Consumer Rights Bill

Baroness Grey-Thompson Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

I rise briefly to prove that we on this side of the House can also have fun and go to concerts and rugby and football matches. I want to support those who tabled the amendment—obviously my noble friend has yet to speak. I believe that this is a very sensible but extremely light-touch proposal—it is feather light. We are not asking for criminalisation, as in the case of the Olympics. We are talking about the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Heyhoe Flint, made demanding equality of treatment for consumers of both original tickets and secondary tickets. That is a very simple demand to make in this extremely light-touch amendment.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson (CB)]

I support the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan. I have a number of interests in sport, which are declared on the register. We might be here a long time if I went through them all.

We have been discussing this for longer than I have been involved in sport—and that is at least 30 years. As an ex-athlete and a sports fan, of course I want people to be watching and supporting. It is important to say that this is not a ban on secondary tickets; it would not be so in practice. This is about those people who hide behind the lack of transparency to mislead or defraud.

We should not take lightly the number of governing bodies which are in agreement on this issue. Again, in the length of time I have been involved in sport, it is very unusual for so many to agree on a single issue. They believe in this because they feel that it is very harmful to what they are trying to do. This is a pragmatic step that empowers consumers. It will not inhibit the legitimate exchange of tickets on secondary platforms. It will just make government policy much more effective.

I would like to come back to the point of the noble Lord, Lord Borwick, on the Olympics and the Paralympics. It was briefly in the media about seats not being filled, but my understanding was that that was part of the contract with the IOC: it was IOC members who had to have those seats available if they wanted to watch the sport. It was not a case of tickets that had been sold and not used—it was a very specific area. Every Olympics and Paralympics Games have to set a number of those seats aside. I feel slightly embarrassed talking about that with the noble Lord, Lord Deighton, in the Chamber. He was much closer to it than I was.

With the Olympics and Paralympics, the legislation that was in place meant that people felt very confident, knowing that when they went to events they would get tickets. I have been to events where I have seen parents standing outside, explaining to their 10 year-old why the ticket they have is not valid. They might have paid over the odds for it, but the pressure from children to see One Direction and all those other people is huge. As a parent you might pay more, because you want to give that experience to your child. You do not spend lots of time checking out different methods of buying tickets on the internet; you buy the ticket because you want to be there. This is about protecting those people and making sure that they know that those seats are protected.

This is pragmatic. Nobody loses out from this proposal apart from those who seek to make huge profits by mis-selling or defrauding consumers. I strongly support the work that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, is doing in this area, because it is vital that we do this.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, I will start with a couple of apologies. The first is for arriving a few seconds into the speech of my noble friend Lord Moynihan. That was partly to do with the excellent speed of the Minister in marshalling us through this, while simultaneously being due to a slight go-slow on the part of my guide dog in getting here this afternoon. I also apologise for not being able to speak to this amendment in Committee; it was my birthday, and I wrongly prioritised a celebratory dinner ahead of speaking on that occasion.

What are we trying to achieve with this? It is not complicated; it does not say anything negative about the concept of a secondary market for tickets. It is simply about this: if we can improve, we will get more tickets into the hands of more sports fans for more events, and we will drive a far more efficient ticketing operation across sport, art, culture and music.

In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, raised a very important point: what is a ticket? That question was not taken up by the Minister on that occasion, so I will tempt her this evening into perhaps going into it in her response, because it is a key point. If we are talking about tickets, it makes sense for us to consider what a ticket is, and crucially, off the back of that, it seems reasonable to consider what a ticket could and perhaps should be. That involves consideration of the physical, the electronic ticket, its commercial and legal characteristics, and what is set around it as regards transferability and negotiability. It seems to be quite sensible to think, debate and discuss all those elements so that we are all clear as regards what we are talking about.

If I am lucky enough to get a ticket for Centre Court at Wimbledon, but then a week before I am struck down with a late spring flu, it seems perfectly reasonable and absolutely right that I should be allowed to resell that ticket to somebody who was not lucky enough to get it in the primary sale. Similarly, it seems absolutely reasonable that I should not be able to make a profit on that ticket, and should be able to get back only its face value. Even more so, if from the outset I pitched into the ticket market with no intention of going anywhere near Centre Court and SW19, it seems absolutely reasonable that there should be no proper purpose in the deriving of profit from that purchase.

The ticket is not a piece of real property; it is a licence—an opportunity. It is the chance to sit on one of those hallowed seats at Centre Court, not something to put away and deal with as if it was some property that can be sold to the highest bidder, who perhaps has nothing to do with sport.

At London 2012 we probably had the most discussions around the senior leadership table about ticketing, because it matters. We knew that whatever we did, most people would not get one of those tickets to the greatest show on earth. We had to be absolutely clear and robust in how we structured that ticket offer so that, even if people were unlucky and did not get a ticket, they could at least see exactly what we did at every stage and see that it was transparent, fair and that there was no secondary market.