Consumer Rights Bill

Baroness Heyhoe Flint Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Grand Committee

That is the flaw in the whole argument. The big four sellers are powerful players. It is part of their unique selling proposition that they guarantee and make refunds that are more generous than simply refunding tickets; they sometimes compensate for travel costs and so on. But that is not true of many other players, and it is certainly not true of the ordinary ticket tout. I do not believe that voluntary action in these circumstances is adequate. I would like to think that in the best of all possible worlds traders will get together and have a common standard of service and so on, but I do not believe that that will happen unprompted by legislation. I am not moving an amendment but I beg to lay my wares before the Minister.

[Baroness Heyhoe Flint (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to speak specifically to Amendment 28, which, as my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones has so eloquently put, is inextricably linked to Amendments 26, 27, 29 and 31. I am pleased to have the opportunity to return to the subject I raised at Second Reading. I am delighted that, in doing so, I am joined by colleagues from all sides, made up of many distinguished people—all finely tuned athletes, of course—who have been campaigning for many years to promote the interests of British sport.

The support for Amendment 28 demonstrates the need for specific action to protect the interests of sports fans when they purchase tickets to sporting events. I apologise if I am repeating what has also been stated so clearly by the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, but just because we call them fans does not mean we should forget that they are consumers. I identify to the House that I am on the Board of the England and Wales Cricket Board, which is one of many sporting organisations that have expressed support for these amendments, such as the RFU, Wimbledon and the Ryder Cup, to name but three global event presentation organisations.

I thank the Minister for taking the time recently to meet with sports delegations on this issue. I shall reflect on that meeting in my comments and touch on the examples she requested. She asked for more feedback and we too would like more feedback.

First, I will address whether, as was suggested to us, the amendment would place too many restrictions into the market place and act as a burden on the buyer and the seller. I cannot see how the amendment can place any unnecessary burdens on the ticket buyer. It is in their interests to be told the face-value price of the ticket they are buying; its location in terms of block, row and seat number, so that they understand where they will be sitting; and, most crucially of all, whether that ticket is rendered invalid if it is transferred. These facts are material to making an informed decision about whether to purchase the ticket.

As for the seller, I do not see that having to provide this information is a restrictive burden. All the major sites that sell tickets already have online forms that people have to fill in with their ticket details. It will take just a few seconds more to add this additional information. Indeed, I tested it myself. I think it takes about 20 seconds to provide this information, which is nothing in the context of having to log in and enter other information. Alternatively, in this modern age people have the option of taking a picture of the ticket with their phone and uploading it, but I have not currently conquered that art of IT communication.

The Government already require information to be provided through the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 —I almost ran out of breath there. That is a very minor step, due to the lack of information and transparency to the buyer. My first question to the Minister is whether she accepts that the amendment places very little burden on the seller and that it is merely an extension to the existing regulations her department introduced this summer. I am sure that the Minister will respond to this short debate by referring to those regulations. They are of course welcome and a step in the right direction. Indeed, they show me that the amendment is in line with the Government’s existing policy approach. However, these regulations, as has already been pointed out, have certain flaws. The main one is that they apply only to sellers who are defined as “traders” and do not apply to consumers selling to other consumers, as happens so often and is the business model for secondary ticket sites.

Let me give an example. Last year one of our major venues, Durham County Cricket Club, managed to uncover the activities of Nicholas Hubscher—this in the public domain—a British Airways pilot who was found to be,

“touting on an industrial scale”,

as a sideline from his main occupation. I have a six-page selection of the cuttings and e-mail reports officially identifying the 800 tickets that Hubscher touted, with a face value of between £50 and £100, during the tests at the Oval, Old Trafford and Durham. These tickets were partially sold for hugely inflated prices on third-party ticketing websites such as Viagogo and Seatwave. The tickets were obtained not though sophisticated software but through using multiple credit cards and names. The England and Wales Cricket Board, in conjunction with the venues, successfully brought a civil action against him in the High Court but it was a stroke of luck that they found him. It had nothing to do with the regulatory regime that the Government have in place. Yet in this case, despite selling hundreds of tickets, Hubscher would not be caught under the existing regulations as he would not come under the definition of a trader.

Even when the sales are placed on secondary sites deliberately to make a profit—which is surely acting as a trader in any other sense—it circumvents the regulations that the Minister says will assist us. Can she therefore confirm that, at present, the application of the regulations only to traders allows for organised touts and others to evade the new regulations?

I am sad to tell the Committee that so many people are doing this. Just yesterday, I went online again to research the issue. On the Viagogo sites, I found scores of tickets for the opening Ashes match at the SWALEC stadium in Cardiff next July—tickets, incidentally, which were only recently put on sale. Those tickets have not even been sent to purchasers yet. Perhaps I may cite an e-mail sent to the England and Wales Cricket Board from a frustrated and angry consumer:

“Dear Sir/Madam, I have tried and been unsuccessful in obtaining three tickets for day three of next year’s test match at Edgbaston in the Ashes. Just by looking online for tickets, I have come across this advert”—

this relates to an eBay advert. The consumer went on:

“Can you please explain to me how these companies get all these tickets and sell them at extortionate prices when genuine fans cannot get them?”

In one instance, four tickets are listed at hugely inflated prices but nowhere does the post tell me the face value of the tickets. Nor does it tell me the exact seating location or whether Glamorgan County Cricket Club, which is the host of the event, is permitting that ticket to be transferred. This advert—there are many more like it on this and other sites—demonstrates the flaws in the existing regulations. Will the Minister look at these ads on sites such as Seatwave, Get Me In! and Viagogo? Perhaps she has already, because I know that my noble friend the Minister is a keen cricket fan. Can she confirm that they are currently in breach of existing regulations and that consumers are not getting the protection we would all wish to see?

I have also seen example after example from Wimbledon of consumers from around the world purchasing tickets at inflated prices and not receiving what was advertised. There are examples referring to debenture tickets which were bought in good faith yet were not debenture tickets, which classify which rather exclusive zone you sit in at Wimbledon. There are complaints from members of the ticket fraternity or the supporters and fans of Wimbledon from the USA about tickets which they did not receive or with which they were refused entry. There were tickets that were not even for the original place that they had booked and paid for. There were also tickets that had previously been stolen from another source. There are these fears in the background, which have alarmed all the people who have spoken so far.

This amendment will make it a specific requirement that the fan buying the ticket must be told what the terms and conditions of the transfer of that seat to them are. Many sporting events do not allow seats to be transferred above face value or without prior approval. As the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, pointed out, we are talking about a £1 billion worldwide “business”. I hope that the Minister will review carefully the case for this amendment, work with those Peers and sporting organisations who have called for change and consider whether this amendment or a revised version of it is the right approach, ahead of Report and Third Reading in this House.