PARLIAMENTARY WRITTEN QUESTION
Arts: Work Permits (25 January 2021)

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, if the Government will publish the official text that was included in the proposed measure to allow creative professionals to travel and perform in both the UK and EU without work permits.

Asked by:
Alison McGovern (Labour)

This Government recognises the importance of the UK’s thriving cultural industries, and that is why it pushed for ambitious arrangements to make it easier for performers and artists to perform across Europe as part of the negotiations on our future relationship with the EU.

This Government proposed to the EU that musicians, and their technical staff, be added to the list of permitted activities for short-term business visitors in the entry and temporary stay chapter of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement. This would have allowed musicians and their staff to travel and perform in the EU more easily, without needing work-permits.

The UK’s legal texts reflected this position, as the EU has now acknowledged. These texts are confidential negotiating documents and it is not appropriate for them to be published.

Answered by:
Paul Scully (Conservative)
25 January 2021