London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (Amendment) Bill

Baroness Doocey Excerpts

Monday 3rd October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Doocey]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of the London Assembly, the Metropolitan Police Authority and the Home Office Olympic Security Board. I understand and support the need for the provisions in the Bill regarding traffic management. Everybody knows that it is essential for athletes and officials to get to the various Olympic venues on time so having a series of roads with special traffic arrangements in place ranging from “no right turn” to dedicated lanes makes perfect sense. For this to be effective, traffic regulations on this network must be enforceable. The Bill seeks to anticipate various contingencies for which the present powers are inadequate.

I believe that Londoners will accept with very good grace the fact that all athletes and Games officials whose presence is essential to running the Games will be able to use these dedicated lanes. But I urge the Government to do whatever they can to encourage those Olympic family members whose presence is not essential to the Games to use public transport instead.

I also support the proposal in the Bill to increase the penalty for illegal touting from £5,000 to £20,000. The take-up of both the Olympic and—this is brilliant news—Paralympic tickets has outstripped demand, and it has been an absolute success story. But high demand creates a market which ticket touts will definitely try to exploit. The Olympics are special; they are about fairness and moral integrity, and we cannot allow ticket touting to undermine this, because it will taint the reputation of the London Olympics. It is therefore essential to do everything possible to prevent ticket touting.

The Metropolitan Police has already set up Operation Podium, to which the Minister referred in her opening remarks, to deal with serious organised crime surrounding the 2012 Games. Part of its remit is to tackle ticket touting, fake tickets and website abuse, which are all very serious problems. Increasing the fine from £5,000 to £20,000 will definitely help the police, because it will provide an important deterrent.

Finally, I support noble Lords who have spoken about the problems with LOCOG’s terms and conditions for the sale of Olympic tickets. I have just now reread the terms and conditions and it is crystal clear that the person who bought the tickets must attend the event. I believe that the public are blissfully unaware of this. Which of us can honestly say that every time we buy we ticket or, indeed, anything else, we read the terms and conditions? I know that I tend to just tick the box so I can go on to the next screen. I fear that LOCOG simply has not thought through the implications of these terms and conditions. How can LOCOG dictate that a whole family or a group of friends, despite every member having a ticket, will not be admitted to an Olympic event because the lead ticket holder has suddenly fallen ill or has been called away on business, through no fault of their own? They will have to say to their family members not just, “I can’t go”, but, “I’m terribly sorry, you can’t go either”. It is frankly ridiculous. The provision is incredibly unfair, and I believe that the majority of the public had no idea that this was in place when they signed up and bought tickets in good faith.

It would be tragic if what I believe will be the greatest Olympics ever was tainted by controversy about the sale of tickets. I urge the Government to do everything in their power to try to persuade LOCOG to see sense and change this ill-thought-out policy.