Marketers offer clients a multitude of services, including how to work out a company’s brand personality. This involves busy executives brainstorming to come up with a description of the kind of person the company, if it were a flesh and blood human being, is or would aspire to become.
Now try to imagine what the Government’s brand personality might be. If you’re stuck for ideas (and I’m sure you’re not!) how about this one for starters: enjoys kicking people when they’re down.
We all know the arts sector has been shafted by funding cuts to pay for the 2012 Olympics. Industry morale is at it’s lowest for over a decade. But to add insult to injury the Government is preparing to introduce changes to work permit and visa legislation. Changes that could have dire consequences for performance and theatre venues, touring companies, orchestras, festivals, as well as individual artists and performers already facing an uncertain financial future.
Details of the proposed changes were released in March. The details are in the 55-page Home Office publication A Points-Based System: Making Immigration Work for Britain.
The crux of the document is that fitting visa applicants into 1 of 5 categories, or Tiers will enhance immigration control. In addition people will be granted or denied entry on the basis of “a points-based system.”
Chloë Reddaway, Campaigns Manager for National Campaign for the Arts, which is the only independent arts body that has been consulted about the new legislation, says, “The existence of the Tier 5 creative and sporting category is, in itself, a recognition of the [arts] sector and means that applicants under this tier do not have to satisfy criteria related to language skills, resident labour market testing and qualifications which can be required of applicants under other Tiers.
“However, the arts sector has many concerns about the practical and financial implications of requirements under the Points Based System and we have been discussing these with the Home Office since the policy was first proposed,” says Reddaway.
After making its submission to a Home Office consultation about the changes in 2005, the NCA met last year with the Home Office to run through the arts sectors specific concerns.
NCA chair, Joan Bakewell, referred to this meeting in her prophetic article about the changes published in August 2006 by The Independent.
Bakewell described one of the case studies put before the Home Office that showed how the changes might affect visiting artists, in this case six musicians from Angola. Under the proposed legislation the musicians would be “required to turn up at the single diplomatic mission in the whole vast country of Angola, which was open only 3 hours a day, and at a considerable distance from where they lived. How to cope?”
For over a year the NCA has led a chorus of arts organizations calling on the Government not to implement work permit laws that would restrict the movement of visiting artists. In April the Government announced that the cost of work permit visas (the kind applicable to visiting foreign artists) would jump from £85 to £200, effective immediately.
As an indication of the possible ramifications of these changes Nuala Calvi wrote in The Stage: “The cost of visas for the Barbican Theatre’s BITE season of international theatre would leap from £1,377 to £43,400, while the Barbican Hall would face a £100,000 bill for scheduling 20 orchestras, instead of £3,060.”
The decision to increase the fees was taken despite the Home Office meeting with NCA.
To add further insult the fees for student visas only rose from £85 to £99. No offence to students but what makes this comparison so stark is that part of the justification Immigration Minister Liam Byrne gave for the changes was that it should be the migrants who get the most financial benefit from coming to Britain who should pay more for entering the country. But surely a visiting artist, who would typically be in the country for a short period, say, long enough to attend a festival, conduct a performance, or finish a tour, would accrue less ‘benefit’ than a tax-free status student enrolled on a 1, 3, or 7-year course?
Luckily, this chapter in the tale of woe ends happily. Last week the Home Office announced the increase in fees for work permit visas would be reduced to fall in line with those of student visas.
Reddaway says “the partial reversal of fees establishes the principle that a negative economic impact on the arts can affect visa pricing for artists.” She remains hopeful that persistency could yield better results for the industry in relation to the proposed changes scheduled to take effect in 2008. “I cannot comment on what the Home Office is likely to do but the NCA will continue to campaign for the changes which we deem to be necessary,” she says.
