Canterbury City Council Bill

Debate between Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Philip Davies

Wednesday 6th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I am very grateful, Mr Deputy Speaker. That is the first time any hon. Member in my seven or eight years in the House has ever said or indicated that they want to hear a little more from me. It certainly has been a red letter day for me, too. I am flattered, Mr Deputy Speaker.

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch makes a good point. It would be helpful to hear from the Minister exactly what is in the Government’s mind. Perhaps she will explain why the amendment should be supported and why the wording should apply to the Canterbury City Council Bill but not to the Reading Borough Council Bill.

Perhaps the Minister will also tell us what the Government’s view is of the principle of touting tickets and so on. The Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport published a report on ticket touting in 2008. I am lucky enough to serve on that Committee, so it is a subject close to my heart. People will have spotted that what is striking about that report is the date—it came out in the middle of the discussions on the Bill. I do not know whether their lordships were influenced in any way by the recommendations of the Committee—I very much hope they were; it was an excellent report, so that may well be the case—or whether they were influenced by the Bill’s principles, but hon. Members may wish to bear in mind the fact that this is a very strange clause in the sense that it is called “Touting”, and that is what is referred to throughout the clause.

The first recommendation of the Select Committee’s report—of course, I will not go through all the recommendations, but it is wise to highlight some of the pertinent ones—states:

“It is important to bear in mind that the term ‘touting’ has very different meanings to different people”.

When we have a Bill that refers to “touting” as if we all know what touting is, hon. Members should bear in mind that comment by the Committee.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I had always understood that the term “touting” usually related to tickets for sporting events. Could my hon. Friend explain how the word covers that use, as well as the use in the Bill?

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and I will just say in passing that I very much agreed with his earlier intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch when he said that these matters are best dealt with at a national level. We are either in favour of ticket touting or we are not, and the same rules should apply across the country. Like my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), I think that many people will believe that touting relates mainly to sporting events, or perhaps even big music events, which is maybe one of the reasons why it is in, for example, the Reading Bill in the first place, as it has a big music festival.

My hon. Friend will be interested to know that clause 11(2) talks about affecting

“Any person who, in a place designated under this section”—

I mentioned briefly about the areas that apply—

“importunes any person by touting for a hotel, lodging house, restaurant or other place of refreshment, for a shop, for a theatre or nightclub or other place of amusement or recreation, or for a boat or other conveyance shall be guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale.”

Straight away, my hon. Friend will appreciate that this goes far beyond what he and many other people might think of it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful for that guidance. It has saved me from having to deal with that particular intervention

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

Does my hon. Friend think that Mr Deputy Speaker’s ruling applies only to Conservative leaflets, or will it apply to Labour leaflets as well?

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

As ever, my hon. Friend makes a good point. He is renowned in the House for defending individual freedom. Of course, if people wish to be encouraged into a place, that is a matter for their free choice, but if people go too far, they would be breaking the law. Those practices may well lead people to want to stop touting altogether.

Some people think that touting acts against the interests of the general public. This brings us to the crux of the argument about whether in principle we should find touting acceptable or unacceptable, as well as back to the point my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds made about the touting of tickets for sporting events. Touts mop up tickets for extremely popular events at a low price or at face value and sell them on at an inflated price to the general public who could not get their hands on them because the touts were buying up all the stock. In effect, the general public—the fan or the person who genuinely wants to go—end up having to pay above the odds for their tickets, which people find unsavoury. The Select Committee took a great deal of evidence on that. Indeed, there has been a great deal of concern about this issue and interest in it.

As it happens, it was not just the Select Committee that looked into the issue. The Office of Fair Trading has also investigated whether ticket touting should be stopped because it acts against the interests of the consumer. After many months of inquiry, the Office of Fair Trading found—this was consistent with the evidence it gave us during our inquiry—that, on the whole, touting acts in the best interests of the consumer, and it does so on a number of levels. In many cases, someone who has bought a ticket for an event that they genuinely hope to go to, but who finds that for some reason they cannot go, will be refused a refund by those who sold them the ticket because it is non-returnable. That person is left with a ticket—it could be an expensive ticket—that they cannot do anything with. What are they expected to do? Their only hope is what is known as the secondary market, which is what is known colloquially as touting. Indeed, I am rather surprised that clause 11 is entitled “Touting”. I think that “Secondary market” would probably be a fairer name.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

As I have listened to this debate my understanding of the word “touting” has been considerably expanded. I want to test what it means in the context of this Bill. If I were a pedlar in Canterbury and I started distributing leaflets on people’s doorsteps, would I be caught by this Bill for touting?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend asks a fair question. In effect, he stumbles—whether intentionally or not—on to quite an interesting point about this Bill. In many respects, this part of the Bill has nothing to do with pedlars, because it need not be a pedlar who is selling the tickets. The term “pedlar” has a legal definition—it refers to someone who needs a licence—whereas the Bill as it stands, if Lords amendment C15 was not accepted, would apply to anybody, whether a pedlar or not.

Use of the Chamber (United Kingdom Youth Parliament)

Debate between Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Philip Davies

Tuesday 20th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I am certain that MYPs who are avidly watching tonight will have been impressed by my hon. Friend’s intervention, and that he has enhanced their opinion of the House. However, I hope he is not suggesting that we should not debate this motion. If he thinks that the debate should not be till any hour, I presume that he did not vote for previous the motion. The Government could have tabled a motion to limit the debate so that it could last only an hour, an hour and a half, two hours or three hours, but they did not do so. It appears—I am sure he will correct me if I am wrong—that he voted for the debate lasting till any hour. Given that, I am sure that he will happily live with the consequences. Perhaps in future he will not listen so avidly to the Whips when they tell him how to vote. He may be signally disappointed again in the future.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)]

I have listened carefully to my hon. Friend’s concise speech for nearly an hour and he has taken a fair few interventions. He has made two germane arguments. The first is that this gathering could take place anywhere other than in this Chamber and, second, that it sets a precedent. If it does set a precedent, we will have to have another debate and a full chance to debate it. I would be grateful if he would now address himself to the actual harm that he sees in allowing the members of the Youth Parliament to debate in this place when the Chamber is not being used for the legitimate business of this House.

[Philip Davies]

The point is that I am a Conservative—as is my hon. Friend—and the principle of Conservatism is embodied in the saying, “If it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change.” As a Conservative, I believe that the onus is on those who propose change to make the case for that change. The case for no change does not need to be made. The point that I am making in my contribution—if I am allowed to get on with it—is that the case for change is a poor one. All of the arguments that have been given are spurious and do not stand up to much scrutiny. I urge my hon. Friend to ask other people to make the case for change, because they have not done so thus far.

We were told earlier that allowing members of the Youth Parliament to sit here will inspire them to get involved in politics. That is one of the arguments that was made last time. It was said that we must allow the UK Youth Parliament to sit here, because if we do so they will be inspired and become interested in politics. That is a curious argument because, by definition, those people who are members of the Youth Parliament are already interested in politics. That is why they are there. If our motivation is to try to inspire more young people to get involved in politics, we should be asking those young people who are not members of the Youth Parliament to come and have a debate here, because that might encourage them to get involved in the Youth Parliament. Why would we want to limit the opportunity to those members of the Youth Parliament who are already interested in politics?