We have had a wide-ranging debate. If we were to apply the law of averages to the question of which side of the argument the coin would fall, I think it would fall on the side of the Opposition and the hon. Member for Hove (Mike Weatherley) who tabled amendment (a). The debate has been strongly in favour of transparency, apart from the contributions of two hon. Gentleman in the back row—the hon. Members for Shipley (Philip Davies) and for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) —who have been the only Members to put up any argument against that, albeit unconvincingly.
I have listened to what the Minister has had to say and I have seen the lobbying from the four secondary marketing companies. They have obviously spent a fortune on lobbying and I am sad to say that I heard a lot of their arguments in the Minister’s speech. From their point of view, all the money they have spent on lobbying has worked, but the House is not convinced.
There is demonstrable market failure. When the House, the Select Committee and the then Minister looked at the issue 10 years ago, they said we would need to see such failure before requiring legislation. We have now demonstrated that that market failure exists. I know that the Minister has written, very late in the day, to trading standards. I wrote to trading standards years ago and the response I received was that there was no evidence. Transparency would provide the evidence of what is happening.
The four letters from the secondary marketing companies say, at long last, that they will abide by the regulations that the Minister’s colleague, the right hon. Member for Cardiff Central (Jenny Willott), announced last year, but they have already had more than six months to abide by those regulations. I wrote
to them to point out that the regulations are now on the statute book, but they have carried on regardless. I have no faith that they will do anything different. That is why we need to legislate. There is cross-party support for that and I hope that Members on both sides of the House will support us in the Lobby. I know that when the Bill goes back to the House of Lords our proposal will have cross-party support, ably led by Lord Moynihan, Lord Clement-Jones and Baroness Grey-Thompson, as well as our own Lord Stevenson. I will push the amendment to the vote.
Amendment (a) proposed to Lords amendment 12 —(Mrs Hodgson.)