My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 28 to 31, standing in the name of my noble friends Lady Heyhoe Flint and Lord Clement-Jones. I see significant merits in Amendments 26 and 27, which I would support had we not tabled our own amendments to effectively the same objective.
In the spirit of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, and my noble friend Lady Heyhoe Flint, I begin with the question: what is a consumer? In the context of the amendments before us, the answer is a sports fan.
It is a rare occasion for the title of a Bill fully and concisely to reflect its intentions. On this occasion, the Consumer Rights Bill achieves that objective: it is a Bill about consumers and it rightly seeks to protect and, where appropriate, strengthen consumer rights. It is a Bill that addresses inadequacies in consumer protection and derives its strength from addressing malpractice against consumers, who can be exploited by loopholes in the law or interpretations of it which, without legal backing, can lead to the exploitation of consumer interests for commercial gain. It is therefore important in the context of these amendments to recognise that, in every sense, consumers are sports fans.
The amendments should be seen as a constructive step towards protecting the interests of fans. As my noble friend has said, they would make it a specific requirement that a fan buying a ticket must be informed of the terms and conditions of the transfer of the seat to them.
This was a key issue for us when hosting the Olympic Games. The subject of ticketing gained prominence for two reasons. The first was a decision made by the International Olympic Committee not to provide a ticketing platform, a platform that incrementally built on the experience of previous Games. The IOC Games department took the view that each host city should start from scratch and that the role of the IOC in this context would be purely advisory. I made my view very clear at the time: that ticketing each and every event at an Olympic and Paralympic Games, while taking into account the myriad contractual requirements of the IOC and the Olympic family for free tickets, required a platform built on experience and expertise that should be refined and improved by each host city, not one that is reinvented every four years. A pattern will emerge of the demand by the world’s athletes for free tickets, greatest—not surprisingly—after they have completed their events. I believe that, had that been in place, we would not have faced at the beginning of the Games the issue of empty seats in areas allocated for the Olympic family.
The second reason emanated from the legal framework for the Games and is directly relevant to these amendments. The Olympic legislation was introduced by this Government specifically to protect fans who sought to buy tickets for the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The Government were initially nervous about addressing this issue at the time. Historically, they had consistently taken a position that the resolution of any problems through voluntary action by the market participants was strongly to be preferred; that new regulation would be considered only as a last resort, even for the Olympics, and only where there was clear evidence that it was in the public interest; and that new regulation and the associated cost of enforcement were likely to impose greater burdens and restrictions of consumer choice as compared to market-led solutions.
However, the Government, along with the police, the fans and the organisers of the Olympic Games, collectively took a very different view after the Olympic Games were over and they had time to reflect on the effectiveness or otherwise of the legislation that had been put in place. In that context, I say to my noble friend in sport, the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, that I
believe the Government learnt a lesson that I hope they will not go back on as a result of the experience that was derived from those Games.
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I will quote from the Government’s response to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee report on ticket touting, which I will bring to the attention of the Committee in a moment. More relevant to what I am saying now is their response after the Games on the sale of tickets:
“The legislation provided a powerful signal of intent to deal seriously with the issue of unauthorised sales of Olympic tickets. The increased maximum penalty fine level of £20,000 was regarded as a strong deterrent against the threat of organised criminal ticket touting activity at the Games. The legislation formed part of the response to this threat and was regarded as an effective deterrent when used in conjunction with the other preventative and disruptive actions taken by the police against organised crime groups involved in ticket touting. Reference to the 2011 Act and the £20,000 penalty fine also formed a useful part of the Metropolitan Police’s pre-Games communications with companies involved in the secondary ticket market”.
I emphasise that point because the Government took a very clear view that the legislation provided a powerful signal of intent to deal seriously with the issue of unauthorised sales of Olympic tickets.
The level of crime behind this is important as well. I will quote the Government on that:
“The Metropolitan Police reported that there were about two hundred arrests nationally … for the unauthorised selling of tickets … during the Olympics and none during the Paralympics. This was for two high profile events over 17 days and 10 days, respectively, with a total of nearly 11 million tickets available and a huge level of demand from the public. By comparison, for a single high profile premier league game there could be (depending on the level of policing) circa 30 arrests of ticket touts. In addition, the Met reported that there was little day to day organised ticket touting activity at Olympic venues. There are”—
again, this is a quote from the Government—
“around a thousand known ‘professionals’ involved in ticket crime (ranging from touts to fraudsters) across the UK”.
That is not insignificant. It is a major issue, and one that ultimately impacts directly on the sports fans who buy tickets. The report continues:
“Only a handful came to the Games”—
under the legislation that was in place—
“and all were arrested. There were no counterfeit tickets recovered or reported at Games venues”.
I suggest to the Minister that such an endorsement by the Government, by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, should be taken seriously. The DCMS, through its endorsement of this legislation, logically opened the door to similar legislation for more sports than an Olympics or football, which is covered by separate legislation. Protection for fans could be extended to all events recognised by the Government in receipt of lottery or Treasury funding and support, or to events clearly identified by the Government as critical to the success of the “decade of British sport”, to which the Prime Minister and indeed the Opposition rightly attach priority.
However, our position today is nothing like as draconian as the legislation that some people saw as relevant and successful for the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The proposal today is not to ban secondary
ticketing but to mitigate the potential for dishonesty and fraud by focusing on transparency and the legally binding provision for information. That is a small step in the right direction. It is not asking to go as far as implementing the Olympic legislation, which was referred to earlier in this exchange of views in Committee—although there would be merit in considering that, if we cannot persuade the Government to take this very small but important step in support of sports fans.
The reasons have been well rehearsed today. Under current legislation, consumers are the losers. Consumers deserve a better deal. We are also increasingly behind the curve in this area, given what other countries are doing, such as Australia and the United States. I would focus the Government’s attention on the state of New South Wales, in particular, which is once again overtaking us, as it has on gaming laws.
The well-intentioned guidance that we have heard about has been tried and tested and has failed. As my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones noted, it has not had the effect sought by the Government. Ticket touting has significant connections with organised crime, with, as I mentioned, more than 1,000 professionals involved in ticket crime. The figure of over 1,000 is the Government’s figure that I cited earlier.
Sport wants these changes. Today’s campaign has been led by a whole range of our major spectator sports and supported by Nick Bitel, one of the UK’s leading sports administrators and an eminent sports lawyer in his own right, who is also a powerful advocate for change.
Following the Games, the Government were going to deal with this under the major events legislation promised by DCMS, for which we are still waiting. In the absence of that, I contend that it is opportune for us to focus on the matter in the Bill and make this small but significant change to protect the interests of the consumers—sports fans. Currently, fans continue to be detrimentally affected. Only last month, we heard of the queues forming at the entrance to Gleneagles for the Ryder Cup. Unknowingly, fans were in possession of forged tickets. They had inadequate means of checking the validity of the tickets because the people selling them could legally ignore government advice and fail to provide the information required to demonstrate the validity of those tickets.
Where ticket touting exists—by, frankly, ignoring government guidance—sport suffers from reputational damage. That has a negative effect both on sports fans —the consumers—and on our chances to secure further international events on our shores, as the Olympic and Paralympic Games served to inspire a generation.
All we are seeking is to make the guidance, which is good, legally binding. Those are the issues on which the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, and I have been campaigning for exactly 20 years—since 1994, when we were considerably younger voices for sport. Mind you, we were not without success at the outset, when we secured an amendment tabled in your Lordships’ House in 1994 specifically with regard to football on the grounds of public order consequences.
I am sure that the Minister will support the amendments and the reasoning behind them that we have put to her today, but if by chance she were not to
do so, she might consider extending the legislation on the statute book that allows the Home Secretary to take action on this front on a wider scale than just within the sport of football. In the context of Lord Justice Taylor’s report, I would argue that ticket touting and lax controls are often the precursor to public order offences at sporting grounds. However, my noble friend has a better route to follow today: to accept the amendments and let the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, and me have a second opportunity to celebrate successful moves to protect the interests of sports fans and the governing bodies that put on these events.
I see no reason why we should not build on experience of the Games in Committee and, through consensus, avoid taking the amendments to a vote at Report or Third Reading. In my experience in your Lordships’ House, well thought through legislation on sport builds all-party consensus and secures the support of the House. In sport, that has been in no small measure due to the work of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, who has been a consistent friend of sport, along with my noble friend in sport, the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, the best Minister for Sport this country never had. Together with the work of the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson—who, incidentally, is en route to this Committee from a speaking engagement in Cardiff, and offers her apologies if she does not make it—the indefatigable noble Lord, Lord Addington, the forensic mindset of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and the assiduous work of my noble friend Lady Heyhoe Flint, they provide a powerful cross-party voice in your Lordships’ House for sport. I hope that their agreement on this key issue of how to protect the consumer, the sports fan, will be carefully considered by the Minister.