Sale of Tickets (Sporting and Cultural Events) Bill

Graham P Jones Excerpts

Friday 21st January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Hodgson]

My Bill would not stop them from being able to resell a ticket. My Bill would allow them to resell that ticket if they have genuinely bought it and genuinely cannot go to that gig or other event, and it would even allow them to resell it with a 10% mark-up for their trouble.

To bring my speech to a conclusion, my Bill sets out a blueprint for addressing the pernicious issue of ticket resale.

[Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mrs Hodgson]

I would love to give way to my hon. Friend.

[Graham Jones]

I have wanted to make the following point for quite a while. There is a tax revenue issue in respect of secondary selling that needs to be addressed. A lot of the people concerned are operating in the black economy, making substantial amounts of money. The secondary market needs to be dealt with; we need to do something about it. Some of these people can be very friendly, but they are making an awful lot of money, and I make the assumption that certainly those who sell tickets outside venues do not pay any tax; rather, they are simply operating for themselves, cash in hand.

[Mrs Hodgson]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point. I did not address it at length, although I did touch on the fact that the Exchequer was not receiving any revenue from this billion-pound industry, apart from a small amount of VAT that some of the exchange sites levy. Every working person in the country has to pay tax through Pay-as-you-earn, but these touts, some of whom are making huge sums of money, are certainly not paying any of it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Hodgson]

I thank the Minister for that clarification. If the IOC made that stipulation, it will have been for very good reasons. I sincerely hope that Members and the Government will consider those reasons, because they are as valid for the IOC as they are for this great country of ours.

We should remove the financial incentive that drives the activities of the major operators and give the police a way to go after those whom they suspect are involved in other criminality. The Bill is sufficiently light touch, I believe, not to harm any promoter, artist or other investor who does not wish their event to be covered. If they do not opt in to the scheme, or if they come to a commercial arrangement with a secondary retailer, the fans will know that that is an active decision. Nobody will be forced to opt in and have such regulation covering an event. If a commercial arrangement with a secondary retailer were made, at least some of the mark-up would go back to the artists or the sport.

[Graham Jones]

When it says on a ticket that it is not transferrable, can that be enforced in law? If that is the case, are the Conservative Members who have spoken encouraging people to break the law? The tickets that I buy pretty much always say, “This is not transferable.” Can my hon. Friend clarify?

[Mrs Hodgson]

As far as I am aware, tickets for the major charity events all have on them “not to be resold” or “not for resale”. Some will say that they are non-transferable. Yes, such people probably are breaking the law—certainly in the case of charity tickets—but there is no mechanism for bringing them to book.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Weatherley]

I have spoken to various football authorities about this, and the reason they allow the selling on of season tickets is that they recognise that people must have a mechanism for reselling if they cannot go to a match. However, the football authorities would not want someone to sell their season ticket for a particular match at 10 times its value. I happen to be going to a Chelsea-Manchester United match later in the season, but I have not paid 10 times the value of that ticket: I have been given it by a season ticket holder who cannot make the match. That is entirely proper.

[Graham Jones]

The hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) raised the security issue, and I am somewhat confused by the way he contradicts himself. Surely, with football, there is a problem with ticket touting allowing people with football banning orders to access a match moments before it starts or while it is going on. However, that point is contrary to the one he made about the restraint of trade, which he says should not be allowed. Does the hon. Member for Hove (Mike Weatherley) agree that it is important to have some control over touting? When considering access to football grounds and the potential for violence, it is important that touting is legislated against.

[Mike Weatherley]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point. It is entirely accurate to say that the selling on of football tickets is problematic because of the segregation of supporters. That is well recognised by all concerned and is just one reason why the promoters of any event might want to restrict to whom tickets are being sold. There are other reasons, and I shall give a good example of one that relates to Conservative Members in a moment.

An hon. Member explained to me that that restriction would not apply to house building—that a developer who builds houses should be free to sell to people, and those people should be free to sell on again. Of course that is true, but if, for charitable reasons, the developer wants five of those houses to go to Cancer Research nurses, they are quite within their rights to say, “We will only sell those on in future to Cancer Research nurses” and restrict the free market into the future as to where those houses go. I see that as no different from the owner—the creative industry person who creates the product—deciding what they want to do with their product into the future. It is essential, therefore, that the owner of the skill or creative talent, or supplier, has a say in who the end user is—but not in all situations. The Bill does not cover every event, and the promoter or band who wish to cover their event have to so designate it.

It is impossible to restrict onward selling without having a mechanism for refund, and the Bill not only allows for a refund but allows on-sale at a premium, be that 10% or double face value or whatever has been decided in the final stages. I am going to a concert tonight—The Cult at Hammersmith Apollo—and my colleague has a spare ticket. He is going to on-sell that ticket at face value, and he should be able to do so. I see no reason why, in that situation, he should not. There are no crowd control or exploitation issues.

However, our discussion relates to those ticket agents that advertise sporting or music events later in the year—sometimes before tickets are even on sale—at 10 times face value. They buy in their hundreds and sell on at huge profits. It is possible to buy Chelsea tickets for later in the season right now, although they are not on sale—and incidentally, as everyone knows, the premier league has a rule on selling at face value only. That is a clear example where the free market for ticket sales is not advantageous. We have mentioned the Olympic games; a non-profit clause is enshrined in its arrangements as well.

There are other cases where the issuer reserves the right for tickets to be non-transferable—train and plane tickets, for example. I expect that when hon. Members sell tickets for a fundraising dinner, they reserve the right to object to a replacement being issued. Can they imagine tickets for the forthcoming Conservative ball, which are £400 each to raise funds for the party, being bought up by touts and sold on at £1,000 to lobbyists, or others, whom they may not necessarily want in their midst? Of course not. The point is that the person giving the function restricts the number of tickets, and insists on the person buying attending or getting permission to transfer. It is right and proper that the person providing the event has some say in that.

On the face of it, ticket touts provide a free-market service, but scratch a little deeper, and for some events that is a misguided and counter-productive service. The touts are exploiting a market abnormality to the detriment of the wishes of those who put on the event.

The proposals in the Bill are fair, in that selling at a small premium is allowed and not all events are covered. Only those wishing to be bound by the rules need apply. If the artist is happy for their tickets to be sold at a premium, that is fine. I slightly disagree with the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West, who said that Madonna would sell at a premium on an auction. I think it right and proper that she be allowed to do so; that is a free-market thing, and she has control of her product to do what she wants with it, but if she has decided that she wants to sell it at a certain price, that should be respected by the copyright owner.