My Lords, I support Motion E1 and pay fulsome tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, for his expertise and tenacity. Thanks to his efforts and those of Sharon Hodgson MP, and after a long campaign with the All-Party Group on Ticket Abuse, we were able to include certain consumer protections in the ticketing market in the Consumer Rights Act 2015. The noble Lord’s amendment on Report sought to introduce additional regulatory requirements on secondary ticketing sites for proof of purchase, ticket limits and the provision of information on the face of tickets. That would have secured greater protection for consumers and avoided market exploitation, which is currently exponentially growing on platforms such as viagogo.
As we have heard, the Ministers—the noble Lord, Lord Offord, and the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose—in their letter of 1 May to noble Lords, offered a review that would take place over nine months, which would make recommendations for Ministers to consider. But that is simply not enough, as the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, has demonstrated. The Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Offord, seems to believe from his own experience—unlike the rest of us—that everything is fine with the secondary market and that the answer to any problem lies in the hands of the primary ticket sellers. However, the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, in his brilliantly expert way, demonstrated extremely cogently how that is absolutely not the case for the Minister’s favourite sports of rugby and football, where the secondary resellers are flagrantly breaking the law.
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Furthermore, the Minister has used the examples both in debate and in correspondence—I thank him for taking the time to meet other noble Lords—of Ed Sheeran, Mumford & Sons, Iron Maiden and Glastonbury as putting in place restrictions on primary market sales to suggest that we should focus our attention on putting pressure on the organisers of these events to use existing legislation to prevent the unfair secondary market. However, apart from anything else, why is it solely the responsibility of artists and promoters to prevent secondary ticketing websites and their suppliers breaking the law? Surely they also deserve greater support. Most other artists do not have the resources to put in place these controls.
As the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, said, all the UK’s main primary ticketing operators offer capped, consumer-friendly resale at the price originally paid or less. All can guarantee the tickets being resold. This model has become standard in the UK market, and such services are now widely publicised at venues. But the growth of this genuine consumer-to-consumer market is being held back by the black market of uncapped ticket resale.
By implementing this amendment in lieu, the Government have an opportunity to fix many of these issues in one fell swoop. It would ensure that touts could not resell vast quantities of criminally acquired tickets through websites such as viagogo, and fans could purchase tickets at face value as intended. After all, something along these lines, as the noble Lord explained, was proposed also by the CMA. We should support it.