you are trying to attract tens of thousands of people into some of these events, that is another barrier. It is all layering. It is not one particular thing. It is thing after thing after thing, I think, is the issue.

Can I offer one good, one bad? I agree with all of that, but on the Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Act, I think that is an interesting example of a piece of legislation where we all agree with the broad thrust, how do we work and all share responsibilities on reducing, preparing for terrorist incidents and reducing the likelihood for larger premises? Early on in that process, there was a discussion about licensing. It was felt that primary legislation was needed because counter-terrorism duties within the premises was not something that was legally enforceable, it was voluntary. Actually, for every single one of my venues, festivals, and events, that is not the case. We have a licence and on that licence it says, “You will protect the public. You will prevent crime and disorder” and you can, if you wish, put specific conditions on there, like there are on the arenas in Manchester now about what you will do to address counter-terrorism. Therefore, that feels like a good example of a piece of legislation where the broad thrust of it we all support, but did it really recognise and understand the way we work as a sector and the licensing regime we operate under? Then the good piece of legislation that we hope is coming very quickly is the secondary ticketing legislation, which the Government reasserted their commitment to legislate fairly recently. We are hoping that will be in the King’s Speech—whenever that may be—next year, and that we can get legislation at the earliest opportunity because, if we remove the touts, it will make everybody more confident about buying tickets. They will get to the actual fans in the first instance, and they will get them at the price they were supposed to pay.

We absolutely agree with that. I would say that our experience in football, of course, is that although there has been a law for many, many years banning ticket touts, because of its lack of extraterritoriality, it has rather a large hole in the middle of it, so we still see lots of overseas-based websites selling tickets. One of the things that could be done is, in the same way as you can go to the courts to get a ban on websites that misuse broadcast IP, if you could get a ban on websites based abroad that are breaking that law, I think that would help.

From our point of view, we are wanting to see what it says about hospitality and travel, because that is a vital part of the funding of a lot of events. I want to see how the ban on resales will affect those particular parts.

They have covered all my points well.

We are a resilient sector and the adage, the show must go on, is a truism because it is true. It is incredible how people still manage to make those events happen, often despite the regulatory barriers that have been put in place rather than because of them. I am trying to think of specifics—

One of the good things that I see is that our industry—hopefully, we are evidence of—actually works together quite well. You may think that we are economic rivals on occasions, but we share information. We are often sharing staff. We have people from Wimbledon working, and from the RFU. So that shared knowledge and shared best practice, is one of the key ways that we deal with a lot of the issues that we are facing.

The production talent that we have in this country is incredible. It is world class and we do share them. They will be working on a music festival one week and then at the British Open the next week and who knows where the week after.

We have looked at this in some areas. We have cautious lawyers who tell us that we have to slightly worry about monopolistic behaviour and an abuse of dominant market position if we try to get together sometimes to do co-contracts and co-supply contracts. It is a bit of a barrier to try to do too much together sometimes.

Yes, the duty will be on the individual employers so that will be the challenge there.

First, should the police have a slightly wider duty than they have? We have seen in some other places where the police have a duty to help the community not just with safety and security but also enrich the communities. If you came at it from that point of view, you would not just see events as a cash cow. That is what we think is behind some of this. It is an attempt to get more money in. A lot of the events that we are talking about are not-for-profit events. Some of them require public subsidy already, things like Notting Hill Carnival and Pride. If you layer on cost there, where will the money come from? It is not clear. We do have concerns about that. I suspect the Home Office is really after football there. Football is a member of our organisation and I think that it would say, “Why should we be treated differently from anyone else?” But that is a point of difference that some would go for.

If Millwall gets promoted, which of course we all hope it does, and then it plays my team, West Ham, who we hope do not go down, I think their policing bill at a West Ham-Millwall game could be quite significant.

I am not even going to comment. Damian, we are releasing you from the traps now.

Bless, thank you. Going back to the employment question. Can you come back to basics and say, typically for events, what the employment contract is? Is it with a venue typically or with an event, like a one-off or an occasional entity, or is it typically with a temp agency, if you are the individual? I do not know who is best placed to give an overview.

I would say all the above. One of the interesting things with this inquiry is you have chosen 10,000 as the start point for major events. That takes in all arenas, and so you have permanent bricks and mortar buildings there, permanent companies, so there is probably some direct employment going on. There will also be agencies, for example, on security that will be providing it. If you go to the field side of live music and annual events in fields, probably 80% of the people there will be freelance.

This is about trying to understand what the effect of the Employment Rights Bill will be, because it will be different. If you have a one-off event, you do not even get to the length of the reference period, do you, to be able to measure it? If you are in a venue, you will have seasonality, like busy periods, not busy periods. That is one thing. The temp age or the staffing age is a completely different kind of question, because, in theory—as Vicky was saying—you could be moving to different events at different times of the year. What I am trying to understand is how big an impact do we think the Employment Rights Bill, as currently drafted, will have on this sector? Is it not as big as people might imagine?

I will give you some figures for one of our events that we represent, which is the London Marathon. The London Marathon has 150 full-time staff. To put on the event it would take 6,000 direct staff and then a whole lot of agency staff who are coming in as well. That is the scale of the difference that you would be looking at.

Have you had a conversation with the Government about what happens if you have a piece of employment that isn’t actually long enough to be the reference period and, therefore, what that individual’s rights are? If they work for, say, three weeks on a zero-hours contract, maybe 40-plus hours in those weeks, it is a busy time, what are their rights?

We have not had a response to that yet.

Have you asked the question?

Yes.

Are you awaiting a response?

Yes.

That is helpful to know. Do you think in this sector that the Employment Rights Bill will have some impact on the structure of employment itself? In other words, one thing you might expect is to have fewer individual events employing people or venues employing people and more contract staff, more staff agency. Is that the sort of thing you expect? Who would make more money in that case? Would it be the individual or would it be the agency?

I don’t think it will affect the individual in terms of increasing their base pay. The agency is the ones that will be doing the work and will look for the reward.

Okay, thank you. On secondary ticketing, you mentioned, en passant, the point about extraterritoriality. Isn’t that quite fundamental? If you ban something in Britain but you cannot ban it elsewhere—there are parallel debates about online gambling and so on—to what extent do you cut out secondary ticketing as opposed to move the margin on secondary ticketing to some people domiciled for tax purposes outside the UK?

That is where a lot of them are already. If you look at the industrial sales of secondary tickets, it typically is people who are domiciled abroad. I cannot recall the detail at the moment, but there is something in the proposals that is international in nature and is looking to address that loophole because we did discuss it during the consultation. There are also elements in there about obligations on social media sites as well.

Good luck, Jon. We have been there.

Good luck to the CMA. The CMA will be the one asked to regulate that one.

Although the platforms may be based abroad and there are platforms out there that are—Ticombo and many others—from our research, most of the sellers are actually British-based. They are just advertising their tickets abroad.

Obviously there are further discussions, analysis and understanding to come, but what impact do you expect this legislation to have on actual volumes of secondary ticket sales?

Significant. You look at where it has been introduced in other countries. The Oasis sale last summer, where everybody was in the queue at the same time, alongside 1 million bots that were trying to buy tickets. There was not that situation for the Dublin concerts because they have similar legislation to what we are proposing here in place in Ireland, so, as a live music sector, we are wholeheartedly behind this.

We are definitely wholeheartedly behind it, but what we have seen in North America, where you have New York, for instance, which has similar legislation, but New Jersey doesn’t, unsurprisingly, all the touts are based in New Jersey. We might just see a bit of a shift is possible.

I refer the panel to my statement of interests. Once upon a time I worked in the industry and owned a number of festival brands, both small and large, and more recently I consulted to the industry, as well across some of the major events in the country. My first question is: how effective is the UK Government in supporting major events? Are there particular Government Departments that are better, more flexible, more amenable to the work that the industry does? Leaning into that, David, you mentioned contribution recognition around tax codes and stuff like that, which I think is important because that cements the case in many respects. A bit leading, but certainly where are we at with regards to Government Departments?

For us, DCMS is good. It talks to us and we have a line of communication with it. I would say the biggest one that we do not have any communication with is the Treasury, which is key to us. We are talking about the changes the Treasury can make very quickly with no consultation, and it does not realise the immediate effect it has on our industry. It is a hard thing to process when you cannot have that conversation. DBT is stretched but it is good. The Home Office is slow, as I think my fellow witnesses will agree. It would be good to have a good line of communication with all of those Departments when they are doing things because, when it affects our industry, it is good for them to know what it does and sometimes how damaging it can be, and we are the people who are best placed to talk about that. We are one of those industries that gets up and brushes ourselves off and carries on, but there does come a point when actually we cannot continue doing that. So, DCMS definitely, but I think if we can get a line of communication with everybody, that will make a big difference to our industry.

Brilliant. Thank you. Jon, would you like to comment on that?

It is interesting that the team in DCMS is called the Major and Commemorative Events Team. That gives you an indication of where its focus is. It is when the bunting is going out. It is the big national celebrations. Whereas, actually for us, major events are what is happening at the O2 on a Tuesday, Co-op Live on a Wednesday, Wembley Arena on a Thursday, wherever else we might be, and then the festivals across the summer. So, yes, DCMS certainly. It has expanded its team. It is engaged in our issues, but then it is going up against the Home Office on policing costs, the terrorism legislation, the special police services, visas, and bringing talent into the UK. It does not consistently flow through there. Then with the Treasury the biggest barrier to us putting more events on in this country is the 20% VAT on tickets. We cannot even start the conversation about that with the Treasury. It is a total brick wall. Then the business rates changes that were announced in the Budget, which is a great example of David’s, of something being sprung upon us. Business rates were supposed to be going up in the digital economy to bring down rates in the high street, so balancing out the clicks and bricks. That evolved into a policy of “We are going to have lower business rates on the high street by charging higher business rates on the logistic hubs and the out-of-town distribution centres and the warehouses”. That evolved into, “If you are above £0.5 million rateable value, you are going to pay the multiplier. If you are below it, you are going to pay less”. That captured every large music venue in the country in the upper threshold, including grassroots music venues in high rateable value areas. Then what was delivered in the Budget has sent arena bills up 100%, 200%, 300%, and still sent the grassroots music venues rates up 20%, 30%, 50%, 100%. Again, that is an example of within that Department it feels like that was an unintended consequence. I do not believe they actually thought that was what they were doing when they announced it, but that is what we are now having to deal with, and we are calling very urgently for that to be addressed.

That touches on your point around—part of it anyway—that economic impact assessment. Nick, would you like to come in on that?

Yes, some around the table may recall the short-lived Sports Business Council, which was set up by DCMS in 2017. That was an attempt to—instead of DCMS constantly battling when things happened—elevate the status of sports business with other Departments. Its mission was to show the thinking about increasing exports, promoting international trade, developing skills, access to finance, and supporting growth. Now, those were all hitting other Government Departments, which they could then champion. Unfortunately, that council never really did very much, if we are honest. It died a death fairly quickly. That idea of other Departments seeing the value and, therefore, being at the core of what they are trying to do, I think that is what we would like to see, rather than DCMS constantly having to go, in effect, with a begging bowl to other Departments and saying, “You are doing something that is going to hurt”. It is more saying, “Well, look, sport could help you”—that is sport and culture, of course—“achieve your aims and your purposes”.

Nick, I will come to you partly because you have very good taste in football teams. What I would say is—certainly through some of my work prior to this place—I have come across a number of clients and colleagues where we have been working on European-based events or UK events, and their frustration with working in the UK and the UK being one of the hardest. Certainly, to your point, Jon, it is definitely one of the best, one of the most dynamic and exciting but, from a bureaucratic perspective, it was expensive. It was difficult to produce events here. It was always hard. It always is, which was always frustrating to hear when I was working with Portuguese and French clients. How do Government Departments collaborate when dealing with major events?

Other than at the highest level, the Olympics, or a World Cup, that sort of thing, there is not that much that goes on. Certainly for the annual events, we don’t have any degree of co-ordination whatsoever. We are constantly having to have multiple conversations. As I said, I think it is different for a major event, especially one where there is a large public investment and a public bidding process because there the Government often has had to give guarantees as part of the bidding process that they will do X, Y and Z on visas, on tax, on carnets or whatever else it might be. With the announcement of the bid for the Women’s World Cup, as an example, it will come with guarantees that the Government will have to give. There we do see a degree, but we do not see that in the annual events to any great extent. We are relying then on the goodwill of DCMS battling for us and sometimes local authorities. Let’s remember that local authorities have a massive part to play in this, and the devolved administrations—if you are going to Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales—they have a massive part to play. Again, especially on peripatetic events, like the Ryder Cup going to Wales or something of that nature, there you do tend to get more co-ordinated buy-in because it is a special one-off event.

Thank you. Which I suppose points to that single point of contact that you mentioned at the beginning of this session as well. That might be a way to do that.

You see that sometimes in the film industry. Certainly, if you have film offices, we see that a lot abroad where there is one film office that deals with everything. Liverpool has one and Glasgow has one as well.

Jon, would you like to add to that?

I agree. From our perspective, major events are annual festivals or the arena and stadia shows. Your primary point of contact there may be the local authority, not central government, because they hold the licence or they have administered the licensing process. There isn’t the sense that we have the Government at our back trying to help us to do more and drive things through. It is more: that function is within that Department, that is within that Department, and actually your primary focus will be on Manchester City Council, Liverpool Council, wherever you might be basing your event.

David, would you like to come in? Anything else?

No, they have covered that.

I think we will be circling back to that, but, Chair, thank you.

We will come on to talk about the devolved Administrations and local authorities, but, on the Government, it strikes me that when there is a major event happening, sometimes there are lessons that need to be learned from it, and sometimes there are legacies that need to be seized and capitalised on as a result of it. To what extent is that happening at a government level? To what extent is there that kind of institutional memory within Government Departments that learn the lessons but also capitalise on the legacies of events? Does anyone have any thoughts on that?

Less so in Government. There are some long-serving people within DCMS who certainly have some corporate memory. One of the things that UK Sport is trying to do, is set up a separate events business, which will therefore be able to hold that corporate memory and then take skills and put them into other events. UK Sport does not have a remit for the annual events. It only has a remit for the bid for events. It does not sit anywhere in particular within Government, but UK Sport will be the nearest on a regular basis other than one or two individuals within DCMS.

Is that something that needs to improve? Am I pulling something out of thin air or would there be value in learning the lessons but also capitalising on the legacy of making—

It would be interesting to see to what extent UK Sport might have any appetite to look at annual events, some of which are much, much larger than the events that it is supporting. With the best will in the world, the European Table Tennis Championship is not on the scale of a Wimbledon, and yet one is getting support, and one isn’t. That may be where it could sit.  

Nick, you mentioned the devolved Administrations. I do not know about Northern Ireland, but the Welsh and Scottish Governments have major events teams. What does that change in practice and is that something that should be replicated on a UK level or is it more appropriate at, say, the London level, the Manchester Combined Authority level?

It will be at an area level rather than a national level, to be honest with you. I was involved with the Ryder Cup when it went to Scotland. We had a good single point of contact there who we would go to for all sorts of issues that we were having with police, with transport, ticket touting, all sorts of things. That probably sat best there. I would not have thought that it was—

What do they do? Who is on this team?

It was multidisciplinary within the Scottish Government.

Was it someone from the police? Was it like COBR, but for events?

In effect, yes. As an example, Alex Salmond came along to some of the meetings.

Wow, okay. You do not think there is a need for that at a UK Government level, but rather at a regional-city level?

It is more likely to sit at a city level. I think that—

How would that address your issues with, say, like, for example, the Treasury?

This overarching idea that the Sports Business Council had would deal with the higher-level ambitions rather than the delivery part of it. The delivery part of it will sit more at a local level, where the police are responsible to the local authorities or the devolved Administrations, things of that nature, where the Government probably don’t have a role. It should sit within the local authorities because they are the ones that are picking up the bill and they are the ones that may be getting the benefit. However, the higher-level ambition, skills development, and things of that nature I think need to be at a high level in the Government.

Major events has two meanings, doesn’t it? For each major event you have a team. The Open coming to Scotland is a major event that would have an operational team attached to it. There is also the concept of how as a country we make the most out of major events in general. Then you do want someone from the Treasury and someone from law enforcement and so on. Is that a fair way to put it?

Absolutely. It is the difference between the overarching policy framework in which we operate and then the operational requirements of that individual event. For me, that certainly will be at either the metro mayor or city level.

Would that be co-ordinated at a governmental level? You talk about the fact that there is a major events team within DCMS, but they tend to concentrate on a big-ticket item, like an Olympics, rather than something that happens annually that still has a huge impact. Would that be better co-ordinated by a single Government Department like DCMS, or would it be better and more impactful if it were an overarching Government Department, something like the Cabinet Office, that could bring people together because its tentacles are able to reach out into the different Government Departments? Have you had any thoughts on that?

I would agree with that. The more people, more Departments are involved, the better it is. It feeds into everybody. There is a caveat with that. I think business events should not be part of a major events team because it is a completely different entity. It has its own ecosystem. We talk about business events as part of that, but it needs to be taken out of that because it sits in a different place. That is quite an important thing to say, that we take that out. I know you have another session afterwards, but it is quite important that we take that out of major events because it is quite different in the way our ecosystem works. There are so many different pull factors there and we can get lost in sport, live events, and festivals, so that is a caveat for that.

We will pick that up with the next panel when they come in.

You have mentioned the postcode lottery of expectations. To David first: how does inconsistency between local authorities across the country impact the events industry?

Majorly, I would say. Some councils are good and engage, some are just slow. That is a problem for the whole industry. When we are dealing with local councils, it is their understanding of the legislation. We work at pace as well, and that is often a problem. When you are doing an event you need everything now to bring the event, but the councils will go at a snail’s pace and that is a real issue for us. That is something that certainly needs to be addressed, because the impact to us is we could lose events. Clients will not book events and we don’t go to their area, which is not good for any local council. I think there definitely is an inconsistency there. I can send you over some of those issues that we have. I will email those over so you have them from some of our partners, which will make it easy for you.

So, a naughty list and a good list.

I am not demonising all of them. Some of them are very, very good, but some of them are still very antiquated and, like I say, run at their own jovial pace. It is no good for us. We are a quick industry. We need quick answers, and that is often a big barrier to bringing events into cities or into local areas, so that certainly is an area to be addressed.

Is there anything that you would like to add, Jon?

I think that the variance that David is talking about in our experience tends to be you have authorities that have a major festival in their boundary. They build up a working relationship with them over years, decades. They know what they are doing. The trust has been established, and that works brilliantly. The challenge can be when you are trying to move a festival into an area for the first time, or—as is increasingly the case now—you have local authorities that are looking for revenue saying, “We have this public park. Would you like to take it over for three days?” They are the landlord. They own the land, but it is the first time something like that has happened within their boundaries, and then you are starting from the beginning of walking everybody through every process.

Inconsistencies are not necessarily always a bad thing. Certainly, there are a number of events that have been able to take advantage because of local authorities taking different points of view and wanting to invest some more than others allows you to—let’s be frank—play one off against the other. Certainly, when I am looking at large sports events, which I have a choice of where to go to in Britain, which has sometimes been helpful. One of the major problems, though, sitting below this is that councils just don’t have the resources. They don’t have the ability very often to support these events. That is the biggest issue that we are seeing, and I am involved in putting on the European Athletics Championships next year in Birmingham and, as we all know, Birmingham went bust and we actually stepped in to be the underwriter of last resort because Birmingham could not do it. It is those deep-seated financial difficulties that we see as the issue with local authorities.

What steps could be taken to standardise licensing and safety processes to reduce burdens?

To some extent, it is what is important to a local authority. We see Brighton, for instance, saying you are not allowed to use single-use plastic in their venues. If that is important to them, I think that that should be important to them and Sheffield or Birmingham may not see that. There is a level at which what is important to local people and local authorities should be allowed. I don’t think we should have necessarily a cookie cutter, but it is more services led, it is the police, things of that nature, the health services, those should be constant throughout.

Anything, Jon?

We participated in the licensing sprint that was held by the Home Office earlier this year, which we thought was a really great experiment, where they said, “Right, we are going to pull together people who understand this topic. We are going to give you six weeks, and we want you to report on how we could make licensing more business friendly and enable you to do more”. We produced a series of recommendations and the first one that was implemented was the development of a national licensing policy framework. Nick is absolutely right. The legislation says that each application is considered on its own merit, so there should be inconsistency because you don’t want a cookie cutter, but actually, we do want more consistency of approach so if you do introduce conditions on the licence for this operational consideration, they need to be pretty similar, whether you are in Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle or wherever that may be. We are optimistic that the NLPF will help to deliver more consistency. It is only to be noted at the moment, and we think it might need a bit more teeth.

What do you think is missing from that framework?

There is a great line in the framework that says that councils, when making their decision, should consider the economic impact of the event or venue. That is wonderful to see, but that is just what they should consider versus what is in the actual licensing legislation itself, where the primary objectives are all about managing risk, so there is still an imbalance there between the pressure to say no to things and the pressure to enable things. We think that could be developed. The other specific, on major events, is there is inconsistency across safety advisory groups, which are put in place in the run-up to every event. We will sit around the table and, to Nick’s point, actually some local authorities are either so under-resourced, or it is so new to them to do something like this that we end up running the safety advisory group, and that is not where we want to be. We want to be stress tested by the regulators, not walking them through the process. We think that there is some updated guidance that may be coming out soon from the Cabinet Office, but that has been imminent for some time.

Is there anything that you want to add, David?

No, thank you.

In the context of local authority inconsistency, how does your sector view the Government’s move to devolution with the creation of strategic authorities, challenge, or risk? To the three of you.

I do not understand the question. Is this the merging of local authorities?

Yes, that is right. They will remove the middle level of local authorities, and they will create unitary authorities and strategic authorities. That might be a bit niche.

For the record, I did understand the question then. I think that it should mean there is more resource in the function, which should be good, but it could mean that the decision is moving further away from where the event is actually happening and that might create pressures to say no. For me, the question is will the function be better resourced. If it is, that is a better partner.

I personally think it could have an advantage. Certainly, if I looked at our experience, say, taking events to Essex where we had three levels of local authority, it certainly would have simplified it if we could have taken one level out. We operate a lot of our events in London where we are dealing with the Mayor. We are dealing with local authorities. Road owning authorities are another layer. I think trying to simplify it would be good and well received.

I agree. If it simplifies the process that is much better. We always look for simplicity, taking away all of the layers and making it easier for us, so it is a good thing.

Has there been any engagement with the Government to that end?

We have not had any.

I want to go back to local government engagement. Jon, you mentioned local amenities, parks and the funding pressures that councils are under. We have had the recent announcement on the judgment on Brockwell Park. We have Victoria Park as well. Some of this leans on communication and engaging with the community. I want to look at local authorities and the different levels of knowledge. David, you touched on different levels of knowledge and how they interpret the Licensing Act. How do we have a more seamless, better understanding of the Licensing Act and how it affects communities? Going back to the situation with Brockwell Park, part of the announcement, the justification was on the impact assessment. It was a negative impact assessment, which corroborated the decision to not have the event, which surprised me. How do we get councils to engage better so that they are a proper partner in that respect? How do we get them to implement directives nationally in a more seamless way? I have worked across different councils and it is different relationships.

It is not my area, to be fair. I would go to some of the better councils and take those. We have talked about legacy. If you take that idea, not a legacy but taking their best practice and showcasing that to councils that are—I do not want to say bad, but making that more consistent across the board. In our events industries, if we have best practice we share it with everybody. Whoever is doing the best practice, that is taken on and put into—I am trying to think of the word.

Like a toolkit?

Yes, like a toolkit. That would probably help, because sometimes they get a little bit lost with it. You should be taking your best and showcasing and using that toolkit for everybody. That is exactly what we do, and people can look at it. Sometimes there needs to be more engagement. If they are more engaged with all of us, it is simple. I would use a toolkit, yes.

There was a shift. When licensing went from the Home Office to DCMS we got the current legislation. That was about enabling and being able to have our continental café culture in the UK and all of these things. We have had that legislation for 20 years and in that time it has moved back to the Home Office and we have seen a drift back towards regulate, regulate. I wonder if there is a better home for this. Maybe if we are talking about a central function around major events, similar to how the Licensing Task Force has devolved new powers to the GLA, to the Mayor in London, to be able to take strategic decisions on licensing, maybe there is some centralised function that it could support. David is right that there is good practice out there in parts of the country. How do we share that? Maybe the national licensing policy framework, because we always envisaged that to be a living document that you would supplement it with circulars. That could be the route where you go, “Right, now we have collated best practice when it comes to engagement with the public and local residents, here’s the guidance for you”.

I am interested in Jo’s idea of a naughty and nice list, David, given that it is Christmas. Talking of which, I want to take you back to safety advisory groups, which someone mentioned earlier, in light of the situation regarding Aston Villa and Maccabi Tel Aviv and the Cabinet Office doing its review into the guidance for safety advisory groups. Our predecessor Committee looked at this under our safety at sporting events work that we did a few years ago, and saw that there were some real inconsistencies in the SAG model across the country. Is there anything in particular that you would like to see change in the SAG model?

Where our events cross over boundaries, having an overall SAG rather than having to go to every single local authority would be nice. To some extent, we have that in London for safety. For things like the London Marathon we have a group called LOSPG, which co-ordinates, so that we do not have to go to individual SAGs to that extent. It is possible that that might help a bit. It is also the inconsistencies. We see very, very different security advice, on events where we think that they are at the same level, but in one place we will be told we have to have full barriers and for an event on exactly the same footprint, we are being told that we do not have to. The inconsistencies make it very difficult to plan for, especially as the SAGs are coming in fairly late in the day. You may be getting your permission three weeks beforehand and suddenly you are told, “We want full hard barriers across the whole of your road closures”. That does not help you in your planning terms.

I agree that we want greater consistency. To your point there, Nick, we have some examples at the moment of some high-profile artists who have hit the headlines over the summer and they go out on tour afterwards. I have been in meetings with people where the phone is flashing because they have that artist on that night in their venue and they are getting last-minute requests, “Can you add this? Can you add that?” It probably—no, not probably—it is not evidence-based. It is concern that is reactive to the media pressure, maybe some political pressure, but it does not tally with any evidence that we can point to of how previous shows have gone on, even the night before in a different city. In addition to how we resource SAGs, there is a question of being consistent and recognising that output as being the authoritative output that does not, unless there is some real new intelligence, change on the day of the show.

And different SecCOs can have different views, so your SecCO changes and suddenly you have different advice.

Jon, you spoke about some of the impacts on the grassroots music venues and it made me think about the levy. The Culture Secretary reiterated, when she saw us, the target of 50% of ticket sales imposing the levy by the end of this year. Can you update the Committee where we are with that at the moment?

There has been a lot since we were last here. We have appointed the trustees, we have launched and we have some brilliant and an increasing number of shows that have taken the levy on. Who was most recent? My Chemical Romance, Foo Fighters, Take That, Rick Astley, Olivia Dean; it is eclectic. At the end of October, we were up around 40% adoption, which is great because, as when we met in May we were at about 8%, so you can see the direction of travel is going the right way. That dipped in November. There were a number of shows that went on sale without the contribution, so I think we are around the 31% at the moment.

Is that because of individual artists not signing up to the levy?

It is tours not signing up. Whether that was an artist’s decision, whether that was the team around the artist, whether that was that it was not raised in the discussion between the team, the promoter, the agent, the circumstances will vary, but the outcome is the same—we do not have the pound on those shows. We are working very hard to mobilise everybody to get that 8% to 30% up to 50% and beyond next year.

Who needs more pressure putting on them to make sure that figure is reached, that target is reached?

Our ideal is that when a tour is being planned, the promoter, the agent, the manager and through the agent and the manager to the artist are all saying, “We want to do this”. At the moment, all of those parties are aware of the trust, all of those parties support the trust, we are trying to get them actively pushing in every conversation.

When do you think the money will start filtering through into the venues?

Yes, we are at the exciting point now. We have been talking about this as a concept for about 18 months. We have a trustees meeting on 18 December and we have identified the first recipients of funding. We are talking to them now and we will announce something early in the new year.

Very exciting. Finally, finally, finally, one of the things that I am passionate about as we go further into this inquiry is that as well as looking at the challenges that major events are experiencing I want to look at the potential and whether there is any potential for UK plc, whether there is greater export potential in the major events sector. Before we let you flee, I want to get your expert opinion on that, whether there is greater export potential, what sort of events and where, and what needs to happen to help that to grow and be realised. David, any thoughts on that?

That goes back to having a line of communication with all the Departments, because that is the way that we can do it. I think that there is an opportunity to have greater export. If you go to an airport, you never see the UK. We are very poor at showcasing ourselves, and that is a real problem for us. If we can have better communication and if we can be a bit more proud of what our industry can achieve, we can make a big difference. That is important.

There are some great things. In the creative industry sector plan, there was the announcement of the music growth package, which is £10 million a year. The idea is that that is taking the artist from their bedroom to headlining an international tour, which is, as you say, great for UK plc, and we are excited about what that programme can do. The fundamental barrier for us is post-Brexit touring arrangements and the challenges of moving artists out of the UK and into Europe, which is our largest market. Prior to Brexit, it was four times larger than the US. This is our huge and significant neighbour. The challenges there are not so apparent for major artists, because they will have the funds and the team to go through it. It will cost them more to tour, the tickets will end up costing more, but it will happen. But if we are talking about UK plc having a production line of talent that will be the headliners of tomorrow for those international shows, that is where the current arrangements are a brake. Also the support companies—the haulage companies, the catering companies, the light, the sound—UK companies are at a disadvantage primarily because of the 90 in 180-day Schengen restriction. We are losing those jobs and roles to EU qualified.

We have a great opportunity here. We have brilliant event delivery professionals and fantastic technical expertise throughout our industry. The major thing that one can do is support the private sector, which is a vibrant private sector and will win export business. It will need support. We had support recently. We were on a visit to Shanghai and UKTI helped us on that. We will need some support, but if we have a vibrant private sector that are there developing the skills, they can go and win that business abroad.

Before you flee, we have a couple more that popped up there.

Thank you for your contribution. Another aspect that is not so much legislative, but radius clauses on talent being limited in a certain number of shows purely because of the contract that they signed, so they cannot perform in a particular city or region, they can only perform once over a 12-week period, or whatever that radius clause is. That probably stunts and inhibits talent, because it means there is less opportunity. Yes, we understand the financial investment in booking high-profile talent, but there needs to be a balance because some up-and-coming or even established tourers are not necessarily able to monetise their craft because of the impact of radius clauses.

Jon, you mentioned that there has been some restriction in movement of UK acts in Europe following Brexit. To what extent do you think a customs union between the UK and the European Union might alleviate those Schengen timelines, for example?

It sounds like it should be wholly positive and would remove a lot of barriers that we have at the moment. If that came with, for example, us no longer needing the carnet and cabotage requirements that we need to meet at the moment, which mean that a UK truck going out on tour can only visit two countries and make three stops before it has to come back to the UK, it does not work for touring at all. Carnet is where you have to detail every single piece of kit, down to speaker cables, everything that you are taking with you. It is expensive, it is time consuming. If any reset in the relationship meant that we did not have to jump through those hoops, we would be able to go out and do more.

Nick, you are nodding. Is it safe to say you agree?

Very much so.

David, any thoughts?

It is not my area, being honest.

That is it from us, unless there is anything further that you wish we would ask you and that you want to put on the record. In which case, thank you all very much for your time today. We will take a break while we get our next panel in.   Witnesses: Faye Dyer, Rachel Parker and Robert Wright.

Welcome to our second panel this morning. Almost a year ago, we launched our state of play inquiry that invited DCMS sectors that were not getting the attention or engagement they needed from Government or Parliament to submit proposals for an evidence session. Our three witnesses all made very compelling proposals for a session on business events that bring together leaders and experts and investors for conferences and trade shows and exhibitions and product launches. While it did not meet the full criteria for our big inquiry on to major events, we found from that evidence that there are a lot of overlapping challenges and that some of the opportunities that are out there for the two sectors are quite similar. So I thought it was a good idea to bring our next session of experts in to discuss the shared and the different issues that business events present, as part of our look into major events. Joining us today, we have Faye Dyer, who is the CEO of the ACC Liverpool Group, which operates an events venue and a ticketing business. We have Rachel Parker, who is the director of the Events Industry Alliance, which represents over 500 companies in this space. And Robert Wright, who is the founder and chief executive officer at the Business of Events, which an independent think tank for the sector. You are all welcome today. Thanks so much for coming in to join us. Could you start by giving our Committee a flavour? When we think of business events, what are some of the biggest business events that take place in the UK?

Thank you very much for the opportunity to come today. As you said, I represent the Events Industry Alliance and we represent organisers, suppliers and venues that create, build and host exhibitions across the UK. On the big shows, big trade shows, to mention a few, you have the World Travel Market at ExCeL; ACC Liverpool does numbers of shows. I am trying to think of one off the top of my head now. There is the Farnborough Air Show. There are shows up in the SEC, up in Glasgow, Aberdeen, Ireland. All over the country there will be shows that cross every sector that you can think of, be it manufacturing, be it health, be it engineering, be it education. There will be shows and conferences that are taking place across the UK on a daily basis.

Faye, what are some of your biggest events and how engaged are the Government with you in your sector?

At the moment I would not say that the Government is particularly engaged with our sector, and it is a massive opportunity both in terms of maximising conversion rates, to bring more business events into the UK, and to make sure that we are maximising the impact. When we talk about business events, it is important that the Committee understands that there are probably three subgroups within business events and all of them have their own ecosystems. While there are absolutely some golden threads across major events, the ecosystems of each are quite different in terms of primary objectives, stakeholders, funding models and legacy. To summarise, there are three key subsectors. There are trade exhibitions. Some examples of those would include things like Manchester Tech Week, Smart Manufacturing Week, South by Southwest, UKREiiF. They are strong examples of ones happening across the UK. We then have what we call international association events. There are over 10,000 of these that happen globally. These are where thousands and thousands of delegates attend for something that is based around a particular sector. Whereas trade exhibitions are around opportunities for export, opportunities to bring thought leadership and opportunities to showcase sector strengths, when we talk about international associations, they are opportunities for knowledge transfer and innovation, and they are ways in which that sector comes together to progress the sector and to develop. Thirdly, it is important to recognise that we also have what we call international corporates. You might think of those as more private events, and what is the role of Government, but we think about FDI opportunities, the opportunity to have representatives from global international companies that are here in the UK. That presents a strong opportunity to build relationships with them. When we think about the Government’s role in each, the Government have a very different role in each of those three sectors. If I could touch for a minute on the Government’s role, when we talk about trade exhibitions, at the moment the Government are not overly engaged with trade exhibitions. We are looking for the Government to appoint a senior representative as far out as possible to say, “Yes, we will be there. We will show up, we will engage in this trade exhibition”. First and foremost, that gives it credibility. That means that that exhibition will have the best chance of attracting the maximum number of exhibitors and delegates. It brings that credibility to it. It also allows the Government to bring public and private sectors together, which is important, and it allows the Government that opportunity to support SMEs to grow and to push forward those export opportunities for the UK. Trade exhibitions for the Government are about showing up. On international associations, what we are asking for from the Government is predominantly about supporting bids. That is about making it easy to get to the right Department, to get someone to sign a bid letter, to get someone to host a delegation, and to look at other incentive schemes that can help us make it more affordable for international delegates to come to the UK. I am sure we will move on to cost competitiveness challenges afterwards. When we talk about international corporates, it is an opportunity for the Government to engage to maximise conversion impact. It is about relationships. It is about the Department for Business and Trade opening its books, working with those contacts and working with more regional inward investment groups. It is a very different role for the Government across all three of those key sectors, but a crucial and not overly challenging role that we are looking for the Government to bring. It is often about time rather than necessarily about financial asks, which is hopefully an easier ask. I am sorry, that was a long answer, but just to set it in context.

It is very helpful to set the groundwork. Robert, from your perspective, how engaged are Government in that business events sector?

They are engaged in part. It is patchy, certainly, and we work very closely with the team at DCMS. Going back to Faye’s point, you can divide the business events sector into two parts. There is the part where we want to attract more business events to the UK, as Faye said—association congresses, trade shows, corporate events. That is a huge sector. That is something like a £34 billion sector that takes place every single day across every part of the UK. We want to attract more of those events to the UK because they help local economies, and they help us to engage with sectors and knowledge economy. The other half is companies that are based in the UK that organise events either in the UK or internationally. That is an area that we really, really excel at. We have a world-class reputation for creating logistics, creativity logistics, putting events on across the world. A lot of organisers and countries will come to the UK to source those organisers. Helping those companies to grow internationally is another part of that jigsaw. However, part of the challenge that we have is that currently we do not have a roadmap. We do not have a roadmap that takes us forward to 2030 or beyond. If you look at other countries where we are competing and where we are perhaps being outplayed, Ireland and Germany this year launched their 2030 roadmaps for business events. They have a very clear plan of where they are going, what level of engagement they want from Government and public sector, what funding models they need. We do not have that currently. Having that roadmap—

You would like to see us having a government strategic roadmap for the business events industry. That is one of your asks.

Yes.

Okay, we are all about actions here.

Absolutely. But as was mentioned in the previous panel, to lump it in with major events would be a challenge because business events have a very, very different dynamic. There are crossovers on the supply chain and ecosystem, but business events operate in a very different marketplace.

Yes, we will come to that in a second. Briefly, Rachel, what more would you like to see the Government doing to promote business events in the way that other countries like France do?

We would like the Government to recognise business events, because we drive inward investment and we foster innovation and we support sectoral growth across the UK. When I talk about recognition, it could be very simple. It could be a Minister doing a letter of support; Faye just mentioned this. It could be a video, but even more importantly, it could be a Minister pinning it down and saying, “Yes, I will go to that show”. I know for a fact that the Farnborough Air Show is at this moment trying to pin down Ministers for the air show next summer. It will take months and it will probably get a last minute, “Oh yes, we can come”. But the damage is done, in a way, because the positive impact a Minister or even the Prime Minister confirming that they will attend a show is huge, because then you can invite all the other Ministers who are international across Europe and they will all come because they will all get the invitation to say, “We are going to this event, come and support it”. That generates so much more activity and generates a lot more people coming to the country, be it nationally or from international, which helps with the tourism side as well. As we say, more bums on seats means more heads on beds. It is that ecosystem that all contributes to a happy, successful event.

Robert, I fear you may have already beaten me to the punch here, but could you clarify whether business events would indeed be served within a comprehensive events strategy or through a separate specific plan?

Personally, I would like to see it in a separate plan, although I think that there needs to be reference to it in a wider events plan, because, as we have been saying, it does cross over some of those sectors. But to lump it in alongside sport and cultural, music and festivals would be a challenge. It needs its own separate roadmap, but it needs to be referenced in a wider strategy on its contribution.

Yes, I absolutely concur. Business events are about value, not about volume. If we are serious about increasing the number of international visitors from 38 million to 50 million, if we are serious about growing the UK’s economy and delivering our industrial strategy, we absolutely need to focus in on how we can use business events as that launchpad and that catalyst for growth. We have not seen much movement in the last 10 years or so. What we have seen is other nations catching up and soon about to take over us. It needs a separate strategy and, crucially, it needs a cross-sector working group that brings together representation from DCMS, from DBT, from Health, from Transport, from the DWP. It is not something that can sit as a very small strand within the overall tourist strategy or we will be no further on in another decade’s time.

Thank you. Rachel, you are nodding along too. Would you like to add anything?

I totally agree. It needs to be across Government, all Government Departments.

Defence seems like another obvious one.

Yes.

Can I quickly highlight that when you look at the major events that were discussed at the last panel, you look at a sporting event that might take place once a year, and that sporting event might generate £50 million of economic value. The business events sector is doing that every single day. The only difference is that we are not on TV, we are not in the newspapers, we do not have the same profile that a Taylor Swift or a Wimbledon does. But business events take place every single day in every city across the country and are generating significantly more on a weekly basis than a single sporting event.

Rachel, you mentioned Farnborough Air Show. Does RIAT come under that umbrella too, the Royal International Air Tattoo?

Yes.

Thank you, that is just for personal knowledge. What else might that strategy include to benefit the business events sector?

I would always start off with some situational analysis because it is important that any strategy starts off with how we compare and what does good look like elsewhere. A strategy has to have clear objectives and it has to be far enough out, so I would suggest at least 2035, and it has to be data-driven. Part of the challenge of this industry to date is that when we talk about data, again we have been focusing on direct economic impact. Notwithstanding that, as Robert said, business events are worth more than half of the overall value of the UK events industry, more than half, and that is direct impact only. So it needs to be data-driven, it needs to pick up on delivery mechanisms and strategy, how we want the cross-sector structure, what those lines of engagement look like, for bidding and, crucially, for delivery, and how we maximise those opportunities when events are here. Then it needs to look at things like what financial incentives are available and how we resource it. There are things that need to be resourced and things that need to be funded still. I say national. At the moment, the structure is England. It sits within the Meet England brand. But if you look, for example, at where we sit for international associations, we are sitting at 5, which is not bad, but we have been at 5 for a very long period of time. In countries that sit above us—Germany, Spain, Italy—it is perhaps no surprise that they all have well-funded national convention bureaus. They all have national ambassador strategies and national ambassadors. We do not have those. I would expect those things to sit in a strategy or a roadmap. Crucially, how will we start to collate that data so that we can see if we are turning the dial, what has worked, what has not worked? As colleagues before talked about in the Major Event strategy group, we tend to focus as an industry on direct only economic impact because there is a mechanism there and it is easy. What we have never done is got to grips with—we know that it is there, we can report on it anecdotally—how we consistently report on FDI, how we report on skills, how we report on GVA, how we report on jobs created and so on. There are some good studies out there. The OECD has done a good study, but we need at a national level to turn that into a framework that works locally here for us, and get everybody on board with reporting against that.

On the national event strategy, we need to be linking that to the industrial strategy, which will help with the growth there, and the priorities that come with the industrial strategy will help us highlight the sectors that you want to go to. As I mentioned before, there will be exhibitions and conferences going on across the country, be it on health, be it on education, be it on transport. If you are due to make a big announcement, why don’t you have a look and see what is going on and see if you can plan to do it at that? We have already identified events for 2026 that are within the industrial strategy. That is some work that we have done with Visit Britain, so it is ready and available.

The support that you need from the Government, what does that look like?

Working with the industry to create that roadmap and to ensure that we have a long-term plan and a long-term strategy that we can adopt. Funding, in terms of making sure that our National Convention Bureau is funded adequately enough to be able to compete internationally, because there is no question that we are being outspent by a lot of our competitors. When we are talking about funding, it is worth putting that into context. From memory, UK Sport received something in the region of £600 million. Correct me if I am wrong, but something in that region. When we are talking about a National Convention Bureau, we are talking about a few hundred thousand pounds. We are not talking about tens of millions of pounds. So the amount of funding we are looking for to be secured over the long term is modest. If you look at the opportunity, the global events sector is currently valued at something around $1.6 trillion. The UK probably gets about $60 billion of that. The sector is scheduled to grow on average at 5% a year over the next four to five years. So we have an £80 billion a year opportunity that we could grab a slice of if we had that additional support and funding to make sure that we are competing effectively.

Rachel, any further thoughts on government support?

I think that it is more about actively championing business events and getting Government to understand what business events really are. Our biggest challenge is that the Government do not understand what we do.

Cost competitiveness, but I am conscious that might be coming, or we can talk about that now if helpful, because it is a major issue if we look at our international competitiveness.

Do we have that coming, Chair? It is a major issue. We are coming on to that.

When you say the Government do not understand, thinking back, I was a Minister in lots of different Government Departments and you would often get bids in to go and speak at events or record a video for events, which I did tons and tons of over the years. Is that the problem? Is the problem that as an Education Secretary or Minister, for example, you might be engaged in education events, but there needs to be more of an overarching government strategy for the huge financial impact of major events as a thing rather than the individuals for that particular sector? Is that a problem, Robert?

Historically, business events have always been wrapped in with tourism within DCMS. That has always been a challenge because if you talk to business events people—I am sure that Faye and Rachel will agree—we consider ourselves to be a very, very long way from consumer tourism, albeit business delegates spend between three and four times that of a leisure tourist, which is another important point. But because we have always been wrapped up in that tourism discussion and model, it has always been difficult to get that voice, because tourism generally has a bigger voice than business events do. Trying to separate business events out from tourism and other major events has always been a challenge.

Should it fall under the Department for Business and Trade?

That is a conversation that has been ongoing for a few years and it was one that was having quite strong conversations prior to the pandemic.

What is your view?

We have a good relationship with DCMS, but trade shows have a dotted line into DBT and there is an argument that says that they might be better suited within Trade given the focus on trade and investment.

What is your view? Should it be in Trade?

My view would be that we would be better off in DBT, yes.

I would like it to sit with a cross-sector working group. That is crucial. If it has to sit somewhere, I am leaning more towards DBT.

You think that DBT would be better. Interesting. Thank you very much.

What do you think is the potential for moving or creating more of this business outside of London? It would be interesting to know, of the total sector—you think of some massive events like World Travel Market, London Fashion Week, London Tech Week, International Maritime. They are all in London. You have the Boat Show and you have Farnborough. How much of this is in London and how much could be grown outside? You talked earlier about Germany. My background, back when I had a real job, was in the hotel trade. German fairs, as it calls them, are spread right throughout the country and a lot of it is domestic. It is not incoming international. We seem to have less of that. Is there an opportunity for much bigger growth nationwide?

There is an opportunity, yes, of course, but I also think that we are suffering at the moment from not being seen as pan-European. From a European perspective we are seen as being a domestic market in how we do it. Here are a lot of national events that are held regionally. Is there a massive market there? Where the market is, they are already doing it, is the honest truth.

Classically, a cap on these things is the number of bed nights available. I used to work for Holiday Inn, and the Holiday Inn franchisee convention can only go to four cities, even in America, so you are very limited here. Historically, Blackpool used to have a lot of bed nights, but things have changed. London obviously does; Harrogate does. Where are the growth opportunities for more of a regional spreading?

You have seen in the last 10 years a lot of growth nationally. You are absolutely right that it was always London where it happened. That was where the growth was, that is where the hotel rooms were and the venues were. But we have seen Liverpool grow and expand, Manchester the same, Aberdeen with a new convention and exhibition centre, Newport in Wales with a new convention and exhibition centre, new venues opening up in Newcastle, Gateshead, Hull, Bristol and west. That expansion is happening outside of London as well as in London. Interestingly, if you look at the growth in the market in 2024, the growth is about 5% UK-wide and most of that growth has come outside of London. It has been in Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Telford and Newport. You are seeing that growth not just in London, but as you quite rightly say, there is an opportunity to expand that even further.

On Government support, and particularly, as you were saying, time sometimes, not just money, this is perhaps something we could go large on in our report. I do not want to put words in your mouth, but part of my experience on this is that not only is it sometimes difficult to tie Ministers down early on for events, but they also cancel. In the scheme of things, if there is a big vote on or whatever it is, quite often for the officials, bluntly, a trade fair is not in the top quartile. Without wanting to put words in your mouth, do you want to say anything about sticking with commitments and making sure that you do get the representation on the day?

It is absolutely key. Even if there is a government reshuffle and you have a new Minister who has not committed, the previous one has committed, one would assume that the new Minister coming in is taking on board what the Government work is anyway. Therefore, if they have committed to going to whichever show it is, the officials should try to do their utmost to ensure that commitment is upheld.

Absolutely. It has always struck me that as a Minister you are always working indirectly on things that you think might help the country, but turning up and shaking hands and forming relationships and trying to sell what we have is a very direct way that you can do that. I was quite disturbed to hear what you said about Farnborough. Farnborough is a town in Hampshire, and Farnborough sells out or affects the whole hotel market of south-east England and into London and the number of contracts at stake is huge. I hope that there will soon be a positive—

They will get it. It will just take a while to get the commitment.

As you say, the earlier you get it, the better for inviting other people, for organising events and so on. Clearly we would like to grow this market. You need growth areas to be able to do that. If there is a growth area, probably someone has already nabbed it. Are there sectors that are under-served currently with large-scale business events, or more competitive sectors where we might be able to nick some other business back from other countries? Where should we be looking for growth?

As Rachel and Faye have both said, linking it very closely to our industrial strategies is crucial and it should not be that difficult. You look at the sectors, where those sectors are that we want to invest in and see grow. We match that to events that are taking place around the world or in the UK, how we can support events, how we can support exhibitors and delegates that are attending, how we can connect with stakeholders that are involved in those events. That forms part of that whole roadmap and strategy piece.

Let’s say you have a sector like life sciences or AI, where the sector itself has an interest and the Government of the country also has an interest in growing. What role do Government play in trying to stimulate the creation of large-scale business events in this country, rather than in Silicon Valley or in Geneva or wherever else they might go?

It needs to help de-risk the investment to start with. We are not seeing enough of—

You say it needs to. Can you start with what it does and then we will move on to what it should do?

Yes. At the moment, the only financial support that there is within the business events sector is a very small part through Visit England that is about growing international visitors. Shows that already have 30% of the audience who are international, they can perhaps claim something like £20,000 or £30,000 to try to grow that audience. It is small money. If we think about the current economic environment and the current uncertainty that we have seen in our global and national economic environment, it is very challenging for organisers when you have a very high degree of fixed costs at the moment to launch shows. It is incredibly challenging. What we would like to see a bit more as well is the business events sector put more on a parity with things like TV and film, whereby there can be tax credits perhaps that can be available to help support costs, to help people with a bit of a leg up, to encourage them to invest, to encourage them to launch new shows in high growth areas, knowing that they have some seed funding to enable them to do that and to share the risk a bit to begin with. We are not very good at that because that support does not exist presently. If I could circle back to some of the points before, it is not about capital city or regions. We want London outperforming other capital cities, and what we want are the non-capital cities outperforming other non-capital cities from a European perspective. An important point when we talk about infrastructure is that one of the things that we do not have right yet in the regions compared to our European competitors is that ease, reliability and speed of transport from the key transport hubs like Manchester Airport, for example, to regional key venues. An hour and 15 minutes, at best, with at least two changes is not acceptable when we are looking at a 20-minute direct route elsewhere. Key government initiatives like the Liverpool to Manchester railway are crucial if we are to unlock some of the potential. We are a bit light on very large national venues. Again, when we talk about infrastructure and what we need from an infrastructure perspective—

We will come on to infrastructure shortly. I do not want to cut you off but can I check, is somebody currently working on trying to make the world’s preeminent AI show come to Britain?

I am sure that people are, yes.

I am sure that they are.

Who are these people? We need to meet them.

Even more importantly, we want to curate our own. It is a sector strength, particularly in public health, so we should be curating our own. We have had a fantastic event recently in the Liverpool City region, a fantastic AI event. We should be looking at how we nurture that, how we help it grow, how we turn that first into a national event and secondly into a European event, rather than attract something that has already been created elsewhere. If there is a gap, let’s fill it.

That is very good because it leads very seamlessly on to Baya’s questions.

One of the things that I want to ask is on infrastructure challenges. Faye, you talked about de-risking and transport connectivity. If you look at, say, somewhere like the east of England—I represent Southend; that is my constituency. Southend is part of the east of England region. We are net contributors to the UK economy but we have very little provision in terms of conference centres, for example, conference centres being a great opportunity to encourage that inward investment, to reshape, to feed into that industrial strategy, Robert, that you spoke about. There is governmental input but there is also regional work that could be and should be done, in my opinion. Using my analogy of the east of England, what should the east of England be doing to play a bigger part in the industrial strategy in terms of investment, business and tourism? What should it do?

First, be clear about what the strengths are, what it is that the east of England is particularly good at and how that ties into the national industrial strategy. Forgive me for not knowing that level of detail. Then it is thinking about what else is already going on that we can then link in with. Maybe sometimes that is tying something that might be more of a two-stop stay that says that if you are coming to something that might be in London, can we package it up, can we have a product whereby we can get out there and do some experiential learning or some on-site visits that are tied into something that is happening elsewhere. It is not necessarily about building a convention centre on its own. Sometimes it is about making it more affordable and more accessible for people in a particular geographical area to go and attend events elsewhere. That could be a financial incentive or intervention to make sure that events are inclusive and that people can still have a seat at the table and make sure that their region is represented. There is a host of other more creative solutions. It is not always about, “We need one of those as well”. It is about how we can connect up, how we can lean into perhaps what already exists, if that helps answer.

Yes absolutely, that was brilliant. We have touched in some of the earlier questions on what Government could be doing and should be doing. Rachel, you spoke about Germany and Ireland, which have overtaken the UK. What are they doing that we are not? Yes, they have a vision, but I would like to know a bit more.

First, they have that roadmap and that strategy that we currently do not have. They have that with Government support and backing, so they have a very clear plan of where they are going to 2030 and beyond. In addition to that, they have better funding than we have, but that funding is relatively modest. In the UK, in terms of those conference and exhibition centres that we have, we have a mix of centres that are owned by local authorities, we have some that are privately owned and we have some that are in a private-public partnership. It would be interesting, going back to your point about your constituency and your region, to look at ways in which Government can support some of that growth, whether that is using some of the—if the tourism levy does come in, how much of that money could be used to fund expansion of that? I also think relooking at how we think about conference and exhibition centres as places to go and do business. They should be centres for trade and investment in those regions and using them as platforms to engage much wider with the local communities.

In my life prior to this I spent a lot of time in the events sector. Part of it was in business but a lot of it was in the cultural sector. I know that it was mentioned in the earlier panel and it has been reiterated by you. In terms of trying to convince Government to understand your importance in the industrial strategy, do you think it would be easier—and I hope this is not heresy, but do you think that the business and the cultural events sectors should be working together on their top-line stats and data? Yes, there will be some differences of SIC codes and things like that, but simplifying that surely should help make the case to the Government and to Treasury, most importantly, because that seems to be one of the Departments that needs the most convincing. Do you think that there is an argument for a bit more collaboration on the ask? Because the experience and the infrastructure, the travel, some of the staff, the technology, it is the same thing. Yes, it is a different experience, but it is still an experience, nevertheless. It would be interesting to hear your thoughts.

One thing I would point out is that at exhibitions, you do business, you do business deals, so you are backing trades, whereas a cultural event is very different. How you have set it out makes sense, yes, but I still think that business events should still be seen not as a silo but joined up with everybody else, but having its own channel, because we generate, just with who I represent, £11.5 billion a year. It is a lot. We are supporting so many jobs. Particularly our sector grew 17% after the pandemic. Between 2022 and 2023, we grew by 17%. We showed that we are so far ahead of the UK GDP growth so far. So we do have a case for us to have our own space, purely for those reasons.

Yes, as an operator of a campus that hosts all three—we have cultural events such as Eurovision, we have sporting events like World Gymnastics, and we have large-scale business events—please rest assured that there is a lot of collaboration already between the three sectors. I do not think that any of us envisages for a moment that would not continue. Of course, there are lessons learnt that we take from each other. The absolute need to recognise that different ecosystem for business events and to move it out of what has been sometimes the shadow of its slightly louder and vibrant neighbours to give it the spotlight that it needs if we are to deliver our industrial strategy is key. All three sectors would absolutely benefit from some clearer frameworks on how we consistently measure the overall value that events in those sectors generate, but recognising that it is not one size fits all. Sometimes in trying to put things into a box, including what Department we want to work to, it is the nuances that makes business events special and the fact that it hits multiple objectives across multiple different Departments.

You have talked a bit about some of the soft power that is involved. As a Committee, we are passionate about the creative industries when we are looking at industries such as that. Could you go into more detail on the soft power aims that these events bring?

Yes, certainly. It is crucial more than ever, post-Brexit, because when we talk about soft power it is about building relationships, fundamentally. It is the opportunity to show thought leadership. It is the opportunity to showcase what we have, that opportunity to bring people together to spend time, to have a quality conversation. That is exactly what business events do. There is a huge number of water-cooler conversations, as we call them, that happen. That is a key part of what business events do. It is showing that we are open for business, that we are welcoming. It is breaking down some of those misconceptions that we have had about how the UK is viewed and that other countries perhaps are using to their advantage when we talk about competitive bidding for things. That is why it is so important for us that we have Ministers and senior officials who show up, because it is that platform.

There are a couple of things there. First, we are very attractive as a country for hosting business events. We are English-speaking, we are seen to be politically stable. We are seen to be very safe and secure as a country, so in terms of people bringing delegates and bringing events to the UK, we are very, very attractive. That in itself gives us a platform to talk about the UK economically and culturally. I will give you one very quick example. We have already mentioned World Travel Market, which took place in early November in London. It is the biggest travel trade show in the world and has about 45,000 visitors over three days. It generates about £300 million of economic impact and fills up pretty much every hotel room in London over the week. In addition to that, we had 60 international Tourism Ministers from around the world visiting during that week. We had 20 Trade Ministers from around the world visiting. We had dozens of CEOs from major travel companies and airlines. Working with DCMS, we were able to develop a programme of engagement for DCMS and DBT, where DCMS and DBT Ministers came over those three days and hosted a couple of sessions with international Ministers. We did two evening receptions. That was a simple example of how we could use our soft power to engage with some of that community. As Rachel said earlier, if you look at the other events that are taking place around the UK on a weekly basis, we absolutely need to be doing more of that.

You have mentioned the roadmap. Would this be one of the tools to maximise that? Are there any other ideas on how we could?

Rachel has already said that already a lot of work has been done with Visit Britain in mapping some of those events that we know are taking place with the industrial strategy, and making sure that we are engaging across Departments to talk about that. The only thing that I would add, and it came up in the early conversation on engagement with the Government, is that we used to have something called the UK Events Industry Board, which was set up in about 2016. Post-pandemic, that was dissolved by DCMS and rolled into the UK Visitor Economy Council, so now business events have a presence rather than having an advisory role to DCMS and Government. Within that roadmap, having that more advisory role where Government and industry can work closer together to advise on some of those soft power initiatives would be good.

You have mentioned two Departments there with the event that took place. So there is a value, isn’t there? Government Departments will see that value. How do you maximise that? Do you think that overall they appreciate the soft power that this can bring?

I am not sure that they are aware. That is part of the challenge. We are very fortunate in this country, where we host a lot of medical conferences and congresses on an annual basis, partly because we have very good research institutions, we have great academic institutions, medical research facilities and teaching hospitals. People bring those events to the UK to engage with different parts of that sector; I am just talking about health. Having the Department of Health engaged in that is absolutely crucial. The same would apply to other sectors as well.

The same happens with education. There is the Bett Show that is held at ExCeL at the beginning of the year, so it is very, very involved in it as well. It is the obvious one for it to be involved in. Coming out of the pandemic, there was a desire to have a cross-Whitehall group where there was a business events representative across each Department. I do not know what has happened to that, to be perfectly honest. It got going and then it did not. That could be great, if there was a representative saying, “There’s this event” and we know that there is somebody that we can go to in each Department who would say, “We understand the value of business events, we are going to get behind this and rally the rest”. Q90            Chair: Strategically tied in with Government so that they can look at what events are coming up and they can plan their own programming in co-ordination.

Yes.

There have been a lot of false starts, and hence to get going. There has a lot already that has been built in the past, including the same old strategy that we can easily pick up and turn around quite quickly and get some momentum behind leveraging business events for growth.

Baya, do you want to come back in or have you covered all your points from question 12 in your earlier one?

We have covered most. We are on this devolution path with the mayoralties coming in. Do you see that as an opportunity to have areas of specialism around the UK, regions that are focused on particular industries? Will that be another way to supercharge that competitiveness? Yes, there may be some sectors that need more work, need more partners, more investment, but it may well produce some good results in other sectors and in other regions. If so, I imagine that the mayors will be key to that. Do you have any thoughts on that area?

It is certainly an opportunity, without question. We have already seen with the metro mayors a lot of growth and increased engagement. The previous panel talked about engaging different sectors, whether that is police and transport and venues and hotels and everything else, and the mayors have been able to help significantly with that. As you say, creating specific regions connected to a particular sector is something that could be really exciting.

One thing slightly away from that is that I had an example of Government and local authorities and venues working together, like Aberdeen. The Scottish Government, the local authorities and the venue and the local councils all worked very well together to put on the World Rally Championship, won the bid, and we have it now for the second year running. It was a good example of how if everybody works together collaboratively, things can go well. I agree with everything that Robert said on the mayoral advantage.

Faye, before I come to you, could universities be part of that? There is a lot of expertise in those institutions and we understand the issues about some of the finance in that sector. Being a little bit left field, is there an opportunity for universities to bring that academic excellence into the mix as well? It helps their finances. I see it with my university in Essex, but this is a wider conversation. On that competitiveness, is that another tool in our UK toolkit to help regional excellence? You have some great institutions in your city, Faye.

Absolutely, and that tends to work very well across the country currently. Those connections, those local ambassador groups that are working between local academia, local businesses, the local visitor economy works very well, in my view, on a more city and regional level. There are opportunities there, I agree with you, with the metro mayors, but that does not take away from what we are needing and asking to be focused on at a national level. We have fewer problems, let’s say, at other layers of that eco-structure because they are in quite a good place, I would say.

Can I answer slightly more broadly, because I am conscious what we have not mentioned, and it is crucial, is the cost competitiveness of the UK? It is important context. Particularly for business events, cost competitive, when we talk about not just the venue itself and the costs of local supply, but crucially the cost of a delegate getting here, because to be successful in attracting business events you have to be affordable for delegates. An organiser will consider that as a key critical success factor when they are deciding where to bring a business event to, because maximum delegate numbers mean a more successful event. When I talk about cost competitiveness, part of the challenge at the moment is that there are things at all different layers. Whether it is ETA, whether it is airport passenger duty, whether it is the rate of VAT on hotels and restaurants, whether it is what we are all about to experience, which is pretty horrific, with business rates, all of that adds up. I know that sometimes it is easy when you work in the sector that people might assume that you are being biased around something. But an important warning that we have been given by the World Economic Forum is that if you look at the cost competitive index for travel and for tourism, out of 119 countries in 2024, the UK is sitting at 113. We have been given a very clear warning that we are starting to seriously price ourselves out of the marketplace on being affordable. We have to be mindful of that and think about how all these different things at different points in that chain are adding up and what they might mean to an organiser’s ability to bring an event here and be confident they will get those delegate numbers. That is crucial. We are incredibly lucky across various northern towns that we already benefit from a voluntary levy by way of an accommodation bid, which has been helpful and crucial on things like subvention to get us in the tent with other European countries. That money is ringfenced for the visitor economy and it is spent in a way that is determined by the private sector. There are pros and cons with a tourist tax, the pros most notably being that it allows that levy to be levied across other property types, such as your Airbnbs. It allows a levy to be introduced in areas where perhaps it is not as easy to generate a local bid. There are pros and cons, and the devil will be in the detail, dare I say, like all things. It is about how that money is governed, does it have appropriate private sector input, and is it absolutely ringfenced for the incremental things that the sector needs at a more localised level. But again, let’s be clear, it is layers. That does not mean that we should not have a level of support at national level to increase visitor numbers. It does not mean that we do not need to consider seed funding for launch or growing and scaling events. It is getting it right at all those layers in the ecosystem. It is not one or the other, or one solving the problem for the other. I am aware that there is a consultation on that and I am sure that there will be lots of views from the industry that will be put forward in due course.

Very similar. The main thing is if it will come in place, where will it be spent and how will it be spent on the local infrastructure. There is one other impact as well, which we were talking about earlier on, that it is not just the tourists coming, it will be people like the suppliers as well, who go around the country and will be there for two days while they are doing the build-up and coming back to stay another night for breakdown. There is an impact for the whole sector as well there.

There are some factual elements where we know we have lost business coming into the UK and we have lost events that were in the UK to other European cities, partly as a result of Brexit but also because of cost pressures. We also know that our competitors, particularly our European competitors, are using the Brexit argument against us when they are bidding for or we are bidding for other events. For example, if Liverpool is up against Geneva, Paris and Barcelona, we know that our European counterparts, as probably we would if we were in the same position, are using things like the visa argument as a way to deter organisers coming to the UK. They are saying, “You shouldn’t go to the UK because you will have problems getting visas for your delegates, you will have problems with your speakers being turned away at the airport because they don’t have a visa for the right purpose or whatever”. On a local city level, Faye and her colleagues around the country are working to counter that, but if there was a way that we could have some more engagement with Government in terms of asking what we can do together to try to counter some of these perceptions—because a lot of them are perceptions—whether that is creating a packaged event visa that is perceived as being more simple to apply for and get, whether that is a Government-led campaign to encourage events to come to the UK and we are open for business. There is a whole range of things that we could do collaboratively that would help balance some of that.

We have launched an MRA, a mutual recognition agreement, for business events, which is aiming to look at three areas. One is recognising qualifications. This is going outwards as well as inwards. There is an issue with qualifications and simple things—well, they are not simple things. Forklift licences are not recognised now in Europe but they were always recognised pre-Brexit. That is one area. Easing the visa restrictions on short-term passes is another. This is an area I was going to touch on to say that there is so much synergy there on music. Of course, Music Live did a fantastic job over the last 18 months in talking about the issues that the artists and the production crews all have with travelling around Europe. The same is for us as well, for our suppliers and our contractors. They are struggling as well with the visa restrictions and the qualifications there. So try to make it simple to move goods and equipment, both sides. Robert touched on perception. Some of it is reality, but some of it is perception, that it is difficult to come back into the UK because of the restrictions and because of the expense, the fact that we are non-competitive now. To cite a couple of shows, we have lost one show, which was a gaming show, this year. It left London, moved to Barcelona, and it was an economic impact loss of £250 million to London. The reasons cited were mainly Brexit, bureaucracy, too difficult, too expensive. I think that that is probably everything.

That is a gloomy note to finish on.

Sorry. I thought Faye was going to take the subject.

Before we wrap up, if you were in our shoes—this has been really helpful; I have covered my page in notes. We like actions here on our Committee. We like making recommendations to Government and others that will meaningfully change the dial for your sector. That is why you are here as well. That is why you asked us to do this. If you were in our shoes, I will come to each of you—I am speaking slowly so that you have time to think—what one thing would each of you be recommending to the Government that would specifically support business events, that would change the dial for your sector and make a measurable difference?

I would always start at the top of the tree. I would start with getting the right structure. Let’s get that cross-sector working group, because if you can get the engagement, the understanding, that vehicle for ongoing conversations, the rest will flow down from there. That is the linchpin for me.

Who would be on your cross-section working group? Who would you want in the room?

I would want DCMS on there, I would want DBT, I would want Health, I would want Transport, I would probably want DWP, and I would want Treasury, and I would want appropriate industry representation as well that is specific to business events. We cannot go too broad and think about visitor economy and tourism. It has to be specific business event representation. We are talking trade organisers, we are talking event organisers, we are talking venue and so on.

Brilliant. A very nice, specific recommendation. I like it. No pressure, Rachel.

I would like the Government to get behind our MRA in the EU-UK reset next year, because I believe that it will restore confidence and that it will make the UK more competitive and therefore get us back into our rightful place as the world’s greatest place for events.

Helpful. Did you get that? We are making our notes now.

I agree with both of those. I would go for long-term funding for the national promotional body, promotional agency, to be able to compete effectively internationally, because it is very, very competitive out there and we need to work harder. But within that, to make sure that we have funding for our growth programme, because as Faye said earlier, Visit Britain has had a lot of success with its growth programme. It has generated a 35:1 return, bringing about £60 million worth of business into the UK in the last year. Ensuring that we have that as part of that funding model is important.

On funding, because we know that the Government hate it when we ask them for more money, what would be most impactful? Would it be some seed funding to start new events, some kind of tax credits for promotion on events, or tax credits to launch shows in some of the high growth sectors?

Certainly core funding for the promotional body is probably No. 1. Interestingly, and I know we touched on it a little bit earlier, it is an interesting conversation to talk about shows that are related to sectors within Departments. For example, if you have a conversation with the Department of Health, what shows and events could be created out of that Department that could bring some of these people into the UK. Having that kind of national plan would be something really, really interesting.

Very helpful. Is there anything that we have forgotten to ask you that you wanted to get on the record today that because we are so useless we did not ask the right questions? No? We asked all the right questions? There we go. Well done, team. Excellent. It has been lovely to see you all. Thank you so much. We are grateful for your time and grateful that you bid for this as an evidence session. It has been super valuable and we have a ton of recommendations that we can now muse over and decide what we want to do with those. We will keep you posted on our next steps and we are grateful for all your time and engagement today.