Equity says new up-front laws not tough enough

Published Tuesday 8 April 2008 at 15:25 by Matthew Hemley

New laws designed to protect aspiring actors and models from rogue agents have been met with criticism from Equity officials and campaigners, who claim the rules are a missed opportunity to “clean up the industry”.

The regulations, which came into force this week, prevent agents who charge a fee for including performers’ details in a publication or website from taking any money up-front.

Instead, performers are now to be given a seven-day cooling-off period, during which they have the right to change their minds.

Any agent who takes a fee from a potential client before the end of the seven days is liable to be prosecuted by the Employment Agency Standards inspectorate, which will be tasked with pursuing complaints against companies.

However, critics claim the new regulations from the government do not go far enough to protect vulnerable members of the public, and also argue that the new rules have not been publicised enough, leading to fears that most companies will not know the changes exist.

Equity general secretary Christine Payne said: “I welcome the fact that the government is looking to take on the small number of rogue agents that give the entertainment industry a bad name. But these changes are a missed opportunity to provide proper protection for vulnerable young people and members of the public. Although most professional performers are aware of the pitfalls, I am still hugely disappointed that the government has failed to take this opportunity to clean up the industry.”

Bectu national official Spencer MacDonald agreed with Payne and said the rules meant that scams were merely delayed by a week, while Equity walk-on councillor Clive Hurst, who has been at the forefront of a campaign to crack down on agents that charge up-front fees, described the government’s response as “half-hearted”.

He said that the laws were meaningless because some people did not realise until weeks had gone by that they had been the victim of a scam.

Hurst is now planning to address the issue at Equity’s forthcoming annual representitive conference. He will call on the union’s council to pressurise the government into making the EAS a statutory body that can impose fines directly on agents acting outside the law.

“This issue will not go away until there is a complete ban on up-front fees paid to agents, backed-up by proper enforcement,” he said.

However, a spokeswoman for the Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform said the new laws would be effective as they are, and added: “Where a would-be entertainer is charged a fee for including their details in a publication or website and the fee is taken before the cooling-off period is up, it will be a criminal offence. The EAS follows up all complaints and can prosecute any agency concerned.”

Pat McFadden, minister of state for employment relations, said: “We think a seven-day cooling-off period is a good idea because we want young models and actors starting out in their careers, and their families, to have time to think about it before paying for inclusion in these publications.”