Sale of Tickets (Sporting and Cultural Events) Bill

Debate between Graham P Jones and Sharon Hodgson

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.