Consumer Rights Bill
Debate between Baroness Heyhoe Flint and Lord Clement-Jones
Baroness Heyhoe Flint (Con)
My Lords, back-tracking slightly, I echo all that my noble friend Lord Moynihan has said, as well as his and our cross-party thanks to the Bill team and to my noble friends the Minister and Lady Jolly. They met the persistence from our side in the early stages with such courtesy and patience. I hope the Minister accepts that we simply are trying to protect those hard-working fans who spend their hard-earned money on watching sport or entertainment—I know that “hard-working” is very much a buzzword of the Government. That is where we are coming from and why we wish to continue to press this issue as regards the Bill. It slightly embarrasses me that the Government seem more keen to protect those operating as ticket touts—perhaps I should change that name to preserve the not-so-innocent and call them “secondary sellers”.
Surprisingly, you get more protection when buying a tin of baked beans. Heinz—or Crosse & Blackwell or whatever brand you use—manages to stick on all the necessary details of the content within, as well as the redress if you are not satisfied with what you have got. In the ticket-touting amendment, we tried to say that what is on the tin is what the consumer will get. The ticket market should be obliged to provide the same honest details on their sites—obviously, I hope that they do not have “Heinz” or “Crosse & Blackwell” in brackets. I trust that the Minister will agree with the cross-party feelings behind this Bill and with those of all the national governing sports bodies that a fair deal is given to all consumers. We are very happy to discuss the matter further.
Finally, perhaps I may add that I do not have any tickets for the Ashes series next summer.
Lord Clement-Jones (LD)
My Lords, inspired by my noble friends Lord Moynihan and Lady Heyhoe Flint, I thought that I, too, should get my retaliation in first before we pass the Bill. I was provoked by the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, almost to wave my practising certificate as a legally qualified Member on these Benches, but I did not take part in assessing the virtues of Schedule 8 because I certainly agree with it as well. I agree that the Bill is in better shape now than when it entered the House, and that is a great tribute to my honourable friend Jo Swinson in the other place, as she had a strong hand in creating the Bill’s architecture. That is not to say that there were not valuable qualifications and changes made as it passed through this House. In particular, I thank the Minister and my noble friend Lady Jolly for the clarifications that they gave to the motor manufacturing industry with regard to one repair, and the clarification and the Pepper v Hart-type statements that they gave to the software industry as well. In future years those will prove extremely valuable.
Of course, there are still a number of bees buzzing in my bonnet. Lookalikes will continue to be an issue that I am sure will be raised on further occasions, and I hope that progress will continue to be made. There are a number of other areas—such as Ofcom powers, which were raised by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson—on which I hope further progress will be made. I am somewhat concerned about some of the unintended consequences of the definition of “consumer”, which, strangely enough, we did not debate in this House but which may well crop up in the future. I, too, thank my noble friends very much for all their help. “Hard work and co-operation” were the words that were used, and I thoroughly agree with that.
Consumer Rights Bill
Debate between Baroness Heyhoe Flint and Lord Clement-Jones
Baroness Heyhoe Flint (Con)
My Lords, once again, I return to the subject I raised at Second Reading and in Committee by speaking to Amendment 13, to which I have added my name. I also have to declare an interest to the House: I am a board member of the England and Wales Cricket Board.
Like so many of my colleagues on both sides of the House, I want the very best for sport and entertainment and their fan bases. I make this address feeling a bit like Mrs Echo of my noble friend Lord Moynihan. As the House has heard, this is a redrafted amendment. It is shorter, sharper and has absolute clarity. It is designed to empower consumers by placing extremely light requirements on the reselling of tickets. Crucially, it does not in any way prohibit or ban the resale of tickets. It seeks to replicate the standards that the Government intended—I stress the word “intended”—to introduce through the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013.
Frustratingly, the regulations are not working at all. I have now studied many online ticket sales sites, as have the major sports groups mentioned by my noble friend Lord Moynihan. We can find no sales at all complying with the stated regulations. In meetings with officials working for the Minister, they, too, have been unable to cite evidence of the consumer contracts regulations having any effect. The regulations are clearly ineffectual. That is why I plead from my sporting heart that we need the amendment. It clarifies matters by placing in legislation key characteristics that must be provided by the seller when a ticket is resold, rather than the existing vague guidance and confusion about what constitutes a trader and what constitutes a consumer. That creates a huge loophole that can be exploited by the unscrupulous leading to, as my noble friend Lord Moynihan said, a £1.5 billion racket.
I hope that all sides of the House will support me when I emphasise what we are trying to achieve. Those who buy a ticket from a secondary seller should be provided with the same information and protection when they buy that ticket as they would expect to receive when purchasing direct from the event organiser. It is as simple as that. But you would not think so, judging by the anguish that sports governing bodies are having to suffer in seeking a satisfactory resolution with this amendment.
If the amendment is made, every purchaser will be told the original face value of the ticket, the location of the seat in terms of block, row and seat number, whether it has restricted vision, and whether it is a seat for a child or senior citizen being sold at what I think is called a top-whack price. It will also allow people to check with the venue that the ticket is genuine. Importantly too, they would be told the original terms and conditions relating to the ticket purchase, and whether the resale was in breach of those original terms and conditions.
As has already been said, it takes only a matter of seconds to provide this information online. Remember that anyone who sells online has to create an account with a secondary seller or website in any event. This is an infinitely longer process than just providing three key details when selling a ticket. If you are extremely modern, you could even take a photo of the ticket and upload it.
Those facts are material for the consumer in making an informed decision about whether to purchase a ticket. I assure the House that this is not an unnecessary burden— and it would certainly not seem like a burden to the 150 or so very angry fans who were refused admission to the Ashes test at the Oval two years ago because they had been sold invalid tickets online. Club officials were angrily confronted, and are probably still recovering from the onslaught, but they had no armoury in legislation to solve the problem. In some circumstances there is no block, row or seat number. That is why the amendment offers the alternative of citing the seat booking reference number.
If the Government intend to continue to defend a status quo that is patently failing, I have three questions for the Minister. First, does she accept that the amendment, if accepted, would place very little burden on the seller? Secondly, why does the Minister not agree that is important to empower consumers by giving them key information about the tickets they have bought, and to protect them from being mis-sold or, even worse, turning up at the event and not being admitted because the terms and conditions have been breached? Thirdly, does she accept that the 2013 regulations are not working, because they rely on guidance alone and are too imprecise about how a trader is defined? Surely individuals who buy tickets with the sole aim of selling them on at inflated prices to make a profit are trading, so should be classed as traders.
I am sad to tell the House that there are very many people doing just that. Only yesterday I went online to research the issue. Across the sites of major secondary sellers such as viagogo, Get Me In!, Seatwave and StubHub—they have been vigorously lobbying against the amendment; well, they would, wouldn’t they?—I found more than 5,000 tickets being sold for next summer’s Ashes test series. This is flabbergasting. These tickets have only just gone on sale. It is inconceivable to me that such a large number of tickets have been bought by consumers who now find, eight months in advance, that they cannot go to the tests. How very strange and coincidental is that? These tickets are being hawked around for profit. Every single one of them is being sold in breach of the 2013 regulations, because they have been put there by opportunistic traders, colloquially known as touts; they are not put there just for fun, or by individual consumers exploiting the system. It is naive to think otherwise and to believe that those actions are acceptable.
Is this how we want to showcase our international sports and entertainment events in this country? Is this how we want to go about protecting a nation of sports fans? Before us is a Bill about consumer rights, so please let us give those consumers the right to know that what they are buying is genuine and is what it purports to be.
I have in the past been regarded as a rebel with a cause in fighting for fairness in sport. Speaking in support of this amendment, I am once again revealing my rebellious nature—old habits die hard—but I am merely seeking fair trading for all. I hope that the Minister is now ready to accept this amendment or at least prepared to offer some room for negotiation before Third Reading. The MCC’s “Spirit of Cricket” project, which engenders fair play, should be adopted for secondary selling of tickets so that all consumers are protected from those who seek to prey on their enthusiasm and desire to acquire genuine tickets.
Lord Clement-Jones
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.