Breaching of Limits on Ticket Sales Regulations 2018

Debate between Lord Griffiths of Burry Port and Lord Stevenson of Balmacara

Wednesday 13th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, I join those who have welcomed this statutory instrument. We could say that progress on the part of the Government has been somewhat slower than perhaps we would have wished, but nevertheless we are surely getting there. That is largely due to the fact that we are working in a cross-party way and in a spirit of collegiate support on the issues that are worrying us in this area.

In your Lordships’ House, this effort is led by the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, who is in his place and has spoken out. However, it would be right at this point to recognise the work of the all-party group which he talked about, because it has indeed been good at keeping up pressure on the Government on this issue. We also miss, yet again, the spirit and enthusiasm of Baroness Heyhoe Flint, who sadly is no longer with us but who was definitely part of the team that includes on our side my noble friends Lady Hayter and Lord Collins, who have managed to keep this issue in front of your Lordships’ House and have got us to where we are today.

Having said that, others have mentioned the problem of resourcing the teams which will have to make sure that the new regulatory process works in practice, and that means trading standards in particular. It is not, as others have said, just a question of resources; it is also a question of matching the technical skills of those who are operating computers to try to cheat ordinary customers out of the ability to buy tickets as they would wish. I am sure that the Minister will have some words to say about that, but I would be grateful if he could make sure that we understand better how the resourcing element of this is going to be met.

Finally, we are still left with a couple of rough ends, and I do not think that we should consider this to be the end of the game. I have yet to have properly established what is a ticket; the legal definition still eludes those who have been working on this issue. It can either be a licence to attend a performance or it can be a piece of real property which, with justification, can be sold on to others. I think that it is a bit of both, and it would be helpful if we could make sure that we put into statute a proper definition of what a ticket is. Once we have that, the rest of the issues which are raised by this whole question of touting and how it operates will be erased.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I am delighted to add my voice to those who have spoken, some of whom have of course carried the burden of this subject for quite a long time. A few years ago, I wanted to see David Tennant performing in “Richard II” at the Barbican. Because of the activities of the organisation already named, I was obliged to pay hundreds of pounds for a ticket, greatly inflated from the face value, in order to get a rather poor seat. I have never told my wife about this expenditure and now that I have made my confession on the Floor of the House, I hope that she will not read Hansard. However, I have been a victim of touts and it was only the grandeur of the performance that rescued the whole thing in my mind.

It is of course scandalous that these things take place. It is perhaps unfortunate that trading standards people, who are accustomed to dealing with infractions of this nature and are empowered to do so, are given less than helpful advice when it comes to pursuing matters in this area. The police have all the powers necessary to bring cases and all the rest of it. It seems important that the police are not burdened with what, for them, will be a marginal or lesser activity. They face so many serious things these days. Perhaps we can look at that in due course.

Since I have mentioned drama and quoted Shakespeare, perhaps I can quote the words of the Minister back to him. He said in an earlier debate that,

“with the new offence on the statute book, the Government will work with industry to enforce it. An offence is only worth having if criminal acts are reported. We have industry groups in place that are now willing and able to take action in partnership with our law enforcement agencies”.—[Official Report, 29/3/17; col. 660.]

We are promised constant review of the outcomes of these regulations once we have approved them. Of course that is good, but are we convinced that if we wait a statutory amount of time—a year or two—to monitor what is happening, the police might not feel that this was their priority and we will have rather little to report at that time, and that we cannot anticipate already the likely shortcomings in the way this matter will be implemented?

My children are less concerned with David Tennant at the Barbican than they are with the Arctic Monkeys. Of course, their recent re-emergence to the public saw a prime example of this kind of difficulty. Indeed, it might well be described for all of us as our “Favourite Worst Nightmare”, since that was the name of one of their albums. One commentator at that time said that it is easier to buy a gun in the United States than an Arctic Monkeys ticket in the United Kingdom. Or, as another one said, it is,

“easier to get a reservation at Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino”,

than one of their tickets. That is another one of their albums, course.

It is well enough to play around with words; it is the ordinary public who suffer from these dangerous and profiteering pirateering activities. It is time that we recognise this as something that has to be addressed, which we do and have done. Indeed, looking at some briefing from Ticketmaster, I see for just how long it has been active in the field trying to control these sorts of activities. It is time that we find ourselves not only expressing concern and making provision, but giving power to the people best able to do something about this so that, when we get our promised report back in due course, we will be able to see first, to answer the Minister’s worries, people brought to justice and, secondly, treated righteously before the law.

All of us can express our very real concerns about this aspect of our national life. All of us want to see something done about it. We just hope that this statutory instrument will not only add something that looks right on paper, but achieve some of the objectives we mentioned today.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Griffiths of Burry Port and Lord Stevenson of Balmacara

Committee: 9th sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 21st March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

While I will have a word to say in a moment about the use of the word veto, I will not claim to know the detail relating to the Council of Europe, to which reference has been made.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

It was the Council of Ministers.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

I beg your pardon. I think the mistake is evidence of the fact that I am not qualified to answer that particular part of the noble Lord’s question.

Gambling Act 2005 (Operating Licence Conditions) (Amendment) Regulations 2018

Debate between Lord Griffiths of Burry Port and Lord Stevenson of Balmacara

Tuesday 20th March 2018 Grand Committee

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I am more than grateful for the remarks that have already been made. I am discovering all the time how much more I am being educated in abstruse parts of our national life that I had no idea about at all. I am a sweet innocent abroad most of the time. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, mentioned a statistic which I have also fallen upon in the paperwork before us: the 28% of people who do not know the difference between gaming—betting—and a lottery. I would be part of that 28%, without any doubt. What I have learned about the overlap between the EuroMillions and the National Lottery is completely new to me. But I can quite see why it should be confusing and why it needs to be evened out.

Others have expressed their own interests. Mine is simply that I have worked with 12-step self-help groups of people wanting to recover from habits incurred in these areas of life—gambling and various kinds of addiction, particularly alcohol—and consequently I look at measures such as this as if I were someone who had the problem and ask myself: what would help me with these matters?

Are we satisfied with the fact that 28% do not know the difference or does that goad us to feel that there ought to be some way of educating people so that it is less than 28%? Is there not some obligation on us to provide a programme of public education, or should there not be some way of drawing to people’s attention to, first, what the difference is and, secondly, some of the other confusions that arose from the analysis offered by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones? I do not have a clue what society lotteries are. We have entertained people from the People’s Postcode Lottery, so I am beginning to be more alert to that. I am making progress on these things but if I am confused, it seems that we should ask ourselves: what do we do with people who are really confused and victims of their confusion?

Certainly, we ought to be driven by the fact that the National Lottery exists to raise money for good causes and anything that interferes with the clear profile that it has should be looked at askance. Is anyone else piggybacking on the National Lottery, taking advantage of the fact that the National Lottery is there, with all its structure and place in society and so on, and rather stealing its clothes in one way or another as it makes its appeal?

I wonder about the trademark authority refusing registration of the EuroMillions logo because of “near identical verbal elements”. In this area I can claim some expertise. Words are very much my tools. If one form of words confuses the ground between the EuroMillions and the National Lottery, I can think of a thousand ways in which we could change the words but still take advantage of the logo. Verbal similarity is not a difficult thing. I have marked undergraduate essays for long enough to know how to identify a little plagiarism now and again. Who monitors the logos? I guess it is the Gambling Commission, the advertising standards people or the trademark authority itself. We ought to keep an eye on these things and—this is the thrust of the statutory instrument—always ask ourselves: will this make for a clearer picture for the people who are the victims of, first, the confusion and, secondly, some of the exploitative methods that are employed by some people in that area of life? But I have no doubt at all that I approve of the order and I add my voice to others who have spoken in favour of it.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, I was not intending to speak on these regulations but I caught something my friend the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said and I thought I would respond to it. It was also mentioned by my noble friend Lord Griffiths in his response.

When we look at lottery matters, we should have regard to the fact that we are looking at a system under which the intention is to increase the amount of money paid out to good causes. We have adopted a model to do that which is not necessarily found in other parts of the world that have lotteries. I do not wish in any sense to emulate the length of time for which the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, has presided over this brief in his party but when I came to debate it, a long time after he started, I wondered whether we should think harder about the percentages going out of the National Lottery system into the good causes. That was presumably not unrelated to the fact that money had to be found for the Olympics, so there was a lot of tension and a focus in that.

However, things have moved on and I felt that some of the figures being cited by the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, were not exactly in line with the current state of knowledge on this. For instance, I understand that there is now a report from the National Audit Office indicating clearly that the money going to the Postcode Lottery does not deflect from people’s interest in the National Lottery and that the representations made on behalf of the Postcode Lottery—that it should be allowed to expand its prize money, which is the point he made—have been the subject of lengthy discussion and consideration in the department. I think there are still consultations going on.

The Minister may know that I have tabled a Question for Written Answer on this matter, to which I am sure she will want to speedily return to amplify what she says in response to this debate. If she wants to wait until then, I will be quite happy, but my point is that there is an ongoing debate to be had about the proportion of money that the public wish to see going to national causes, which means that our model needs to be robust and sustainable.

First, is it time to reflect on that? Secondly, is there room now for this in a society that has changed out of all recognition since the National Lottery was formed, and which has an interest in local events? Research exists now to show that the Postcode Lotteries which are done postcode by postcode in the full system, and which operate right across Europe successfully, may offer another approach to giving for good causes in that the committees set up under the Postcode Lottery seem to be locally focused. The giving is therefore not so much for the benefit of winning a big prize, because the prizes are more modest, but because there is more satisfaction in the direct channelling of money towards local causes. It may be appropriate for the Government to look at whether it is time to think again about these things so that we can get more sense, and, we hope, more money, into the system.