My Lords, I will speak to Motion E1 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan. Like the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, I thank him and my honourable friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West for their relentless campaigning and enduring diligence on this issue.
The current system is not working. It is not strong enough to stop a shadowy oligopoly of parasites on talent: unscrupulous people who are profiteering from genuine fans who want to see their heroes perform live. Tickets for many high-profile events, which by their very nature are extremely limited in supply, are being resold for many times their face value. Genuine sports supporters and music fans are being ripped off.
I will give just one example. The original price of the most expensive seated tickets for Taylor Swift in Edinburgh next month was £194 each. I went online to book mine last night, dedicated Swiftie fan that I am, and the cheapest seated tickets with unrestricted views were more than £500 each for two together. The most expensive pairs were £3,646 each—more than 19 times the original price. If I were to buy them, I would wonder to whom that additional money, almost £7,000, was going. It is obviously not going to Taylor Swift—or Tay Tay, as we fans call her.
Sports clubs and artists pitch their prices at a level which they think is fair and which enables them to make a profit: a price that allows their fans to enjoy their work—often a special occasion that will be remembered for a lifetime. When they see their fans charged excessive prices, they are right to believe that their hard work, talent and reputations are being exploited. These excess profits are not going to those who have worked hard to develop sporting prowess or exceptional skills as a performer; they are going to unscrupulous organisations which are often difficult to track and prosecute and which are prepared to exploit existing loopholes and take risks by breaking the law, knowing that they are unlikely to be caught. Such organisations employ sophisticated technology to distort a necessarily restricted market. In his response on day 2 of our debate, on 13 March, the Minister argued his case for not accepting amendments on this issue. The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, has, with characteristic persistence and diligence, convincingly rebutted those arguments and perhaps alerted the Minister, as he set out earlier, to just how easy it is to be misled, overcharged and ripped off by the various online sites which operate in the secondary market, perhaps even saving him from an expensive mistake the next time he chooses to see an international rugby or football match or even a pop concert.
The CMA made recommendations in relation to secondary ticketing that are covered by this amendment, as the noble Lord set out earlier. The first was to ensure that secondary tickets can be sold only with proof of purchase of the original ticket, to avoid speculative sales of tickets which may not have been bought and might not be provided—a recipe for rip-offs. The second was to limit the number of resales by a single reseller to the amount that can legally be purchased on the primary market. If a reseller is offering tickets in groups larger than this, that must indicate that the additional tickets have been misdescribed or misappropriated and potentially that the purchaser could unknowingly be receiving stolen goods. The amendment also requires
that secondary sellers make the original face value of the ticket clearly visible to the purchaser. Subsection (3) of the new clause inserted by the amendment gives the Secretary of State powers to impose or amend conditions for resellers in response to further loopholes being found by resellers to get around these reasonable and legal restrictions, if any emerge in the future.
The second part of the amendment is equally important. It formalises the Government’s non-legislative commitment to undertake a review over the next nine months, as mentioned earlier by noble Lords. By the time that review finishes, the Consumer Rights Act 2015 will be 10 years old. It is already showing its age in the face of the rapid technological advances allowing unscrupulous companies to exploit fans and performers. The review will enable the Secretary of State to identify emerging risks—the unknown unknowns—and respond to rapidly changing technology as touts inevitably seek to exploit the loopholes of the future.
Every year, fans spend millions of pounds of their hard-earned money on these special occasions. It should not go to touts or resellers who exploit the system and play fast and loose with consumer law. The devil is in the detail here and it is also in delay. The time to act is now. The combined weight of the concerns and arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, the CMA, the entertainment and sports industries, consumer groups and ordinary fans is difficult to resist. I am impressed by the Minister’s resolve in the face of this tsunami, but I hope that he will now support this amendment. If the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, wishes to test the will of the House, we on this side will support him.