Last week the Mother of the House, Harriet Harman MP and I secured a parliamentary debate on the difficulties UK musicians, creatives and artists face when touring in the EU.

It's endlessly amazing that the public consciousness and the media can day after day follow the intricacies of, say, the arguments over the EU and fishing rights, but the UK music industry, which employs more people than the fishing and steel industries combined, hardly gets a look in.

On leaving the EU, The Trade and Co-operation Agreement (TCA) very much focused itself on goods rather than services, and so cultural touring was left behind.

The music sector has suffered exceptional difficulties since the start of the pandemic, and the problems persist. Employment has dropped by 35%, with revenues almost halving. We were riding high before the pandemic - the sector grew by 11% in 2019 – far beyond the rest of the economy, demonstrating the creative skill of the UK and our cultural leadership.

The European Commission themselves said that UK musicians "dominated the European panorama". But for this to continue, uncertainties around cabotage, carnets, visa and work permit charges need to be resolved. Visa-waiver agreements have now been agreed with all but 6 member states, but work is still restricted to 90 in 180 days and other problems persist.

The cost of a Greek visa for short-term working is £68 per person. Then there's the £300 cost of a carnet for an unaccompanied instrument – so if you've got several musicians looking to play, you're talking hundreds or even thousands of pounds just to get the show on the road.

Then there's the cabotage absurdities. UK trucks can make only three stops in the EU: one initial movement and two subsequent stops. So tours can't use UK trucks, or they have to reroute back to the UK every 3 stops, which is costly, logistically impossible and ridiculous. Many orchestras and artists have their own trucks, formerly exempt from cabotage restrictions, but this exemption was not included in the TCA. So now there's a huge incentive for hauliers to move from the UK to the EU, which I'm sure no one wants to see.

And, as we have no carnet waiver agreement with the EU, musicians need to source carnets well in advance of travel and get these physically signed by Border Officials. This is something that EU musicians don't have to face on entering the UK. Instruments containing certain plants or animal parts, like rosewood or ivory, need a CITES permit as well as a carnet to enter the EU. Established artists and large orchestras can just about manage the mountain of paperwork and may be able eventually to tick all the boxes but for those starting out it's hopeless. This points to a decline in the future dominance of UK culture.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group for Music which I chair is launching an inquiry into all these issues, taking evidence from every part of the industry and major artists in order thoroughly to understand the problems.

Without solving these issues, we're not only harming ourselves economically, putting the industry though more unnecessary stress and losing jobs to the EU, but we're also going to lose talent, influence, our upper hand and – importantly – our leadership on the international stage.