Speeches by Hinds.

“Have you asked the question?”

“Have you had a conversation with the Government about what happens if you have a piece of employment that isn’t actually long enough to be the reference period and, therefore, what that individual’s rights are? If they work for, say, three weeks on a zero-hours contract, maybe 40-plus hours in those weeks, it is a busy…”

“This is about trying to understand what the effect of the Employment Rights Bill will be, because it will be different. If you have a one-off event, you do not even get to the length of the reference period, do you, to be able to measure it? If you are in a venue, you will have seasonality, like busy periods, not busy …”

“In which case, Chair, I shall defer to that moment.”

“Bless, thank you. Going back to the employment question. Can you come back to basics and say, typically for events, what the employment contract is? Is it with a venue typically or with an event, like a one-off or an occasional entity, or is it typically with a temp agency, if you are the individual? I do not know who …”

“That I am not so sure about. Just to—”

“I think I can give you some reassurance, Jon.”

“How much more change are you expecting?”

“Are you able to quantify in any way the cost effect?”

“Yes. Nick, can I pick you up on what you were talking about there on employment? What do you think will be the effects of the Employment Rights Bill on this sector?”

“What do they do? Who is on this team?”

“Wow, okay. You do not think there is a need for that at a UK Government level, but rather at a regional-city level?”

“Was it someone from the police? Was it like COBR, but for events?”

“Who are these people? We need to meet them.”

“We will come on to infrastructure shortly. I do not want to cut you off but can I check, is somebody currently working on trying to make the world’s preeminent AI show come to Britain?”

“You say it needs to. Can you start with what it does and then we will move on to what it should do?”

“Let’s say you have a sector like life sciences or AI, where the sector itself has an interest and the Government of the country also has an interest in growing. What role do Government play in trying to stimulate the creation of large-scale business events in this country, rather than in Silicon Valley or in Geneva or …”

“As you say, the earlier you get it, the better for inviting other people, for organising events and so on. Clearly we would like to grow this market. You need growth areas to be able to do that. If there is a growth area, probably someone has already nabbed it. Are there sectors that are under-served currently with lar…”

“Absolutely. It has always struck me that as a Minister you are always working indirectly on things that you think might help the country, but turning up and shaking hands and forming relationships and trying to sell what we have is a very direct way that you can do that. I was quite disturbed to hear what you said abou…”

“On Government support, and particularly, as you were saying, time sometimes, not just money, this is perhaps something we could go large on in our report. I do not want to put words in your mouth, but part of my experience on this is that not only is it sometimes difficult to tie Ministers down early on for events, but…”