I shall speak also to Amendments 26 to 31, which I am glad have been grouped, because they deal variously with one or two aspects relating to ticketing, and I think that there is a great deal to be taken from the fact that an all-party alliance is putting forward the various points. I hope that the Government are in listening mode, at least on these matters.
What is a ticket? That is definitely not a rhetorical question. We have a real problem about what we understand by the word “ticket”. What does purchasing a ticket confer on the purchaser in terms of rights and responsibilities? I would be very grateful if the Minister, when she replies, would spend some time explaining what the Government think a ticket is, because I would be illuminated by that.
There are two strands of thought. The promoters of many of our larger sporting and entertainment events feel that a ticket is an intangible right to attend an event or performance, a personal licence for the person who bought the ticket—and, presumably, those for whom he or she has bought the ticket—to attend a specific event, occupying a designated seat. That is not what is believed by the secondary ticket companies, who take the view that a ticket is real property and, once bought, is available to the original purchaser to sell and resell to any third party willing to pay a market price for it.
The problem is that there is no real accommodation between those two approaches. On the one hand, the promoters of events feel that tickets which have not been released are being advertised and sold, which means that the seller cannot guarantee that they will ever be able to honour that transaction. Tickets are being sold at prices well above their face value and the purchasers have no idea that that has taken place. Fans can end up buying tickets which do not guarantee them entry even to the event to which they think that they have bought a ticket, because there may be terms and conditions for the sale that have not been disclosed to them, which prevent them being transferred. I was at an event last weekend where I had a ticket issued by a reputable national theatre company which said clearly on its face that it was not valid if sold at a premium price. Of course, I knew that, because I could read it; but others may not have spotted that. In general, the view taken by many promoters is that consumers are being priced out, mis-sold or even defrauded when tickets are resold on the secondary market.
Two principles underlie that. The first is that promoters should make tickets available to people at affordable prices and that that should be protected; but also that consumers should be provided with more information about what they are buying when purchasing tickets through secondary outlets.
The secondary ticket market takes the view that people should have the right to buy surplus or unwanted tickets, and argues that by providing a platform for buyers and sellers, it offers an excellent service. In many cases, that is true. It also thinks that the traditional model means that only a very small number of tickets are made available, with the balance being sold at premium prices to sponsors and corporate hospitality organisations.
It is fair to say that this issue has a long history, with both this Government and the previous one trying to respond to public pressure, which is clearly pulling in two directions. On the one hand, people want access to tickets when they go on sale, but they are also against thousands of tickets being bought by people seeking to make a profit rather than attending the event. Equally—people will say this within a few seconds—they feel that they ought to be able to buy tickets if they decide, perhaps late in the day, that they would like to see the event after all and get very annoyed if they find that there are no tickets available or the price is extraordinary.
Recent technological changes have had an effect on this. We often find computerised botnets—as I think they are called—hoovering up tickets on sale online. What chance have ordinary punters to get tickets in the first place? Most people will either have been or will know of people who were trying desperately to buy tickets for the Olympic Games when they first went on sale, and spent many hours on the phone waiting for someone to respond or online waiting for something to respond. Sometimes you won; sometimes you did not. Obviously, with very popular events there will be a problem however you do it, but computerisation is both an advantage and a disadvantage.
We are beginning to worry about money-laundering and criminal gangs active in this area. If that is the case, where should the public interest now lie?
There is already a huge amount of legislation. I will not go through it in detail but there is the Civic Government (Scotland) Act, the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act and the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act, and in addition to specific legislation on touting there are legal remedies under existing criminal law relating to theft, deception, obstruction or threatening behaviour. In addition to primary legislation, there is a substantial amount of secondary legislation coming through from the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 and the Price Indications (Resale of Tickets) Regulations 1994, some of which have a direct impact on the way in which people are going to be treated if they are caught transacting secondary sales.
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However, there is a flaw in some of these regulations in that they do not apply to consumer-to-consumer transactions; they apply only when agents are involved. Accordingly, they do not apply to some of the issues that have caused the most concern recently. Secondary legislation in this area is constantly being updated—indeed, it may have been done as recently as June 2014—and I hope that the Minister will be able to shed some light on where the law currently stands on these matters.
The Committee will be aware that the London Olympic and Paralympic Games Acts were probably the most recent times when we discussed these issues, and I am sure that they will come up again as others speak to this debate. It is interesting that when the ticket touting laws were strengthened in the 2006 Act, it caused a bit of reaction among many of the major sports governing bodies. In April 2007 the Guardian published a report on a letter sent by five sports governing bodies to the Secretary of State demanding that they be given the same legal protection against ticket touts that was to be enjoyed by the London Olympics and Paralympics. The governing bodies asked the Culture Secretary to reform a “two-tier” system that was now apparently surrounding ticket sales in British sport. They said:
“The sports community is frustrated that the government has made it an offence for tickets to be touted for the London 2012 Olympics … It is surely an anomaly that the Wimbledon tennis tournament to be staged in late June 2012 will have no ticket-touting protection, while the tennis tournament at the same venue just eight weeks later in the 2012 Olympics will … We would urge you to address this anomaly so that there is no two-tier status between the Olympics and other major sporting events held in the UK”.
I draw attention to the DCMS Select Committee that carried out an extremely thorough investigation in 2007 following an OFT report in 2005 which found that the secondary ticket market was not operating satisfactorily. Its report was the subject of a Westminster Hall debate in April 2008. In his contribution, Don Foster MP for the Liberal Democrats postulated that the approach should be based on the principle that,
“there is an important role for a well-organised secondary market that has proper consumer protection built into it”.—[Official Report, Commons, 24/4/08; col. 531WH.]
However, the debate highlighted the lack of enforcement at that time, and figures were produced later in the debate showing that there were only some 20 convictions a year for ticket touting. Could the Minister update us on the present situation? It would be interesting to know whether it has been possible to mount more prosecutions and whether they have been successful.
When the then Minister, Gerry Sutcliffe MP, wound up, he suggested that what was needed was a voluntary code based on,
“a new code of principles that the market can sign up to”.—[Official Report, Commons, 24/4/08; col. 542WH.]
And what was to be in this code of principles? Improving the systems needed to prevent the exploitation of the ticket-buying public; countering bad practices such as misleading information and erroneous and future selling; provisions on exchanges, returns and refunds; and controls on tickets, such as identity requirements. In fact, he suggested that photos should go on tickets. That seems to be a very good agenda that we might well consider as we go forward in this debate. The problem, however, lies in the fact that it would be on a voluntary, not a statutory, basis.
There was a debate in the Commons in March 2012 in which Michael Weatherley MP said:
“I am not advocating that every ticketed event be subject to additional legislative support. Many artists and events will be happy for the secondary market to buy and sell their tickets, but those that wish to have protection should be able to apply for support under law, in the same way the Olympics did”.—[Official Report, Commons, 13/3/12; col. 62WH.]
In response the former Minister, Hugh Robertson MP, said that the trigger for a change of government policy would be evidence of,
“large-scale criminality … taking place as a result of secondary ticketing”.—[Official Report, Commons, 13/3/12; col. 64WH.]
I think we now have that evidence. Established in June 2010, Operation Podium is a dedicated Metropolitan Police unit created to combat organised crime around the London Games. A report on that operation, made public in February 2013, looked at three types of ticket crime—fraud, counterfeit and unauthorised ticket selling—and set out a number of recommendations, which included consideration to be given to introducing legislation to govern the unauthorised sale of event tickets. It said,
“The lack of legislation in this area enables fraud and places the public at risk of economic crime”,
and that:
“The primary and secondary ticket market requires regulation to ensure transparency, allowing consumers to understand who they are buying from and affording them better protection from ticket crime”.
Will the Minister update us on progress on implementing those recommendations? Will there be legislation, or do the Government perhaps have better information on this matter than the Metropolitan Police?
I turn to our amendments. The RFU, which we thank for its lobbying and provision of material in this area, has told us that the prices set by it are at a level which it thinks is affordable for rugby fans of all backgrounds. It has ambitions to grow the sport further as part of the Rugby World Cup legacy. It states that it is important that rugby is, and is seen to be, a game for all, which means that tickets to watch England must remain affordable—for my part, being Scots, I have a slightly different view: they should be priced out of the world, so that nobody can go and watch them and they lose, but I move on. The RFU tells us that, in its view, ticket touts price many of the people that it would like to see at its games out of the possibility of going. It has many examples from each season of cases of mis-selling and fraud. As a not-for-profit organisation, the RFU argues that every penny made or saved by the RFU is reinvested into rugby. It believes that it is unfair that highly organised touts are buying up large numbers of tickets to resell at huge profits while contributing nothing back to the game.
Our amendments would ensure that all transactions which involve the resale of a ticket should include detailed information about the ticket, the seller and the terms and conditions relating to resale. Websites facilitating secondary selling should be able to operate, but they would then become accountable for checking that this information is provided to consumers. We do not think that there should be a requirement for websites to check that the information is correct, but they should be obliged to remove advertisements for tickets if they are informed that the ticket information is incorrect or it is confirmed that the tickets may not be transferred. There is a legal case on this matter which some of us may wish to refer to.
We believe that providing more information to consumers would mean that the primary seller—for example, the RFU for matches at Twickenham—could
check that the ticket was genuine and being legitimately sold. Providing consumers with exact details would ensure they knew what they were purchasing and that were not buying something which offered no proper view or was at the wrong price. It seems logical that we should go down this route and make sure that the arrangements are as outlined by the RFU.
As I indicated previously, the legislative change that we are looking for is in line with existing government policy. The Department for BIS published updated arrangements for ticket resales in the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013—which may again be updated in 2014 —which have the good intention of making more information available to the consumer, but they do not seem to be sufficiently applied and there is evidence that abuses are still occurring. Since they apply only to “traders”, we do not think that they will attach to “consumers” selling tickets within peer-to-peer sites. The existing regulations are not explicit enough about the information that must be provided. Our amendments address that concern by placing the key information requirements in the Bill rather than leaving it to secondary legislation.
The RFU assures us that the amendment will not place any extra burden or additional costs on the industry, as there are already requirements to list ticket information details. As a result, the ticket sales process would become more transparent for the benefit of all. I beg to move.