The Stage

DCMS issued ‘misleading’ statistics on live music in UK

Published Tuesday 8 November 2005 at 15:10 by Nuala Calvi

Government officials published misleading claims about the state of live music in Britain ahead of the new Licensing Act, the UK’s market research watchdog has ruled.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s first Live Music Survey - intended to assess what impact the legislation would have - claimed that 1.7 million gigs had taken place in bars, clubs and restaurants whose main business is not live music.

However the Market Research Standards Board says the claim about the research carried out by pollsters MORI was inaccurate because a quarter of the gigs took place in other sorts of venues not listed in the subsequent press release issued last year. Included among the sites were thousands of churches, community halls, hotels and private clubs and associations, many of which do not involve public, professional performances.

DCMS officials have hurriedly edited archived comments by minister Richard Caborn on the department’s website and disciplinary action is now being taken against the MORI employee responsible for the survey.

Live music campaigner Hamish Birchall, whose complaint about the DCMS claim triggered the investigation, told The Stage: “It helped them at the time to argue that licensing hadn’t harmed music in bars, and enabled them to justify to their own MPs that [further] licensing wouldn’t harm live music. It goes to the heart of the government’s case for reform.”

A spokeswoman would not comment on the change to the minister’s statement, which now includes the words “and other venues”. She denied that the original quote had been misleading.

“The purpose of the press notice was to outline the music survey concisely and point people towards the report,” she said. “We wanted to get across the point that this was about small venues and not Wembley Arena. In the many interviews/briefings we conducted at the time it was made very clear the extent of the venues surveyed.”

MRSB has said the figure quoted should have been much lower, at 1.3 million, excluding hotels, churches and community halls. But Birchall claims the true figure is 850,000, excluding members clubs and associations, which have been exempt from entertainment licensing.

He added: “The point of the survey was how much licensing affected the decision to have live music. If a venue is not required to be licensed, clearly it is not affected by licensing in its decision-making process. So what’s the point of looking at that category of venue?”

A MORI spokesman agreed the original press release might possibly have been construed as misleading.

He said: “This was a genuine mistake. At no point was there any intention to paint a false picture, particularly as the full study report was released at exactly the same time as the press release and was made freely available to all on the DCMS website.”