Consumer Rights Bill

Clive Efford Excerpts

Monday 12th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

No, it is not. Let us be clear that a lot of these organisations are quite capable of looking after themselves and, if they put their minds to it, of achieving the aims they say they want to achieve. That applies whether we are talking about the Harvey Goldsmiths of this world, the Rugby Football Union or the England and Wales Cricket Board. These organisations put forward their arguments about wanting to help the grass roots of sport and so on, but if they really wanted to do that, they could do so in many ways without going down the road of trying to interfere in the free market.

Let us be clear about how much personal information will have to be placed on the internet for everyone to see under the regulations that have been passed by the other place. The seller has to provide details of

“(a) the face value of the ticket;

(b) any age or other restrictions on the user of the ticket;

(c) the designated location of the ticket including the stand, the block, the row and the seat number of the ticket, where applicable; and

(d) the ticket booking identification or reference number.”

That information could easily be used by criminals and those who are less scrupulous in order to ring up the vendor of the ticket and arrange for the ticket to be sent to an alternative address. It could also be used to set up an alternative listing, as so much information is being provided.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

The information that the hon. Gentleman has just read out would surely be available at the point of sale, so if anyone wanted to use it in the way he is suggesting, they would merely need to go on the website originally offering the tickets or ring up the venue in order to get it. It is at the point of resale in the secondary ticketing market that we are asking for that same information to be made available. What can be wrong with that?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. He has just described one way in which these sporting bodies can control the allocation of tickets. I am sure that there are many other ways. Much has been said about the use of botnets and modern technology to scoop up tickets.

I have heard nothing about how big businesses, which run these venues, have tried to use technology to deal with the problem—if they think it is a problem. I put it to the Chamber that they do not think it is a problem, as they are getting the money that they expected to get. They do not see it as a problem and the consumers do not see it as a problem. The reason why I have not been inundated with complaints is that people are, by and large, happy with the system. They know that tickets for popular events will probably be sold at a price that is greater than that for which they were originally sold. If people are lucky enough to get a ticket in the first allocation, that is exactly how they regard themselves—lucky. They know that they have got a valuable commodity, in just the same way as someone who acquires any other article that goes up in value thinks themselves lucky. Someone may buy something for a fiver at a car boot sale on a Sunday morning, and find out a few months or years later, when they take it on “Antiques Roadshow”, that it is worth 10, 100 or 1,000 times more than they paid. That is how the free market works.

It does not matter how much we try to legislate or to cap ticket prices, the fact is that ultimately the free market will out: tickets will change hands, whether through an organised website or on the black market outside stadiums and venues, for whatever someone else is prepared to pay for them.

[Clive Efford]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) for her campaign on secondary ticketing and the need to protect consumers, and to the hon. Member for Hove (Mike Weatherley) for his consistency on this issue and, as someone who comes from the entertainment industry, for his very well-informed speech.

I must also pay tribute to Statler and Waldorf at the back of the Government Benches—if it was not unparliamentary, I would suggest that the hon. Members for Shipley (Philip Davies) and for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) were a couple of muppets. My question for them is: what kind of market would object to consumers being fully informed about a commodity at the time of purchase? Even if we applied the principles of the free market, we would not want to restrict information to consumers when they buy products.

The hon. Member for Shipley used the example of selling houses, but we would not sell someone a house without letting them look around it or without giving them all its specifications. Similarly, we would not sell someone a car saying, “We’ll only let you look at its left side,” or “We won’t let you look inside”; we have to give people all the information. There cannot be any objection to ensuring that consumers are fully informed.

The hon. Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen) intervened to ask about the resale of rugby tickets. He said that if tickets allocated within the rugby family were offered for resale on the secondary market, the rugby club found doing so would be banned from receiving any future allocation. The RFU went to court to obtain the information it needed in order to regulate the sale of tickets in exactly that way. I therefore agree that such rules should apply, but rugby needs such information to make its own regulations stick. In seemingly agreeing with his colleague, the hon. Member for Bury North, the hon. Member for North West Leicestershire is actually agreeing with us.

The Olympics restricted the resale of tickets, which had to go back through the arrangements set up by London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games and be resold by Ticketmaster at face value. In the early stages, people complained about the fact that there were a lot of empty seats, but such tickets had to be recycled to ensure there was an atmosphere in the stadium. The process of making sure that the tickets went to family members or genuine fans successfully and memorably created a unique atmosphere within the Olympic stadium. That is remembered, particularly by the athletes who performed there, because we made sure that such tickets were made available at face value to genuine fans.

The RFU wanted to do exactly the same with its tickets for this year’s rugby world cup, but even before the tickets were made available, they could be bought for several thousands of pounds on secondary ticketing websites. The cheapest child’s ticket is £7 and the most expensive ticket is £700, but I saw—I will not name the website, because there are lots of them and it is wrong to single out one of them—five tickets on sale for £8,000 each, with a £3,000 handling charge.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Bridgen]

I want to take the hon. Gentleman back to his point about the website selling tickets for £8,000 with a £3,000 handling charge. Did it actually sell any tickets at that price, and if so, is he concerned or sorry for the people who decided to pay £11,000 for a ticket of their own free will and does he believe that they need to be protected?

[Clive Efford]

If they can afford £8,000 for a ticket, I do not think they need my sympathy. The point is that we put pressure on people such as the organisers of the rugby world cup to make tickets affordable through a progressive ticketing policy so that people who genuinely love the sport but might not have the funds to pay that price for the ticket can go to the games.

[Andrew Bridgen]

rose—

[Clive Efford]

I am answering the hon. Gentleman’s point and he can come back to me on it in a minute, although I am going to shut up quite soon.

Some of the people purchasing these tickets are clearly involved in criminal gangs, as shown in the report on Operation Podium from the Metropolitan police. That report was given to the Government and they were warned that it was not just a question of people making a few bob on the secondary ticketing market. The people who set up these botnets to swamp the market when tickets are first offered for sale are often involved in criminal gangs associated with drugs and firearms. The Metropolitan police have raised serious concerns about this and we ignore them at our peril. What kind of free market wants to perpetuate such activity? I am interested in that.

[Mr Redwood]

We have heard a lot about the £500 tickets to go to a particular day of the Lord’s test against Australia, but as a cricket lover who wants more people to be able to go to test matches does the hon. Gentleman agree that an awful lot of tickets are on offer from the original vendor at very sensible prices for Headingley, Durham, Old Trafford and so on and that people could go to those?

[Clive Efford]

I am delighted that those tickets are on sale at very sensible prices, which is why I am in the Chamber to support the ECB, the RFU, the FA and others in asking for the sensible ticketing policies they apply to be protected. All they are asking is to have the information available when a ticket is offered for resale so that they can see whether that ticket is being sold according to the original terms and conditions for the sale. We should not be allowing organised gangs to exploit the consumer by hoovering up these tickets and forcing people to pay much higher prices on the secondary ticketing market.

[Andrew Bridgen]

To return to the question of the RFU, it is well known by the local grass-roots rugby clubs that these tickets are on allocation and should not be resold at a higher value. All it needs to say on the ticket is, “If this ticket is resold at a higher value, ring this number.” Everyone will then know that the club will not get an allocation for three or five years.

[Clive Efford]

The point is that the governing body of the sport wants that information so that it can police it. It went to court to try to get the information, so we should be saying that it is not unreasonable for the information available at the original time of purchase of the tickets to be made available when the tickets are being resold—

[Andrew Bridgen]

rose—

[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.