Consumer Rights Bill

Debate between Lord Borwick and Lord Moynihan

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Borwick]

My Lords, very few secondary markets are perfect but they are certainly welcome in that they provide liquidity to the primary market. These amendments on secondary ticketing platforms would get in the way of the primary market. When somebody buys a ticket for an event, they are investing in something that is often way into the future. Tickets for big shows are often released a year in advance or more, so buying tickets to such events strikes me as a rather entrepreneurial activity. It is risk-taking: you cannot know whether you will enjoy the show or event and there are no reviews to read or critics to listen to. Yet if you decide that you cannot go to the event or change your mind, it is a good thing that there are proper secondary platforms developing to sell those tickets. These amendments would mean that people would think twice about that risk of buying tickets in the first place. They would be distortionary.

The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, mentioned botnets. I think they were also mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, with whom I entirely agreed on his earlier amendment. I am afraid that I disagree with him now because surely there are very good pieces of software that can stop the purchasing where computers buy automatically. Those aggravating things where you have to fill in a distorted word to prove that you are human can stop the botnets.

The noble Baroness, Lady Heyhoe Flint, talked about her aggravation that somebody was paying £4,000 for a ticket to a cricket match. I am aggravated that that £4,000 is not going to the cricket club but rather to somebody else. If somebody is prepared to pay £4,000 for a ticket to a cricket match, why is the cricket club not charging that figure? That money would then go to the sport rather than to somebody else. Of course, the real problem is the ticket touts outside railway stations or on street corners who are selling outright fake tickets or perhaps their electronic equivalents. Selling electronic tickets or trading on the street without a licence is illegal; there is already legislation to deal with this problem. The secondary platforms are already ensuring that resold tickets are valid. They usually insist that the face value of the original ticket is stated during the transaction. The market is providing solutions. We do not need new legislation and new burdens. In any case, these amendments would hit the good guys instead of the bad guys.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 28 to 31, standing in the name of my noble friends Lady Heyhoe Flint and Lord Clement-Jones. I see significant merits in Amendments 26 and 27, which I would support had we not tabled our own amendments to effectively the same objective.

In the spirit of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, and my noble friend Lady Heyhoe Flint, I begin with the question: what is a consumer? In the context of the amendments before us, the answer is a sports fan.

It is a rare occasion for the title of a Bill fully and concisely to reflect its intentions. On this occasion, the Consumer Rights Bill achieves that objective: it is a Bill about consumers and it rightly seeks to protect and, where appropriate, strengthen consumer rights. It is a Bill that addresses inadequacies in consumer protection and derives its strength from addressing malpractice against consumers, who can be exploited by loopholes in the law or interpretations of it which, without legal backing, can lead to the exploitation of consumer interests for commercial gain. It is therefore important in the context of these amendments to recognise that, in every sense, consumers are sports fans.

The amendments should be seen as a constructive step towards protecting the interests of fans. As my noble friend has said, they would make it a specific requirement that a fan buying a ticket must be informed of the terms and conditions of the transfer of the seat to them.

This was a key issue for us when hosting the Olympic Games. The subject of ticketing gained prominence for two reasons. The first was a decision made by the International Olympic Committee not to provide a ticketing platform, a platform that incrementally built on the experience of previous Games. The IOC Games department took the view that each host city should start from scratch and that the role of the IOC in this context would be purely advisory. I made my view very clear at the time: that ticketing each and every event at an Olympic and Paralympic Games, while taking into account the myriad contractual requirements of the IOC and the Olympic family for free tickets, required a platform built on experience and expertise that should be refined and improved by each host city, not one that is reinvented every four years. A pattern will emerge of the demand by the world’s athletes for free tickets, greatest—not surprisingly—after they have completed their events. I believe that, had that been in place, we would not have faced at the beginning of the Games the issue of empty seats in areas allocated for the Olympic family.

The second reason emanated from the legal framework for the Games and is directly relevant to these amendments. The Olympic legislation was introduced by this Government specifically to protect fans who sought to buy tickets for the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The Government were initially nervous about addressing this issue at the time. Historically, they had consistently taken a position that the resolution of any problems through voluntary action by the market participants was strongly to be preferred; that new regulation would be considered only as a last resort, even for the Olympics, and only where there was clear evidence that it was in the public interest; and that new regulation and the associated cost of enforcement were likely to impose greater burdens and restrictions of consumer choice as compared to market-led solutions.

However, the Government, along with the police, the fans and the organisers of the Olympic Games, collectively took a very different view after the Olympic Games were over and they had time to reflect on the effectiveness or otherwise of the legislation that had been put in place. In that context, I say to my noble friend in sport, the noble Lord, Lord Pendry, that I believe the Government learnt a lesson that I hope they will not go back on as a result of the experience that was derived from those Games.