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Law360, London (March 1, 2021, 1:35 PM GMT) -- Top musicians backed calls on Monday for the government to provide an insurance safety net for live events this summer, saying there is insufficient cover available on the commercial market.
Robert Plant, the former frontman of rock legends Led Zeppelin, Who singer Roger Daltrey and electronic music duo the Chemical Brothers are among artists who say public funds should be used to provide COVID-19 cancelation insurance.
Event organizers say insurers are refusing to offer policies that cover cancelations resulting from the pandemic. They have urged the government to provide a £650 million ($910 million) insurance fund for the beleaguered live music and events sector.
The proposals echo the government's own £500 million scheme to restart film and TV productions, which has been providing specific COVID-19 cancelation cover for studios since last year.
"The U.K. government has already provided a financially backed scheme for the film industry, which has allowed production to resume," the Chemical Brothers said in a statement. "All we ask is that the same approach be taken to help those in the live events industry, which needs the support too, and provides so much to the U.K. economically as well as culturally."
The biggest U.K. live music events are summer festivals, which trade body UK Music estimates attract 5.2 million people every year. The biggest, Glastonbury Festival, announced in January that it was canceling its 2021 event. But two other major music festivals, Leeds and Reading, have announced that their planned events at the end of August are going ahead.
Insurance broker Tysers said other festivals would also pull the plug if they were unable to get cover.
"The window of opportunity for this summer will slam shut very shortly," Tim Thornhill, director of the entertainment and sport division at the company, said. "The government needs to act now."
MPs on the parliamentary Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee have called on the government to provide a similar fund for its TV and film scheme to give the live music sector a boost.
But Economic Secretary to the Treasury John Glen said in a letter to the committee at the start of February that the time is not right, adding that "professional film sets can more easily be made COVID-secure than public events."
DCMS committee chairman Julian Knight said on Friday that the decision should be reviewed after the government published its "roadmap" out of lockdown. "We're calling on the Chancellor to review that decision now that the government has a better sense of the road to recovery," he said.
Neither a spokesperson for HM Treasury nor the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport responded immediately to a request for comment.
--Editing by Joe Millis.
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