The Live Music Forum, the Feargal Sharkey headed body set up to advise the government on the impact of that previously reported Licensing Act, which changed the ways pubs and smaller venues had to apply for licences to stage live music, may eventually conclude that the new legislation has failed to deliver the "explosion" in live music ministers said it would and that, as some in the grass roots live sector had predicted, in fact live music provision in some places has gone down since it was made law.
A submission by the LMF's Impact Of The Act Sub-Group, based on MORI research I think, is expected to say that the old system, where one or two musicians could provide incidental music in pub venues without the need for a licence, was actually better in supporting grass roots musicians. Licensing changes elsewhere, the sub-group will say, have not had any noticeable effect in improving grass roots live music, while those who continue to stage small gigs have to tolerate increased bureaucracy.
Commenting on their findings, Musicians' Union general secretary John Smith, who chairs the LMF sub-group, told The Stage newspaper: "[The act] is a disappointment. [Ministers] Kim Howells, Richard Caborn and James Purnell all promised me, face to face, that it would be good for live music. If we're going through all this pain, it should be good. But the more we have researched it, the more we think it's neutral".
The Stage also quote a 'live music campaigner' called Hamish Birchall who says: "The sub-group's report makes a mockery of government promises that the act would help live music, and of recent DCMS claims that the initial evidence of the act's impact has been positive. It calls for the very things that campaigners wanted, but that this government ignored when it drew up the act in the first place - a better incidental music exemption and a small-scale venue exemption".
The submission has not, as yet, been issued as an official conclusion by the LMF itself, and the government's Department Of Culture, Media & Sport have played down the significance of the sub-group's comments and the subsequent reportings of them. Though, given that reporting, the LMF will lose quite a bit of credibility if it publishes any report that doesn't at least address those concerns within.