Women and Equalities Committee transcript: Misogyny in Music – Follow up - Apr 24

Members present: Caroline Nokes (Chair); Dr Lisa Cameron; Dame Caroline Dinenage; Kate Osborne; Kirsten Oswald.

Questions 390 - 436

Witnesses

I: Andrew Medlock, Interim Chief Operating Officer, CIISA; Jen Smith, Interim Chief Executive, CIISA; and David Smy, Deputy Director of Enabling Regulation, Office for Students.

Examination of witnesses

Witnesses: Andrew Medlock, Jen Smith and David Smy.

Q390       Chair: Good afternoon and welcome to this afternoon's session of the Women and Equalities Committee for some follow-up work on our inquiry into misogyny in music. May I welcome our three witnesses this afternoon? We have Jen Smith, the interim chief exec of CIISA; Andrew Medlock, the interim chief operating officer of CIISA; and David Smy, deputy director of enabling regulation at the Office for Students.

As is usual, Committee members will ask you questions in turn, but if at any point any of you wishes to come in on a question that has not specifically been directed to you, please do indicate that and I will bring you in. I want to start off with some questions to you, Jen, about the development of CIISA, where it is currently and how soon you expect it to go live.

Jen Smith: If I may, Chair, I have a few opening remarks that I think will address the questions you have put to me. This is a timely appearance before you because although the misogyny in music inquiry has concluded, scrutiny of how the music industry and the wider creative industries conduct themselves has not, and bullying, harassment and discrimination remain alarmingly current.

CIISA is set to go live by the end of this year, in December, contingent on our funding ask. We appreciate this opportunity to update the Committee, as we have developed significantly in the 12 months since I last updated you. We now have a two-year business plan, an operational blueprint and a corporate strategy in place, and we move imminently into our year-one and year-two funding ask of our key stakeholders, which we anticipate will be successful. We are recruiting to key roles within our governance structures and appointing a head of standards to lead that aspect of our work.

We are pleased to confirm that we have wide-scale support from leading organisations across the music sector and beyond, in the wider cultural sector, with 80 leading organisations listed as supporters on our website from film, TV, music and theatre, with audio, fashion, advertising, games and publishing set to follow, coming into CIISA in 2025.

Finally, I am pleased to tell the Committee that we conducted a snap survey—our consultants PA Consulting did the survey on our behalf—and got the results last week. Eight hundred creative industry professionals responded and 91% were in favour of CIISA, with 84% of those respondents saying that they would use our services once we go live in December. That demonstrates yet again that CIISA remains urgent and essential.

Q391       Chair: Thank you. When questioned about CIISA, people were broadly supportive and thought it was important that it was set up. What is awareness like if people are not directly asked in a survey about CIISA? What is the penetration level in the creative sector? Do they know you exist?

Jen Smith: Yes. I would say that among the freelance community there is significant anticipation about CIISA services going live. In terms of our wider engagement strategy and visibility, we are not yet open for business and would not like to create the perception that we were able to receive people's cases, so we have limited visibility on social media, for example, at this stage, and we have focused our engagement strategy on conversations with key decision makers. But rest assured that we will be ramping up our communication strategy as we move into our year-one and year-two funding ask and as we go live later this year.

Chair: So you are going to build up to the launch with a significant engagement strategy.

Jen Smith: Yes.

Q392       Chair: I was concerned to hear last week from a leading person in the sector. When I asked him about CIISA, he looked at me blankly; when I told him what the acronym stood for, he then did know. Is that much of a problem? Should we refer to it in full rather than as CIISA?

Jen Smith: We are happy to do that. We have found that CIISA is generally well socialised. Certainly, my colleagues tell me that in the music sector, when there are panel discussions around the misogyny in music inquiry, there have been occasions when CIISA's name has been mentioned and there has been spontaneous applause from freelancers in the audience. So there is good recognition about us coming forward and people knowing that CIISA exists, and the acronym being widely known.

Key stakeholders that are helping with our engagement specifically in the music sector include the BPI. Each of the labels have now committed to CIISA individually, as have the Musicians' Union, Help Musicians, the Music Managers Forum, Live Nation, PRS, the Association of British Orchestras—I could go on—so we are confident that we have sufficient stakeholder support in the music sector and beyond to bring CIISA to reality at the end of this year.

Chair: The freelancers are applauding. Are the labels applauding, as well?

Jen Smith: We have spoken to each of the labels individually; we continue our engagement with them. They have shown their support and commitment to us by endorsing CIISA on our supporters page. We continue to work with them on shaping our services, and we believe we can count on their full support.

Q393       Chair: We have brought David from the Office for Students here for a specific purpose. Could you tell me in turn—Jen first—how you see CIISA collaborating and working with the Office for Students?

Jen Smith: CIISA will be, by its nature, a collaborative organisation. We do not seek to duplicate provision, but we seek to address gaps in provision. We have already met with colleagues from the OfS to consider how we will ensure there is adequate provision and safeguarding for students working in creative settings.

David Smy: I completely endorse all of that. We have quite a lot of experience working with other organisations that have links to students and have abilities to help students that we do not, or have information about students—or, in turn, where we are able to assist. We work quite closely with the Office of the Independent Adjudicator, for instance.

We can definitely build on that with CIISA, as well. There is lots of room for information sharing, signposting and ensuring that students are supported from every different angle. There is a lot of interface between the academic side and the professional side in practice in this area.

Q394       Kate Osborne: Jen, can you set out to us what legal barriers there might be to CIISA's work—for example, around GDPR provisions? What progress, if any, have you made with the Government to minimise or remove those barriers?

Jen Smith: As you would anticipate, we have taken significant legal advice in relation to GDPR. Our handling of data remains a critical core success factor for CIISA. We are confident that the advice we have had is robust. We have requested a meeting with Government to discuss a challenge that we have identified, and mitigation to that challenge. We have requested that meeting and it has been offered to us. We will update the Committee once that meeting has taken place.

Kate Osborne: Okay, so would we be looking at legislative changes to enable that to happen—to support the work that you are doing?

Jen Smith: I will allow my colleague Andrew to speak to GDPR in more detail.

Andrew Medlock: As part of our final design phase, we have been looking at the range of services we want to provide and mapping that against our legal requirements. When doing that, we have not done anything that is going to preclude our work. We do not see any showstoppers with regard to that. We are confident that we can deliver within all the legislative requirements that we have.

What we are talking about here is that we have identified a number of things that we would like to speak to the Government about, with regard to making CIISA's work more efficient. Although we know that we can safely navigate GDPR, for example, we can see things that can be done to ensure that we are doing that in the smoothest and most efficient way for the people who use our service.

Q395       Kate Osborne: This question is to Jen but, if you are better placed to answer, Andrew, please do. I want to ask about defamation law and how that might impact your ability to highlight serious examples of unacceptable behaviour.

Jen Smith: Again, we have taken significant advice on defamation from leading counsel. We are confident that that advice is robust. That relates to the most serious and high-profile investigations that CIISA may take forward in future. We are confident that we have been advised very well by our counsel. My colleague, Andrew, may have more comments to add.

Andrew Medlock: Exactly—on the same principle—we have looked at it, tested it and can see that we feel confident in this space. We have taken initial advice and will get more advice. The key elements are that we will be a confidential service; there is no running commentary—the work will be done in private with the parties involved. Most importantly, CIISA will be an evidence-based, objective investigative process.

We will look to ensure it is verifying any allegation that is coming to it, ensuring it is tested and that people have the opportunity—obviously, all parties—to submit and refute evidence, so that we can come to an evidence-based finding, on a balance of probabilities. We feel that that is comfortably within the defamation law parameters.

Q396       Kate Osborne: You mentioned interested parties. Let me turn to parties in another way, I suppose; later in the year, we may expect a change of Government. Have you had any conversations with any of the Opposition shadow Ministers?

Jen Smith: We have kept all sides of the House informed of our progress, and we will continue to do so.

Q397       Kate Osborne: You set out that CIISA will undertake investigations into historical allegations. What is the most up-to-date information that you have on the likely scale of that work? What does that look like? Are there limitations to that work? Do you have the capacity for it?

Jen Smith: We have thought very carefully about this, and we have a three-year window for historical allegations to come forward in our current plans. In terms of modelling demand, we are working very carefully with PA Consulting, which is underpinning high-level assurance for CIISA. Demand modelling is part of our immediate planning going forward in our design phase, but benchmarking is quite difficult because we are a unique proposition. It is difficult to look at peer standards, authorities and regulators and anticipate what demand might be, but we are confident that, in our business plan, we are accommodating for, potentially, a rush of people wanting to use CIISA's services in the first instance, and modelling for that in how we take our services forward.

Andrew Medlock: To elaborate on the historical cases front, CIISA's objective and role is very firmly to tackle what is happening both now and in the future—to future-proof the creative industries and the workplaces within that aspect—while also recognising and balancing the fact that there are things we can learn and potentially act on with regards to historical aspects. Our core focus is on future-proofing the workplace culture within the creative industries. That is why we are saying that there is a three-year provision, but we may override that if we can see that there are justifiable and compelling reasons to do so. In particular, that could be that we can see there has been a historical aspect but there is a real prospect or likelihood that any harm is continuing in the here and now as well. We want to make sure that we are balancing those aspects out.

It is really important to note that, even if CIISA had 300 staff, conducting formal investigations is an incredibly resource-intensive endeavour. We are not going to be able to investigate every single case. We want to ensure that we are balancing that out by early dispute resolution through mediation, support and advice to ensure that we are adding value wherever we can. We will only be investigating the most serious and complex cases, so we will need to manage expectations in that regard.

Q398       Kate Osborne: Of course, I suppose the issue there is that sometimes, until you start investigating, you do not know which ones are the serious cases. How do you manage that?

Andrew Medlock: We will have criteria that look at what would come under a “serious and complex case”. That is where our core provision of allowing and enabling people to report their concerns to us enables us to build a picture—patterns and themes—so we can see where we can take the most amount of intervention and impact in a particular area. If we got reports in a particular area where we can see that it is justifying, through evidence-based inquiries, that there is a pattern of behaviour or a theme, we would want to take action. It is about how we strategise and use our resources wisely to get at the most important and impactful issues.

Q399       Kate Osborne: Thank you. In February, your update said that freelancers will not be able to access CIISA's in-house investigation service. Could you tell us a little bit more about that and why that is the case? How or why was that decision made?

Jen Smith: If I could just give some clarity: I think you saw a grid describing how we anticipate users will engage with CIISA. Really, what we are saying there is that investigations are not an on-demand service, and that CIISA will make the decisions when we investigate and when we do not. Obviously, if freelancers come to us with legitimate concerns and we see that it is right that we investigate, we will obviously do so. As my colleague has said, we will use our resources judiciously and we cannot promise every freelancer that we will investigate every issue that they may wish us to.

Kate Osborne: Just to clarify, that is not a blanket decision; that is on a case-by-case basis.

Jen Smith: Yes, case by case.

Kate Osborne: That is good to hear.

Q400       Chair: How did you land on the three-year time period?

Jen Smith: We gave it real deliberation with our legal advisers and equally with other colleagues helping us shape CIISA. From the engagement we had with freelancers, we felt there was a desire to have some historical window. Others had suggested five years and so on; we have landed on three. We think that is proportionate to the resources that we will have, but obviously CIISA will be operating proactively. As we demonstrate our value and effectively shift cultural norms in the creative industries, while there will always be a provision to look at historical cases, we think our positive, proactive interventions will be the main value-for-money benefit of CIISA seen by the creative industries.

Q401       Chair: Will you have the capacity to look back if a current complaint comes forward? I will give you a real-life example of a Harvey Weinstein-type figure, where many of the complaints were very historic, yet there was current ongoing concern. Will your investigations have the ability to look back further than the three years, if necessary?

Andrew Medlock: That is a very good question. We would want to plan any investigation and look at what the breadth is, and then think about what resources are aligned to that, so that we can think about how we can do that in the most effective way possible. We are alive to those particular points. If it is a historic investigation and we are being asked to do that by other organisations, for example, we need to ensure that we are appropriately resourced, if it means that it goes beyond our existing staffing resource. It is all about the planning, breadth and scope. We want to be very clear about not going into fishing expeditions, for example, and ensuring that we are very laser-focused on what needs to be addressed, bearing in mind that an investigation is very resource-intensive and can take years if you do not get it right.

Q402       Dame Caroline Dinenage: Can I talk to you about sanctions? I know that when we were originally doing our inquiry, there was concern that CIISA may not have the necessary teeth to be able to make a difference. Jen, could you update the Committee on the range of sanctions that CIISA will be able to impose?

Jen Smith: Of course, we are describing these as recommendations that CIISA will make. The anchor for those recommendations will be CIISA's standards framework—whether that standards framework has been breached and determining how serious that breach is. We are always interested in proportionate accountability, and we will be developing our recommendations further. That is now imminent in our final design phase.

We accept that our recommendations will not be binding, because we are not a statutory regulator, but in the case of many self-regulators or voluntary regulators, most elements of the industry do abide by them. A good example of voluntary regulation that is already socialised within the creative industries is the BBFC, which determines age classifications for films. In practice, we feel our recommendations may go into educational provisions, organisational or systemic changes, or restorative impact warnings that we may issue to individuals or organisations. For the most concerning behaviours we may find, we would refer to legal avenues or publish non-compliance with recommendations.

Q403       Dame Caroline Dinenage: What about the whole concept of being able to name and shame an organisation or individual? Is that still on the cards? At what point and in which circumstances would that be brought into use?

Andrew Medlock: That is probably looking at the very sharp end of the stick, with regard to very serious behaviour. A recommendation or sanction that could be included is a referral to legal avenues, other statutory regulators—for example, the EHRC—or even the police. Looking at our final design, if we make a recommendation and can see that there is regular or routine non-compliance, or an individual or organisation is simply not listening to us, then we will look at how we publish that and at the public interest aspect. That is the very sharp end, where we are seeing that people may challenge our authority.

We are very clear, certainly in the conversations we have had, that the industry is backing CIISA to do this job. It is backing us to set standards and it is backing us to enforce those standards. Obviously, that goes with ensuring that we deal with non-compliance correctly. We will look at how we can publicise any non-compliance where we see that we have done as much as we can and it is now over to the industry to decide what to do.

Q404       Dame Caroline Dinenage: So non-compliance is what happens when everything else you have tried goes wrong—you would then take those steps. Before you get to that stage, how do you encourage compliance? What steps will you be able to take to encourage people in that direction?

Andrew Medlock: Encouragement can happen in many different forms. The first is that, by having CIISA doing this work, we expect the industry to accord with our authority to make those recommendations, so that they are accepted and complied with, full stop. Of course, as Jen was saying, we do not have binding powers here, but if we see that we have made a recommendation but it is very clear that, after a number of engagements, it is not going to be complied with, we would want to make sure that we are taking that to the next stage—if I can call it that—in the way that I just spelled out. That includes the possibility of us using a legal avenue. So if we said, “Here is a statutory regulator in this space that can take this forward,” or if there are legal avenues that can take it forward, then we would take it in that way.

Q405       Dame Caroline Dinenage: With that in mind, CIISA is not a statutory body, and you will potentially be using the powers of others that are statutory bodies. Do you think you will be content with that as an approach in the long term, or do you think there will come a time when CIISA will have to become a statutory body in and of itself?

Jen Smith: This is the route that the industry has chosen. This is what the industry has asked us to do, and it has been endorsed in the sector vision by Government—to take this approach as a voluntary regulator. That is where we currently are. We are just going into our year-one and year-two funded ask. We anticipate that that will be successful. We anticipate that the stakeholders that have engaged with the work so far to get to this place will be true to their word and fund us. Should that not be the case, we would examine our options at that point, but we feel this is the right route for the creative industries at this juncture.

Q406       Dame Caroline Dinenage: Very good. David, can I come to you? We have focused on everybody else far too much, so let's have a chat with you. When are we going to see the new condition of registration for higher education settings that is aimed at protecting students from harassment and sexual misconduct?

David Smy: I want to thank you for inviting me and thank everyone who has engaged in the lead-up to our consultation and beforehand. As you know, we published that consultation last year. We had 216 responses, including an unusually high number from students. We expect the final decisions on that to be published in the second half of May—so next month—alongside the outcomes of the pilot prevalence survey that we did with students about sexual misconduct and sexual harassment. We are publishing next month.

The final decisions on that are yet to be made, but I expect there will be a recommendation to have a condition in essentially the form that we put forward in the consultation—obviously, really carefully considered and refined through responses—with the clarity that that provides for students and the clarity of expectations it provides for providers.

Q407       Dame Caroline Dinenage: I appreciate that the decision has not been fully made yet, so it is difficult for you to comment on exactly how it might work but, theoretically, could you set out the factors that might, for example, trigger an organisation to be found in breach of those conditions? Similarly, Jen and Andrew, what kinds of sanctions potentially could be imposed against people who are found to be in breach?

David Smy: The first thing to say is that the proposals for the condition are in the shape of requirements for providers to have certain policies on harassment and sexual misconduct. There are some specific elements—having appropriate, fair and transparent investigation processes, and proper support for students who need it—as well as requirements for providers to set out the steps they are going to take in their particular context to deal with things. There are consistent elements that we think are important for everyone, but we also want people to consider their own circumstances. According to your own report on misogyny in music, the challenges faced by students there are different from those in, say, large campus universities. So in terms of the conditions in the form, you have to have policies and you have to meet them in practice. That is the framing.

In terms of evidence, we are not looking at individual complaint resolution per se. We are not saying, “This person should have had a different outcome.” We are not set up in that way, apart from in the case of free speech, where we have been given complaint powers by Parliament. What we would be looking at is the effectiveness of the policies.

I think what is most likely to trigger interest would be if something did go wrong in an individual case, or even more so in a series of cases. We would say, “Why did that go wrong?” Was it an individual person who, outside the wider control of the university or college, made a particular mistake, or does this expose something? This student said that they couldn't come forward, and when we look at it, we can see why they didn't feel they could come forward, because your policies weren't sufficiently clear or because there is evidence that you didn't provide an environment where they were confident to come forward. So we would be looking at the effectiveness of the policies and then whether they were delivered in practice.

In terms of what we do about this, a lot of our work with providers is just based on engagement. If we saw something come up, we would talk to them. We would say, “Are there things you need to fix?” We want them to comply. We want them to sort things out.

If we think that something has gone badly wrong, we can launch investigations into providers. We can impose specific conditions of registration, which basically says, “Everyone has this general condition imposed, but you have to particularly introduce this policy, in this way, to protect students.” Then, if they breach the condition—this condition or others—we have really clear powers to impose financial, monetary penalties on providers, to fine them up to £500,000 or 2% of qualifying income, which is essentially income from students. For really big providers, 2% of qualifying income can be very big, but also, for quite small providers, £500,000 is always going to be significant.

You touched on, in questions to CIISA, identifying this to providers, and we have really clear policies on publication. When investigating a provider, we would normally publish what the outcomes were and, in particular, we would normally publish if we imposed a monetary penalty or a condition of registration, because we think that is where a lot of the value is—in other providers both being able to see what went wrong in order to understand that this is the sort of thing where, if they do it, they will be breaching the condition as well, and in being able to make improvements.

Q408       Dame Caroline Dinenage: Basically what you are saying is that the monitoring of compliance with the new condition would be triggered by something going wrong. You don't keep a watching brief on whether the condition is being complied with, as a matter of course.

David Smy: We have in general a risk-based approach to regulation. We have 400 providers. We don't, for any condition of registration, go to each provider and check them systematically every single year. It is possible that in the future we might do some spot checks in this area or other areas, but in general we think the most proportionate thing for providers and the best use of our resource is to focus on cases where there is an indication that something is wrong. I mentioned that that might be high-profile individual cases; there is another possibility. As I said, we have piloted a prevalence survey approach, so if we rolled out a wider approach to understanding the prevalence of sexual harassment and misconduct, we might also see patterns in the data that did not come up in any high-profile way. We might see data that indicates that we need to go and have a look and understand what is going on. That mirrors how we deal with other conditions of registration. It can be about reacting to individual incidents that suggest there may be a problem, or it can be about flows of data that suggest there may be a problem.

Q409       Dame Caroline Dinenage: So in some senses a lack of data could be as worrying an issue as data that proves there is an issue.

David Smy: Yes.

Dame Caroline Dinenage: The reason why I say that is that multiple reports have said that there are failings in the reporting structures in conservatoires or other settings dedicated to the creative industries. So it will trigger alarm bells if the reporting is showing virtually no data or data that is in some way cause for concern. Is that something that would be on your radar, in terms of monitoring?

David Smy: We completely agree that there are massive concerns about the reliability of reporting. Sometimes, providers do good things that actually increase reporting, and there is a risk to them that it is seen as being, “Oh, suddenly you have lots of cases,” to which they respond, “No, we don't have lots more cases; we are just doing things that let our students come forward.”

I was talking about prevalence. We have been piloting an approach where we directly ask students whether they have experienced anything of this sort of behaviour, where it is not relying on reporting or people coming forward to their providers with problems. If we did continue with that sort of approach, we would be able to say to a provider that we have seen an increase in prevalence and then ask if they have had an increase in reporting. If they said, “No, it all looks to fine to us,” then that is not massively reassuring. It suggests that the problem is increasing but the awareness is not being raised at the university or college itself.

Q410       Dame Caroline Dinenage: That makes sense. If you look at gender pay gap reporting, there are some countries that have a very low gender pay gap, but that sometimes corresponds with countries where very few women are employed. Sometimes, you have to interrogate the data and ask, “What is missing here?” rather than, “What is cause for concern?”

David Smy: I completely agree. We have been quite specific in the way we have asked the questions in our survey and polling, where questions are quite challenging to answer. We know that people respond differently to questions such as, “Have you faced sexual harassment?” or “Have you faced inappropriate behaviour from academics in your organisation?” People may have different understandings of what those things mean, and might answer those questions in different ways based on a localised culture. We think it is really important to get as objective a sense of what is going on as possible.

Dame Caroline Dinenage: And to educate people on what is and is not acceptable behaviour, right?

David Smy: Absolutely. I talked about investigation processes and support, but there are also proposals about training staff to be able to deal with things appropriately, and raising awareness among students. That is both about making sure that students understand what the policies are—so they know how they can complain and what their rights are—and ensuring that they understand what is unacceptable and feel empowered to challenge things, whether it is affecting them or they are seeing it affect others.

Q411       Chair: David, you referred to there being 216 responses, and an unusually high level of response from students. Can you share with us what number of students responded?

David Smy: I think 17% of the responses were from students or student representatives. It is by no means a majority, but it is a lot more than we have had on lots of other conditions. Obviously, lots of providers always want to respond because they have to deal with compliance, but there is an unusual level of engagement from students in the formal responses. We also held student roundtables and webinars to bring in student voices.

Q412       Chair: Was there a gender split?

David Smy: In the individual people who responded? I don't actually know, so we can write to you on that. I do not know whether it would always become clear, because sometimes the responses are corporate—we will get a response from a student union from a certain university. There were individual students, but most of the responses were from representative groups.

Chair: Thank you.

Q413       Kirsten Oswald: I will stick with you, David, and look a little bit further at the pilot prevalence survey from last year. Can you tell us more about the findings, and also the next steps? What do you see as the priorities from here on in?

David Smy: I do not want to say too much about the findings because it is official data; we need to engage with the providers who agreed to be in the pilot prevalence survey, so I do not want to give lots of statistics.

In broad terms, I would say that the prevalence survey tends to support the sorts of concerns we thought we might see going into it. It definitely indicates problems in this area. It is quite helpful because it goes into a reasonable degree of detail, giving us a bit more nuanced information about the sorts of issues that students face and the sorts of environments they face them in. We see quite significant amounts of sexual misconduct and sexual harassment occurring within a higher education setting, but also outside of it. It helped us to understand the different sorts of things that people face and the different forms that takes.

On next steps, I expect that we will give an indication, and probably not a fixed policy position, because we will want to consult more widely on it. I think we will give an indication when we publish the outcomes of the pilot. As I was saying to your colleague, that is really important. Prevalence data is very valuable, though. It cannot be substituted for by reporting data, so we are interested in finding a way to make that work. We need to understand what tools are most useful for the two slightly different purposes, both of which are met to an extent in the current system: getting detailed information about the sector in general, the patterns of things that affect students and how those might arise, which helps to raise awareness and educate and help people to develop interventions, and getting the provider-level information that would allow us to look at a group, whether of creative industry providers or of campus universities, and say, “This one is a bit of an outlier. It seems to have more of these sorts of issues than others.” We are looking at our statistical and polling tools to see what is most likely to get us those things.

Q414       Kirsten Oswald: When will you publish?

David Smy: We expect to publish all of this in the latter half of May—about a month from now.

Q415       Kirsten Oswald: Thank you. Jen, our report on the music industry received widespread coverage, as you know. Many people in the music industry came forward with their own stories of discrimination and harassment as a result. Have you seen an increase in people's interest in the role of CIISA over recent months, perhaps connected to that?

Jen Smith: Undoubtedly so. The report was a landmark piece of work. It has been a lightning rod for action in the music industry and an essential backdrop for the conversations that we are having with key leaders within the music sector. We are very grateful for the endorsement this Committee gave to CIISA in the report. Indeed, we have already taken action on the recommendations on which you stated that CIISA should take action immediately—they are already in train. It has been a pivotal moment for the music industry to focus its energy on dealing with this issue, and supporting CIISA is part of that.

Q416       Kirsten Oswald: You recently did your own survey of the music industry. What information were you looking to gain from that survey? Can you share any of your findings with us today?

Jen Smith: We can share some of the headline data. Again, it is utterly compelling: 91% of the 800 respondents from film, TV, music and theatre were in favour of CIISA, and 84% said that they would use our services once we are live. We were very happy with the response rate. It was a snap survey. Our colleagues and partners at Black Lives in Music are currently doing a very deep-dive, long survey into bullying, harassment and discrimination in the sector. We work closely and collegiately with them, and that data will also shape CIISA's services. Our snap survey is in tandem with more qualitative research that we will take forward—longer-term testimony from individuals. Andy might speak further about that.

Andrew Medlock: One of the core premises of doing the survey was to begin engagement with prospective users. We wanted to know more about whether there is support for CIISA—is it something people want to see? Would they use it? We have had some very positive feedback. But we were also thinking about what they want and expect to see from CIISA in more general terms. We were told that the top three important features for CIISA were that nobody is victimised by using CIISA, that CIISA is a confidential service, and that CIISA is independent. Those three things correlate with a question we asked about the top three barriers to reporting at the moment. It comes as no surprise that the negative impact on people's career within the creative industries was top of that list, alongside the feelings that the problem would not be resolved and that there is a lack of confidentiality when reporting. You are reporting to the very organisation and people you may be raising concerns about.

The data is very important for us. It tells us that there is a real need and real support for CIISA. But we have to get it right about establishing trust and making sure that people can report to us without fear of victimisation—that it is a confidential process—and, most importantly, we have to protect that second “I” in our acronym, so that we are very independent and are able to speak truth to power, to those organisations, through the reporting of the concerns of individuals.

Q417       Kirsten Oswald: Thanks. For those reports and investigations, are you confident that you need to cope with the potential workload?

Andrew Medlock: We are confident. CIISA is a unique service and a unique organisation, so we do not have anything to benchmark it against at present. This is the first port of call for us to show that there is potentially a lot of demand for CIISA. We will look at that and we will work on our demand modelling and capacity planning. We want to focus on how we can be most effective with the resources that we have. We want to do a lot with early dispute resolution and mediation to avoid formal, resource-intensive investigation.

We are hearing a lot from organisations and individuals that having the educational and preventive aspect of CIISA will be really important, so that we start to talk about standards and to have a singular vision of, and consistency about, what is and is not expected, and start to educate, train and inform people, and to support people in those organisations as well, so that they are tackling the behaviours before they become issues. CIISA cannot solve everything—the report wisely said that it cannot be the panacea for the music and creative industries. If there is going to be culture change, it needs to occur from within the industries, but we are there to support that. Utilising our resource strategically, we feel we can make a difference.

Jen Smith: The survey has also highlighted to us CIISA's unique point of difference. What is missing in the sector at the moment is that single point of accountability, that one place where behaviours of concern can be reported to, with the objectivity and trust that we will bring to people using CIISA, because we are an independent body. We are confident about our business plan. No one knows the volume of people coming to us—demand for us will be high, but we are modelling for that with the resources we are requesting from the industry to back CIISA, so that we can be live by December.

Q418       Chair: Jen, this might be a wholly unfair question to ask. Our report on misogyny in music shone a light on some of the issues, and you have just referred to it as having been an incredibly useful piece of work for highlighting the problems and for encouraging people to come forward. I am very aware that we do not want that work to wither and die. How can we best keep up the pressure on the industry? How can we best make sure that CIISA is an effective body?

Jen Smith: Your scrutiny and attention to the issues is essential. I cannot emphasise that enough. The report was fundamental in shining a light on the issues, so we would like to keep the Committee updated on our progress in terms of stakeholder engagement and securing the funding, which we anticipate will be successful but is imminent in the sense of asking for our year-one and year-two funding. We would also like to work with you on some of the recommendations that you put in the report and on the sector perhaps having further conversation with Government. The three areas we would like to discuss further with you are: more conversations on the prevention of misuse of non-disclosure agreements—

Chair: Don't worry, those questions are coming.

Jen Smith: Okay, we will get there. But yes, we want to keep our engagement with you live. It is fundamental to keep a laser-like focus on these issues for the music industry and the creative industries as a whole.

Q419       Dame Caroline Dinenage: One of our recommendations was that you had a conversation with the Music Managers Forum to work together to develop and oversee a mandatory accreditation programme. Will you update us on whether that has happened?

Jen Smith: Yes. We speak very frequently with the Music Managers Forum. We have secured a date and convened representatives from film, TV, music, theatre and fashion to look at the commonality of issues around accreditation for key roles in those respective parts of the creative industries. That discovery session is taking place in early May, so CIISA has already used its convening power to look at issues in the sector where we feel that we could make a difference. Yes, that action is already in train.

Q420       Dame Caroline Dinenage: That is really good news. I know I am probably putting you on the spot here, but once that meeting happens, and if you decide that such accreditation would be a good thing, what would be the timescales for getting something like that rolled out?

Jen Smith: That is a good question in terms of how we build that into our operating model. One of the things that my colleague Andrew and I have discovered in our engagement with the sector is that there is a real appetite for training and accreditation for key roles in the sector, not just within music but with, for example, intimacy co-ordinators, chaperones, and fashion and modelling agents. There is a desire to do this. We want to explore how that would work in practice, what timescales might be appropriate to bring this in, and what other relevant sectors within the creative industries might have similar roles, such as casting agents, that want to look at something of this nature. We have already started that conversation because we recognise there is a real desire to move forward with it. We will update the Committee in writing once we have held our discovery session.

Q421       Dame Caroline Dinenage: It would be really helpful if you could let us know how those conversations go—I think we would like to keep an eye on that. The other thing we highlighted in our report was the issue of recording studios and live music venues being particularly problematic locations, as was reported to us during our inquiry. Having had a chance to digest all that, what do you think CIISA can do, through standards and training, to improve safety in those sorts of settings?

Jen Smith: What we are proposing is a standards framework with associated codes of practice for specific, nuanced environments. I am with the Music Producers Guild tomorrow, and we did a webinar with senior leaders from that organisation recently. There is an appetite to have a specific code of practice for studio space that will be attached to CIISA's standards, so there will be teeth, if you like, for whether that is breached or not. That is our way of moving forward in that regard. We have had a meeting with senior leaders from the MPG and there is appetite to go forward in that way.

Q422       Dame Caroline Dinenage: In your response to our report, you also said that you thought CIISA had a role to play in increasing representation and diversity across the sector. Can you talk to us about that a little more? What role do you think CIISA can legitimately play in that?

Jen Smith: Intersectionality and representation is incredibly important to CIISA at all levels, in terms of governance and our staff. It is important that we represent the people who come forward to us; that we understand that discriminatory behaviour, bullying and harassment go together, unfortunately; and that we have a role in future-proofing the inclusivity of the talent pipeline. That is absolutely essentially for our relevance. We work very closely with Black Lives in Music, as you know, which is our anti-racism partner. It supports our work and provides us with good critical friendship. We also think this is something we can embed within our standards framework, so that we can help drive representation and inclusion through CIISA's work.

Q423       Dame Caroline Dinenage: The collaboration is really important, but what would be your first step in an ideal world? What would that look like? How would you meaningfully change the dial on this?

Jen Smith: What that looks like in practice is subject to further discussion with our key partners. We are obviously going to be geared up to receive issues in relation to discriminatory behaviours. We want people to know that they can come to CIISA; we will take those complaints and issues incredibly seriously, and we will look at respective interventions that would be appropriate in those cases.

Andrew Medlock: We have an opportunity to look more closely at what the standards will encompass and what we expect. We feel that we have a role to play as a convenor of conversations, as Jen has mentioned, about what practical steps organisations and industries can take to improve representation. We would be more than happy to start that narrative and then think about what that looks like in the standards, so that we can start monitoring progress with that as well. We feel that we have a potential hands-on role. There needs to be, as Jen was mentioning, more engagement about what that looks like, but we feel that we could have a role to play in that regard.

Q424       Dame Caroline Dinenage: Are you not worried about mission creep?

Andrew Medlock: I am worried about many things. That is an interesting point, because the standards need to encompass so many different things. One of our core strategies is that we are not reinventing wheels here. There is so much really good work that has already been undertaken, so we want to synergise that into one place. This goes to the question of the timeframes for what happens next: once we have the standards framework, we will start looking at what that looks like in terms of sector-specific guidance. How would those standards be implemented or demonstrated in practice in the music industry, the film industry and so forth? We can then start looking at how that looks in practice and start thinking about training and accreditation. Yes, there is potential for mission creep but, because there is so much really good stuff out there, the real challenge is harnessing all that together in one set of standards.

Jen Smith: We will always be true to CIISA's purpose, which we set out quite clearly: to prevent and tackle bullying and harassment, and bullying and harassment of a discriminatory nature.

Dame Caroline Dinenage: There is so much overlap between the two.

Jen Smith: Absolutely.

Q425       Dame Caroline Dinenage: David, we have previously recommended that all first-year students undertake bystander training and that you should make doing so a requirement or condition of registration. Is that something that you are going to be implementing?

David Smy: The proposals that we set out last February talk about training for students, and awareness. We talk about bystander training. We specifically give bystander training as an example of the sort of training that could be done to meet this condition. I do not know whether we would say, “It must be in this precise form.” But I think it is the only example that we give of the sort of thing we mean by the wider words that we use to describe the training that we think students should have. Wevery much think that bystander training is helpful in this area and something that we would support.

Dame Caroline Dinenage: What feedback have you had on that?

David Smy: Broadly, a lot of the student responses are supportive of having it. A lot of providers would not say, and they would not want me to represent them as saying, that they do not think that doing that sort of thing is important. The responses we get tend to be, “We do not want you to regulate us. We want to be allowed to do it ourselves or stick in the self-regulatory space”, as well as concerns about how it will work in practice, what exactly it means and when it will need to be done by. We are thinking really carefully about implementation timelines, so that people have time to deliver these things in practice. I do not think providers think it is bad.

There is a concern from providers and students about the proposals and the consultation—about it being mandatory. There are concerns that there might be individual students who have experienced things in this area; they may feel isolated and vulnerable going to the training that everyone has to go to. They might find it traumatic. We are thinking very carefully about that because we do not want to just make it optional, because there are probably a lot of people who just would not go if it was optional.

We are considering whether it should be a thing that is mandatory in principle but making provision for individual students with exceptional circumstances, as for other things—although if I was a provider and large proportions of my students said that they found it too sort of traumatic, hostile or difficult to attend the training, I would examine why that was and how to support them to participate rather than saying, “Oh, well; 30% of our students do not want to come to our training. It's their choice.” I think it is something that I would want to reflect on.

Dame Caroline Dinenage: Yes, I think that is right.

Q426       Chair: Jen, some of the most compelling evidence that we took during the inquiry was from Charisse Beaumont. You touched earlier on some of the intersectional issues. I can remember clearly her saying that, if we felt that women in music were discriminated against, then black women in music were severely discriminated against, oversexualized and faced incredible pressures based on sexualisation, appearance and so on. What do you think you can do specifically to help black women with those intersectional challenges? How can those challenges be effectively tackled?

Jen Smith: As I have said, Black Lives in Music have been one of our key supporters. They have been with us from the start of this journey.  We partner with them very effectively on CIISA's ongoing work. Dr Kienda Hoji, who is on the board of Black Lives in Music, is going to join our co-creation council imminently, so that we can have a thorough workstream looking at CIISA and anti-discrimination, so we anticipate that work coming forward shortly. Dr Charisse Beaumont, as you say, has given compelling evidence to this Committee and  continues to inform and shape  how CIISA will work moving forward. They are key strategic partners for us. It is something that we do want to address, but we are doing that work in our final design phase with that organisation and with Charisse. 

Q427       Chair: David, back to you and providers and bystander training.  Can I dig down a bit into whether you are expecting much resistance from providers, or perhaps student unions, who think that they are in a good place to regulate themselves because they have a massive tome of rules and regulations already and maybe don't want any more?

David Smy: I don't think I would say I would expect resistance. In the consultation we have had pretty solid support from students. We have had quite a lot of providers saying, “These are really important issues, but we want to continue to do it ourselves and not have it be a regulated requirement. We think it is mission creep”—as you were saying to other witnesses. Indeed, those views have been expressed in Parliament as well. There are people who think this is not our core business. If we introduce a condition in this area, I wouldn't expect the sector to respond by saying, “We don't want to do it.” I don't think that is what they do. They would seek to comply, and we would try to make sure that they were doing that effectively. I certainly think student unions would want to engage with it. This is stuff which is really beneficial to them. It is quite empowering for the students and student representatives to have really clear standards set out that they know are binding requirements on the universities and colleges that exist at the moment.

Q428       Kirsten Oswald: May I go back to you, Jen, and touch on legislative changes? The Government rejected all our recommendations on changes to the Equality Act, to parental leave and limitation periods.  If we were to call on the Government to reconsider any of these recommendations, what would you see as the priority?

Jen Smith: There are three recommendations that we would like to further discuss with you, should you go back to Government in that regard. One is extending the time to make a claim around employment tribunals. The second is a further discussion on the prevention of the misuse of non-disclosure agreements. Equally important is the extension of protections for freelancers under the Equality Act. It is those three recommendations that we would like to discuss with you further, should you go back to Government in that regard.

Q429       Kirsten Oswald: That is helpful. As you know, we will come on to non-disclosure agreements. Do you foresee the three-month limitation period on bringing cases to an employment tribunal as something that would put pressure on your work?

Jen Smith: Maybe my colleague Andrew can answer that.

Andrew Medlock: The recommendation to extend that to six months would certainly help with easing the pressure. Providing people with a bit more time helps them and helps CIISA to provide the right advice. That is why we would strongly endorse that recommendation and any return to Government on it.

Q430       Chair: Jen, the Government rejected our proposal around NDAs. Is that an area that CIISA can do some work on?

Jen Smith: I worked with Zelda Perkins, who I think has been known to this Committee for many years, on the prevention of the misuse of non-disclosure agreements. Some of the thematic analysis that I think CIISA will report on is the use of NDAs to cover up poor behaviours in the creative industries, as well as fear of victimisation. It is an area of significance in the creative industries that CIISA wishes to shine a light on, alongside the important work that Zelda Perkins has been doing for many years.

Q431       Chair: I feel very strongly, and I am sure that other members of the Committee do too, that NDAs have been used, exploited and misused to protect perpetrators, and have seen perpetrators stay in role—stay in very high-profile roles. I am very conscious that it takes a Zelda Perkins, doesn't it? It takes somebody with courage and determination to speak out against their use. Do you think CIISA has a role there, where individuals themselves do not necessarily have the grit of Zelda, in exerting pressure on organisations to step away from using NDAs?

Jen Smith: One of the conversations that we will have with Government is for CIISA to become a prescribed person in the relevant legislation, so that people who are subject to NDAs can speak to CIISA with confidence. But, as I say, we share your concerns about the prevalence of the misuse of non-disclosure agreements in the creative industries, and that is an area of focus for CIISA.

Andrew Medlock: There are two specific issues for us. Obviously, the main issue is there should not be any misuse of NDAs for covering up sexual assault or any poor behaviour of any type. We are very strongly in agreement with the Committee on that. The second aspect is we know that NDAs by their very nature may cause people to fear coming to us, and they may and do cause fear of speaking out full stop. We wholeheartedly agree with the recommendation of having a retrospective moratorium on NDAs in particular. Also, as Jen rightly mentioned, the fact that NDAs or the misuse of NDAs may still exist means that people may be prevented from coming to CIISA. We really are interested in having a conversation about how we overcome that through the route of prescribed persons.

Q432       Chair: David, we know the Government have legislated to act on the misuse of NDAs in higher education. That is coming into force later this year. What role does the Office for Students have in monitoring that?

David Smy: We will be consulting on a condition of registration that underpins the free speech duties. The ban on NDAs is part of the free speech duties that sit on providers. We will have a condition that, in very crude terms, says, “comply with the free speech duty”, although I am sure that it will take more work and guidance than that. Our colleague Arif Ahmed, director for free speech and academic freedom, will be leading on that. We will have a condition regarding breach of the condition. More than that, I mentioned before that free speech was an outlier in that we have individual complaint powers, too. Even before the condition of registration is in effect from 1 August when the legislative ban comes into place, individuals will be able to raise complaints directly with us, and we will consider every complaint under the free speech duty that comes to us. If someone comes to us and says, “I have had an NDA imposed upon me, and they are trying to enforce this on me” or just, “They have imposed one on me,” we will be able to look at that and publish our findings, set out what has happened in that case and make recommendations about what the provider then needs to do to fix it. We will have quite an individual ability to intervene in those cases.

Chair: Thank you. I am just going to check whether any other members of the Committee have any additional questions they want to ask.

Q433       Dame Caroline Dinenage: Very quickly on the NDA thing, in this Committee and the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, we have met organisations that say they do not have NDAs and then we have met people who worked for those organisations who say they have signed something that seems very similar to an NDA. It might be a confidentiality agreement; it might be given a different name. Is that something you have seen as well, Jen? Is this an experience that is quite common?

Jen Smith: By not calling it an NDA, it has the same impact on that individual, and there is a prevalence of the use of these agreements in the creative sector, which CIISA will shine a light on. We will report back to this Committee and put in our aggregated data how prevalent the use of these agreements is. It is something to turn the floodlights on, so yes, we share your concerns about them, and it is part of CIISA's remit to address them.

Q434       Chair: It has been striking the number of people who have approached this Committee confidentially, sometimes anonymously, highlighting their experience. It may well be something that is referred to as a confidentiality clause or agreement. How do you expect to be able to collate those sorts of numbers?

Andrew Medlock: First and foremost, we need to encourage people to come and report to us with regards to that. We will be alive to the elements that surround what is happening here, be it called an NDA, a confidentiality agreement or something else. We will want to explore whether people are being told, “You must sign this. You cannot speak about X, Y and Z going forward.” As Jen mentioned, we would then be able to look into that and provide aggregated data. We are very clear as well, subject to the consultation that we want to have on standards, that there will be something there that says this is not acceptable. Whether it is called an NDA or a confidentiality clause, it is not acceptable for it to be used to cover up poor behaviour within the workplace. We can then start benchmarking against that and, if needs be, start taking action.

Q435       Chair: I am going to hit you with hypotheticals—nobody likes a hypothetical question. If you get a pattern, and you find another organisation, business or individual that seems to have collected a bunch of NDAs against former or current employees, what would you do with that information? How will you take action against the body that has had a load of NDAs signed by their former employees?

Andrew Medlock: That is a really interesting scenario. We are looking through case studies at the moment. Of course, it would be on a case-by-case basis. Personally, I think that would fall under that pattern of behaviour that is going against the standards. That is why it is really important that the standards talk about it, so that there is an expectation. In that hypothetical scenario, if we saw that there was a pattern of behaviour and it met our criteria, we would want to investigate and explore that further. There would then be a published report with regards to that. In between that there could be various aspects that come out that we would need to take into regard. But if we could see that there was a clear pattern of behaviour that was going against the industry-endorsed standards, we would want to call that out and take action accordingly.

Jen Smith: Again, it speaks to that unique point of difference that is currently missing in the creative industries. There needs to be a single place of accountability where these patterns of behaviour or systemic failings can be identified and reported, so that we can take relevant action. At the moment it is too easy to hide in the vagaries and the cul-de-sacs of the creative industries. CIISA will address that.

Q436       Dame Caroline Dinenage: Another question just occurred to me. I won't ask about organisations, because that would be mean at this stage, but are there any sectors or subsectors that you would like to draw our attention to at the moment that have been less forthcoming when engaging with CIISA's activities?

Jen Smith: We are really encouraged that we have had development money and support from Amazon, but we would welcome further conversations with Netflix and Apple.

Dame Caroline Dinenage: That was very specific. Thank you.

Chair: Very specific. I thank the witnesses for their evidence. If anything occurs to you that you wish to share with us in writing after the session, then please do. I would expect an invitation back at some point, although I cannot now guarantee it will be in this Parliament.