I congratulate the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) on a thorough interpretation of the new clauses.
Music, theatre, comedy and sport are a vital part of British society and the British economy, and our creative industries are worth more than £36 billion a year. They generate £70,000 every minute for the UK economy, and employ 1.5 million people in the UK. That is why it is vital to have a healthy and transparent ticket market, yet with increasing frequency, secondary ticketing resellers are causing dramatically inflated prices for the fans, and taking away revenue from performers. That has to stop.
I have consistently been a champion of the free market and I do not have a problem with artists or sports teams charging whatever they wish for their services. That is their prerogative, and they should be allowed to set the prices of their tickets or, if they choose, to sell them
through secondary ticketing or auction websites. However, as the online marketplace has become quicker and easier to use, a large number of unsavoury and illegal practices have sprung up surrounding ticket reselling websites. That is why I, along with colleagues from both sides of the House, founded the all-party group on ticket abuse. We conducted a review and the results were published recently, as we have heard, with new clauses recommended as a result.
One key aspect of an honest and transparent ticket purchasing process is the intention of the buyer at the point of purchase. No one would begrudge a Rolling Stones fan who has become ill the day before the show the opportunity to sell their ticket to someone else. However, an increasing number of people are buying tickets with absolutely no intention of going to the event. Instead, those career touts buy tickets solely with the intention of denying them to real fans, whom they can squeeze for profit by reselling their tickets to a “sold out” event.
That situation is not limited to fans who simply waited too long to buy tickets. With internet ticket selling becoming more streamlined, touts are able to use sophisticated computer systems to buy large volumes of tickets automatically mere seconds or minutes after they go online. That can often mean that it is practically impossible for genuine fans to get access to the event, forcing them to rely on an artificially created secondary market, and depriving content creators of revenue for their event. That is unacceptable.
On this issue I fundamentally disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), who raised some points earlier, because we would all suffer, including the artists. Just because an artist has received the full value for a concert that is sold out does not mean that they—or another artist—would not suffer elsewhere. For example, suppose someone has a budget of £500 a year for going to venues. They might think, “I’ll go to 10 concerts in that year and buy some merchandising and other products while I am there”, but if they then spend £200, £300 or even £500 on one concert, they will not go to the other nine. No wonder there is underselling in other concerts because people do not necessarily have the money, and we all lose out as a result.