London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (Amendment) Bill

Debate between Lord Higgins and Lord Stevenson of Balmacara

Tuesday 25th October 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 7, and to support Amendment 8 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, and Amendment 10 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Addington.

We recognise the huge logistical issues involved in running a successful Games. Thanks to the helpful letter that I received recently from the chair of LOCOG, the noble Lord, Lord Coe, we are all much better informed about the thinking, research and planning that has clearly gone into the ticketing and access arrangements for both sets of Games, across all the venues. It may well be argued later that the issues raised in this group of amendments are not a matter for the Government, but for LOCOG. That may well be the legal position, but I am sure that the Committee will recognise that, while the Government will undoubtedly get no credit whatever from a successful Games, they will certainly get all the opprobrium going for any failure, or perception of failure, in any aspect of the Games. Such is life.

At Second Reading, seven noble Lords raised concerns about the ticketing arrangements in so far as the details were available at that time. There seem to be several issues in play, and it might be helpful if I summarise them. I have also added some answers from reading between the lines of the correspondence that we have received, and the comments made during the debate. Will it say on the face of a ticket who the main purchaser is? I think that the answer is yes. Does the lead ticket-holder—the person who ordered the tickets—have to attend and use one of their allocation of tickets? No, but the lead ticket-holder must be available to be contacted. Does the lead ticket-holder have to bring identification with her or him when attending the events for which she or he has tickets? Yes. If so, what is the level of ID required—is it a passport, driving licence or what? We seem to have been told that it must be a photo ID card, which would include those.

What happens if there is a problem, and the lead ticket-holder is ill or otherwise uncontactable? I am afraid that that is not clear. What contact phone number will be held by LOCOG? Will it be the home, business or mobile number? Will every ticket-holder's number be checked before the Games start to be sure they the ticket-holder can in fact be contacted if needed? All of that seems rather ill considered. When will LOCOG actually collect this information? In its most recent letter, LOCOG says that it will be in contact with ticket purchasers. There is a long time to go until the Games and I can foresee many problems on this front. Can the person who bought the tickets sell some or all of them to friends and family at face value without falling foul of the ticket-touting regulations? We have received good responses to that question, and we look forward to hearing further details of the scheme nearer the time.

Does the resale or selling-on process have to be notified to LOCOG, and the tickets released in the name of the new holders? I think not, but, on the other hand, if the exchange scheme is up and running and the portal works, that question takes care of itself. However, it is an issue that may need to be pursued. It would be helpful if the Minister could confirm that I am right so far in the answers to my questions. She is avoiding my gaze. Now I am getting a gentle smile of encouragement, so I think that I am on the right track. So far, so good.

The watchwords of the early planning for these Games were the need to build in flexibility and proportionality, bearing in mind the risks involved. But I wonder whether the genuine concern, which noble Lords expressed at Second Reading, reflects a worry that the need to prevent ticket touting has upset the right balance on this issue. I think that concern is growing, and it leads to further questions.

In his letter to which I have already referred, the noble Lord, Lord Coe, says that LOCOG has worked with the “ticketing leads” from many national and international sporting events, including those responsible for previous Games, the FA and Wimbledon. He says that the terms and conditions are in line with “standard practice”, and,

“NOT out of line with what the public would expect”.

Well, I wonder how he knows that. I admit that this is anecdotal, but there is a view held widely around your Lordships’ House that the public are not on the same page as LOCOG. Many events that I have attended recently did not follow this procedure. At any rate, perhaps we can encourage the noble Lord to join our debates and give us some information on all of these points later in the proceedings. For the moment, these are the questions that are left in my mind.

Will the training of the largely volunteer staff, at both turnstile and box office, be sufficient? Can the Minister explain precisely what will be involved in cases where tickets are thought to be fraudulent in some way or other? Will there be sufficient staff on duty to ensure an uninterrupted flow for other audience members? Would it be sensible to try out some real-time testing of these procedures, perhaps in the trial events in the run-up to the Games, so that teething and other problems are identified?

Can the Minister say something about the urgent need to ensure that the successful ticket-holders know and understand what they need to do to ensure that they can get into the venues with the minimum fuss and controversy concomitant with good security and proper evaluation of risk? Finally, the amendments in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Higgins and Lord Addington, make good sense and I look forward to hearing from the Minister whether they offer a way out of the potential PR and operational problems that we seem to be facing. I beg to move.

[Lord Higgins]

My Lords, it may be convenient if I speak first to the amendment that has just been proposed by the noble Lord, which seeks to remove Section 31(1)(b) from the original Act. His amendment would leave the clause simply reading that the person commits an offence if he sells an Olympic ticket,

“in a public place or in the course of business”.

That would create a dangerous situation, for the reasons that I mentioned in the previous debate, namely that unless we are successful—as my noble friend Lord Coe said a little while ago—in setting up a situation on site that enables people to dispose of tickets that they cannot use, it may be that perfectly reasonable people seeking to sell their ticket in any public place, not necessarily outside the stadium, would commit an offence. As I suggested earlier, instead of sub-paragraph (b), which the noble Lord has suggested we omit, we should say “or above face value”.

Turning to my main point, I do not presume to say that my amendment is in any way perfect, but I put it down originally because no one else had put down an amendment that would enable us to debate the issue that a number of noble Lords said at Second Reading gave them cause for concern. I will come to the specifics in a moment, but I regret to say that I agree with the noble Lord who has just spoken. The statement in the extremely helpful letter written by the noble Lord, Lord Coe, in his Olympics role, states that the,

“Terms and Conditions are standard practice at major events. They are NOT out of line with what the public would expect”.

Certainly, a quick—even a slow—survey of your Lordships’ House asking, “Do you expect the purchaser of the ticket will either have to be present or be available on the telephone to allow someone to use the ticket, which that individual has purchased on behalf of, let us say, his children?” would show that this is not the general view. I do not believe this is what the public expect, because a large number of the public do not go to football matches and so are not familiar with what the practice might be there.

One has to face the fact that the public do not expect this to be the situation, but it may be that they can be informed of it in appropriate ways having purchased the ticket. As I understand it, if that information is not actually going to appear on the ticket, it is proposed that a fairly lengthy document would be sent to the ticket-holder explaining these things. Certainly, it would need to say very clearly, in big letters in red type, that the ticket can be used by someone whom you bought it for only if you yourself are present. I leave to one side the question of what happens if the person who bought the ticket is dead—that will raise a difficult issue—but none the less it may be extremely difficult for the individual to be present or even to be on the telephone.

I have put down an amendment whose effect would be to make the situation more flexible. The amendment states:

“To prevent ticket touting, tickets should record the name of the person purchasing the ticket—

I understand that it is proposed that that will be done—

“and indicate that ticket holders may be admitted even though they are not accompanied by the person purchasing the ticket”.

The organisers may well feel that that drives a cart and horses through the whole thing, but they are not proposing to apply these provisions in a draconian way. On the contrary, they are proposing to adopt a flexible attitude. People need to be clear whether the person who bought the ticket has to be present when they wish to use the ticket on a particular occasion. We need to clarify whether we are going to stick to the thing rigorously or whether we are not going to stick to it rigorously but make it clear that ticket-holders ought to be able to establish that they are related to the person who purchased the ticket.

As I said, my amendment is certainly not perfect and comes up with a solution that may be thought to be too favourable to ticket touts, but we need to clarify. We all recognise that there has been an enormous and extremely difficult exercise on ticketing. At the same time, we do not want to create a situation where, because of the provision stating that a ticket-holder must be accompanied by the purchaser, we have large queues of people trying to telephone the person who bought the ticket to say, “Please will you confirm to the ticket office that I am related to you?”, or whatever it may be. That is a genuine problem, and I do not say that I have the answer yet. We need to give more thought to this.