Waterson Review

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

The Act has of course come into force and there have been prosecutions on ticketing, although they are often made through fraud law rather than consumer law. The advice I would give to consumers is to get in touch with the excellent Citizens Advice service. If they have evidence of fraud they should contact Action Fraud, and there is also the possibility of trading standards taking action. One of Professor Waterson’s recommendations is that more work should be done on that.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that modern-day touts who use bots in the form of software that stores hundreds of credit card accounts and can instantly sweep the market of tickets the moment they go on sale, only to reappear half an hour later through their colleagues on the secondary market at highly inflated prices, corrupts the market and denies the true fans of sport and musical events the opportunity to buy tickets? These touts should be subject to legislative action by the Government through the Digital Economy Bill.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

As always, my noble friend makes some powerful points. He will be glad to know that the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has asked for a round table to be held with the industry on this matter next week, on 30 November, in order to bring together all the interested parties to look at the issue of bots following very useful discussions on the Digital Economy Bill.