Speeches by Hinds.

“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?”

“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?”

“Who are these people? We need to meet them.”

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

“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 …”

“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 lar…”

“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 abou…”

“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…”

“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…”

“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 …”

“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 obvious…”

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

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

“What do they do? Who is on this team?”

“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 Comb…”

“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?”

“Good luck, Jon. We have been there.”

“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 …”

“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 t…”

“Are you awaiting a response?”