Will state-backed insurance save live music events?

Music festivals and other live events will be protected by a government-backed insurance scheme if future Covid lockdowns prevent them from going ahead.

Private insurers “will receive a guarantee from the government which will allow them to offer products to cover organisers if state restrictions shut events down” says Sky News. The government will effectively act as a reinsurer, putting up a £750m fund to underwrite future payouts. If events go ahead, the Treasury could make a profit from the premiums paid by insurance companies.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak said he had stepped in because “the lack of the right kind of insurance is proving a problem” even though Covid restrictions have been lifted. More than half of this summer’s music festivals have been cancelled.

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Oliver Dowden, the culture secretary, said the scheme would now give organisers “the confidence they need to plan for a brighter future”.

However, Labour said the programme was no more than a “bare minimum” and promoters would still face risks in staging events.

The live events industry, which has repeatedly called for such a plan, has given it a mixed reaction. The Musicians’ Union said a “major problem” is that the protection will apply only during a new lockdown, and would not help events that would become financially unviable if social distancing came back into force.

Greg Parmley, chief executive of industry association Live, told the BBC that “the devil is very much in the detail” because cancellations due to social distancing rules, rather than a full lockdown, were “far more likely”.

Leading figures from the sector also say the help has come “too late”. Chris Smith, the Womad festival director, told The Guardian: “Anything to support the industry going forward is a positive, but it has come too late for so many organisations like ours who have lost the summer and need not have done.”

The digital, culture, media and sport committee has been calling for the safety net since January. Its Conservative chair, Julian Knight, said that though the scheme “will provide the confidence the sector needs to plan and invest in future events”, it is a “shame that it has come too late for some this summer”.

But Tom Watson, chairman of UK Music and the former deputy leader of the Labour Party, said he was “extremely grateful” for the “working solution to a complex problem”.

He told The Times that the government is “protecting jobs but, as importantly, allowing commercial music to get back on track to being a net contributor to the exchequer”.