BRITAIN’S music scene will be limited to people with trust funds if youth benefits cuts go ahead.

Music industry experts have warned that the Tories’ ‘earn or learn’ policy would force bands without rich parents into conventional employment.

Record label boss Tom Booker said: “Without the meagre state funding they need for a shitty shared flat and drugs, musicians from low-income families will be unable to revolutionise youth culture.

“Meanwhile musicians from good homes, who either have personal trust funds or rich parents with a misguided belief that all creativity is good, will flood the charts with gypsy jazz, electro-swing and pastoral folk.”

Booker predicts that the UK music scene, once the most progressive in the world, will become the preserve of beautiful but dull girls called ‘Jessabelle Fox’ killing time before they either get married off to a banker or enter rehab.

Jake de Bournville-Cobb of gypsy-electro-jazz act The Keta-Peasant Troubadours defended his music: “It meshes trumpets, storytelling, banging beats and pretending to live in a truck.

“If we weren’t doing this we’d be working in marketing or the financial sector. So the world would probably be worse off overall.”

Tom Booker said: “‘Earn or learn’ is bullshit. It should be ‘earn or learn or be in a band with genuine potential.'”