This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Business News Legal Live Business
MPG speak out about form 696
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 19 December 2008
The Music Producer’s Guild and Musician’s Union are teaming up to more formally protest against the increasingly infamous Form 696, the Metropolitan Police created form used by London councils in the live music licence application process which asks for personal information about all musicians due to appear at music events plus specifics about the genres of music to be played.
Anger over the form has been growing in the artist community since UK Music chief Feargal Sharkey raised it at a parliamentary review of the 2003 Licensing Act. Sharkey was arguing that new powers introduced by the Act were being misused by some local authorities, making it harder, and more costly and time-consuming, for promoters of smaller music events to secure licences.
With regard to the 696 form, used by London local authorities since the introduction of the new legislation, he questioned what was done with the personal data of musicians and whether the genre information would be used to discriminate against those types of music associated with ethnic minority groups. He added that the 2003 Act itself does not require such information be collected.
Since then a petition against the form has been set up on the 10 Downing Street website, and the Musician’s Union have been formally speaking out about it. And the boss of the Music Producer’s Guild this week issued an open letter supporting the Union on this issue.
MPG boss Mike Howlett wrote: “The Music Producers Guild would like to add its support to the Musicians Union’s campaign to stop London Metropolitan Police from enforcing Form 696”.
“Our understanding is that Form 696 compels licensees who wish to hold live music events in 21 London boroughs to report to the police the names, addresses, aliases and telephone numbers of performers, and most worryingly, the likely ethnicity of their audience. Failure to comply could result in fines or imprisonment”.
“In keeping with the Musicians Union and UK Music, we feel this is a gross infringement of civil liberties and a form of racial discrimination. We also feel that this will deter the staging of live musical events, stifle free expression and possibly penalise certain genres of music and ethnic audiences”.
Howlett adds that he is encouraging his members to sign the aforementioned petition, and that he’d support any Union activity to lobby for the abolition of the form.
