My Lords, as the third signatory to the amendment and as someone who tabled amendments in Grand Committee, in the face of the superb introductions by my noble friends Lord Moynihan and Lady Heyhoe Flint, I intend to be extremely brief. I bow to the knowledge, expertise and passion which they bring to the amendment today and I will simply emphasise four points.
First, this amendment is not intended to create a ban on secondary ticketing and would not do so in practice. It is not designed to inhibit the legitimate exchange of tickets on secondary platforms. The target of the amendment is those who are using the lack of transparency to mislead or defraud consumers; it will benefit all those wishing to buy tickets on the secondary market.
Secondly, as my noble friend Lord Moynihan said, some of our biggest national governing bodies of sport, such as the FA, the ECB, the RFU and the LTA—I am sorry about the initials but there are plenty of them—as well as the organisers of events such as Wimbledon, England 2015 and the London Marathon, are calling for this because they believe that their consumers, the sporting enthusiasts, are being harmed by the lack of transparency in the secondary market.
Thirdly, as has been very clearly illustrated, the current consumer contract regulations are too narrow and capture only traders. Yet no one selling on the secondary market identifies themselves as a trader. Furthermore, as my noble friend Lord Moynihan said, the obligation to list the main characteristics applies only if they are known. I thought that “Honest, guv” was an extremely good way of putting it. They can say, “I don’t know the characteristics or the ticket number”, and so on. The consumer contract regulations are pretty ineffective. It is quite clear that none of the main ticketing platforms has put anything additional on its website as a result of them, so in that sense they are completely ineffective. Of course, as my noble friend Lord Moynihan pointed out, there is a minimal amount in the regulations themselves; the rest is in the guidance, which is not binding.
Fourthly, my noble friend Lady Heyhoe Flint gave us a number of illustrations. There is a very recent illustration from the rock world with the Fleetwood Mac tour. Something like 12,000 tickets for that UK tour are available on the secondary websites. Have all those enthusiastic Fleetwood Mac fans really decided, having bought those tickets in the first place, to put them on the secondary market because they are washing their hair one day? That is a completely incredible scenario and it only illustrates the need for far greater transparency in the ticketing world. I very strongly support the amendment.