Consumer Rights Bill

Ben Gummer Excerpts

Monday 12th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Clive Efford]

I am not going to give way again, because I want to end my remarks.

I have one question for the Minister before I sit down. She wrote on 8 January to the Trading Standards Institute and to the Society of Chief Officers of Trading Standards in Scotland. Our argument is clearly getting through, because she has raised concerns about consumer protection and has asked for the organisations’ advice. When she responds, will she say whether she has had that advice? We have been debating the issue for a very long time and for the Minister to be writing on 8 January to find out this information is a little like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, but we still have time, because the Bill will obviously go back to the Lords where there will be an opportunity for common sense to prevail with the Government, even if they will not concede the point tonight. I hope that the Minister can tell us how she got on with her letter.

[Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)]

I came late to this debate and picked up on some interesting arguments being put by Members on both sides of the House. At first glance, my one concern about the amendments is that they do not seem to address some of the valid points about robots that have been raised by Members on both sides. I am sure that the Minister will want to address that point when she answers the debate.

One point that has not been raised about the nature of the free market and how it operates for secondary ticketing is that there is not an absolute property right to a ticket when it is sold, because it is not like any other good. The hon. Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) mentioned second-hand cars, which someone might buy and then sell at a later date, but of course the ticket is merely a promise to provide a service or a piece of entertainment in a given period of time, and therefore the original vendor must retain some sort of property right. If the original vendor wishes to sell a ticket to someone at one price, perhaps because they are a certain age, come from a particular area or belong to a particular club, that vendor might still have some property rights that enable them to enforce the terms of that sale. I am sure that the Minister will want to address that issue as it pertains to the secondary market, because those people who sell tickets should be able to have some control at some point, if they wish, over who they sell those tickets to.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

It has been a year since we started to scrutinise the Bill, time during which much has changed, not least the Minister leading on it. As she can tell from today’s debate, she missed many treats during our debates, although I am not sure whether a repeat performance of the arguments made by the hon. Members for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) and for Shipley (Philip Davies) was what she intended to generate.

It has been a long journey and I pay tribute to all those Members who have sought to scrutinise and improve the legislation. Many debates have taken place to meet the test we set, as this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create a nation that is on top of its rights and can play a full and active part in the market in both the public and private sectors. Labour certainly recognises that helping people to make the most of their money is vital in a country that is drowning in personal debt—£1.43 trillion of it. Little wonder that StepChange Debt Charity says that six out of 10 people in this country believe that politicians must do more in the next five years to help them stay out of financial difficulty. Making sure that they do not get ripped off should therefore be absolutely paramount in the work we do and in this Bill.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Hove (Mike Weatherley) and my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) for tabling the amendment and for their perseverance on ticket touting, which is a clear example of people being ripped off. I also want to pay tribute to the hon. Members for Bury North and for Shipley for their persistence in making their arguments and possibly making Friedrich Hayek spin in his grave through their interpretation of a free market. Let me deal with their arguments, because I think we will have to come back to them otherwise.

Few other markets would be characterised as free in which a limited number of sellers hoard a product, buying it up in bulk using underhand methods and then colluding to sell at hyped prices. Just because this is happening on the internet does not make it any different. One of the golden rules of the free market is that people should deal with each other honestly and require honesty in return, and that is clearly not what is happening in this industry. It is clearly not a free market. I am also delighted that both hon. Gentlemen outed themselves as fans of St Trinian’s, because that can be the only explanation of why they believe that this is about spivs in pork-pie hats looking at the types of shoes people are wearing rather than a billion-pound ticket-touting industry that is damaging the pockets of fans of sport and music.

One reason we support the amendment tabled by the all-party group on ticket abuse and reject the Government’s call to reject the cross-party call from the Lords to address this issue is that we do not agree with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport that this is classic entrepreneurship, precisely because we know that it is not an open market. We know that botnets are hoovering up tickets the second they go on sale. Fans simply do not stand a chance.

Some estimates put the figure at 60% of tickets being taken up in this way. One expert looking at the sporting industry in the past year has identified around 30% of tickets being bought up in this way, so fans cannot click fast enough to beat the botnets. The Secretary of State challenged my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West and said:

“The interests that the hon. Lady is representing are probably those of the chattering middle classes and champagne socialists”—

I noted that the hon. Member for Shipley called me a socialist earlier; I have amended my Twitter biography accordingly, with his praise—

“who have no interest in helping the common working man earn a decent living by acting as a middleman in the sale of a proper service.”—[Official Report, 21 January 2011; Vol. 521, c. 1187.]

This is no Flash Harry and this is no decent living.