Ticket Reselling

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Tuesday 17th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

I am sure the DCMS has aficionados of all those disciplines. Only today, officials were talking to the Rugby World Cup organisers about arrangements for the event. Those will include using bar coding, named tickets, staggered ticket release and reward to fans with a history of support. The Government are engaged in this matter, but all successive Governments, and indeed Select Committees that have looked into this in the past, have concluded that regulation is not the best way of achieving what we all want to do.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, after our performance in the past three tests, does the Minister think it will be almost impossible to give away, let alone resell, tickets for the final two?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

I very much hope that England will win the last two matches and make it 3-2. The important thing we need to remember is that very often people buy tickets and wish to have a secondary sale because someone cannot go or their team does not win into the quarter-finals or semi-finals, so there are practical difficulties. When a Select Committee looked at this in detail, it concluded that regulation was not the way to achieve what we want.