Thread by @GeorgePeretzQC

This piece by @jpianomiddleton sets out the problem. The government’s explanation of how we got here was set out by the DCMS minister, Caroline Dinenage, in a debate last week on the petition about this issue. committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/1…

https://twitter.com/GdnClassical/status/1360240508153462786

Let’s look at it.

The UK proposals, she says, were straightforward and just involved adding musicians to the list of permitted short term business visitors.

The problem, though, is that the concept of a “short term business visitor” (a term common to a number of EU and UK free trade agreements) specifically excluded people who are paid on their own account by someone in the host country.

The STBV concept is essentially designed for employees of businesses travelling to deal with their employer’s customers (or target customers). It doesn’t cover a singer wanting to take a part in an opera. See (b).

The UK proposal thus apparently meant fiddling around with the definition of STBV, so as to include musicians being paid on their own behalf. (The published UK text is blank at a key point, but that seems to have been the idea.)

Problem, though: you can fiddle around with a definition - but fiddling around with that one in the STBV provisions had implications. Not least because the EU has promised other countries to offer them as good terms here as it offers to any other country.

So that definition would not just have widened for the UK but for others too.

So the UK offer wasn’t exactly “straightforward”. And it isn’t quite right to say that it would have removed the need for work permits: see the standard rider to all these STBV provisions. “Specified in Annex SERVIN-3” (and thus subject to work permits) is a *long* list.

As to the EU proposal, that was under the heading “mobility” (which is really where this issue belongs: it’s about the right to go and get a short-term gig or job, not about UK companies supplying services to EU customers).

The EU offer was for general short run (90 days) mobility to work but which could be subjected to limits by individual countries - but the offer made it clear that individual countries could not limit artists’ right to undertake “ad hoc activity”.

Dinenage is right that that offer would have left the ability of technical staff, and musicians acting on more than an ad hoc basis (and your guess is as good as mine as to what “ad hoc activity” meant), subject to blocks by individual states. So not ideal.

But it is reasonable to suppose that it could - with a will - have been worked on.

The problem with the EU proposal though, from the point of view of the current government and its choice of Brexit, was that this was all under a “mobility” head. Commitment to visa-free travel - even in a limited way for 90 days - was unacceptable.

See Dinenage’s last quoted paragraph.

Which is why we are where we are.