The Stage

Passing the buck is just child’s play

Published Tuesday 9 August 2005 at 10:25

The Institute of Entertainment and Arts Management has, as this newspaper noted earlier, been busy resuscitating itself from its once moribund state. If its intervention in the area of child performance licensing is anything to go by, then its rediscovered energy is to the benefit of the industry at large.

Unfortunately, its campaign to bring to light some of the unintended, negative consequences of the Children Act 2004 may have lost a little momentum. The new minister for children, Beverley Hughes, has side-stepped the previous incumbent’s offer of direct talks about the licensing dilemma caused by the new legislation. Hughes has devolved responsibility to her deputy who has, in turn, offered talks with her civil servants.

Our instinct is to sneer when ministers cite their workload as an excuse to dodge an obligation. We must allow, though, for the fact that, while performer licensing is important to us, it is peripheral overall to the concerns of the Department for Education and Skills. Also, that mandarins generally have a better technical grasp of the fine details of legislation than their political masters.

The problem, however, is that civil servants cannot make political commitments, nor can they assume ministers will be persuaded by common sense arguments from their advisers. IEAM representatives will doubtless find their Whitehall hosts better informed on the arcane ramifications of the Children Act than Ms Hughes or Ms Eagle. Yet they are justified in their concern for the future success of their campaign and must press for a junior ministerial contact at the least.

The government needs make no apology for putting child safety before the wish fulfilment of child actors. Yet this is not the issue here. It is precisely for want of definite guidance from Whitehall that we now have a system where a child in one education authority can be licensed to perform, while another elsewhere is excluded. The issue here is not a lack of safety but of even-handed treatment.