Consumer Rights Bill

John Robertson Excerpts

Monday 12th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mike Weatherley]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I was just trying to point out that we ask for transparency in almost every other aspect of our society, and we should be asking for it on tickets. We are only asking for the name, the seat location and so on to be given. I think I have made that point crystal clear.

It should also be noted that the police are generally supportive of the suggested changes to the secondary ticketing markets. Ticketing legislation was recommended in the final report from Operation Podium, the Metropolitan police unit set up to monitor crime around the Olympic games. The police said the Government should intervene in the ticketing market because, among other things, certain aspects of it are funding criminal activity. We cannot argue against that; the police are saying it.

There is one more thing: many ticketing companies argue that should a ticket be invalid, counterfeit or fraudulent, a full refund will be given. We heard that earlier. That is very laudable, but it does not address the full problem. Refunding the price of a ticket will not make up for the travel expenses and accommodation costs of going to the concert, show or event; nor will it make up for the time spent acquiring the ticket.

Refunds look like a fair deal on paper, but even though the buyer will get their money back, the process actually sets up losses across the board. The seller of the ticket does not make any money, the company loses money by having to pay a refund and the buyer does not get the satisfaction of going to the event. The buyer is deprived of the experience that he or she worked hard for and spent money to secure. With the proposed transparent system, that would not be the case.

There is another quirk to the existing system that affects not only the artists but the taxpayer. Some venues, such as the National Theatre and the Donmar Warehouse, are subsidised by the state in order to ensure that opportunities to see productions are available to the widest possible audience. When ticket prices are vastly inflated—as in one case, from £20 to more than £2,000 for a Shakespeare production at the Donmar Warehouse—not only are potential purchasers priced out of the market but the Government’s programme of subsidising the arts is undermined and money that could be ploughed back into new productions is lost. Why would we, as taxpayers, want to subsidise theatre to make it more available to people while at the same time allowing others to make £2,000 on a ticket? That is absolutely bonkers.

The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has told me that he supports the right of ticket providers to have terms and conditions and for those terms and conditions to be respected, and that any buyer should be aware of and adhere to them. Others who have spoken today have said that there should be terms and conditions, and that they should be respected, just as any other contractual arrangement is respected. That is how purchasing works. If I go on a train, I buy a ticket that is not transferrable. That applies in many other areas of society, too, so it seems bizarre that it does not apply to ticketing. These measures would enable those terms and conditions to be respected, and the Secretary of State should therefore fully support the amendment. I find it bizarre that he does not.

What we are asking for would give artists and venues the opportunity to regain control of ticket pricing and of the terms and conditions that they put on tickets. This would ensure that genuine fans had access to the events they wanted to attend. It would also hinder the ability of those using new methods of mass ticket-buying to artificially inflate the market in such a way as to creative negative impacts on the UK’s creative and sporting industries. If a band, artist or promoter wants to sell tickets at an inflated price, they are absolutely at liberty to use the secondary market to do so, but our proposals would mean that they would need to print on the ticket the fact that they had done so. I see nothing wrong with that. If we can make a small step in supporting the artists and fans, as we can with these amendments, we will have taken a very large step forward.

[John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my fellow co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on music, the hon. Member for Hove (Mike Weatherley), and it will be difficult to follow such an excellent speech. I agree with every point he made. I shall make my contribution a little more personal.

I got involved in ticket touting—in the sense of complaining about it, not actually doing it—many years ago. I became an MP 14 years ago and about a year later, Take That got back together. My three daughters were desperate to get tickets to see them, but I am sad to say that they did not, although they have seen the band since. After a lot of shouting and ear-bashing and being told that I should do something about the problem because I was an MP, I looked into the situation and found it to be nearly as bad as it is today. Things were not so technically advanced back then, but they were certainly shaping up that way.

[Mrs Hodgson]

It was tickets for the Take That reunion tour that garnered my interest in this topic. I want to place on the record my gratitude to my hon. Friend for the leadership that he showed on this issue before anyone else in the House did. Others have picked up the reins now that he has led the way in getting us to where we are today.

[John Robertson]

I think my hon. Friend might be over-egging the pudding a bit, but I am always grateful when people recognise that someone has done something, particularly in this place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I had exactly the same experience, albeit not with Foo Fighters. I was trying to get tickets for the Jesus and Mary Chain recently, and there seemed to be a lot of sites advertising the tickets as being available. Those sites lure us in, but eventually we get transferred to other sites. By that time, we have wasted a huge amount of time and end up buying the more expensive tickets. Sometimes we try to hunt for the original tickets, but I suspect that that offer no longer exists by that stage.

[John Robertson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

This is not a free market; it is what I call a con market. I believe in a fair market. I believe that people should be treated fairly and given a chance to buy something at the advertised price. If 100,000 people want to go to a concert and they get to the tickets before I do, that is fine, as long as there are really 100,000 people. I do not expect the machines that the hon. Member for Hove mentioned to buy up all those tickets in a matter of seconds so that I cannot get one. That is not a free market, and it is certainly not a fair one.

The previous Labour Government, with whom I had lots of arguments, could not quite see this my way. I hope that the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson), will listen to these points, because she now has a chance to do something that my Government never did—put the situation right. Things are getting worse and as technology becomes more advanced, people use it for the wrong ends. They used it to prevent my kids from getting those Take That tickets all those years ago—my kids are still looking for those tickets, even though they are parents themselves now—and they are preventing me from getting the tickets I want.

We just want to be treated fairly. I do not mind paying the going rate of £68 or whatever, but I do mind someone buying up 100,000 tickets at £68 each and then selling them for £100 each. That is not right, and it should be against the law—it is taking ticket touting to an extreme. I am not talking about the happy chappie who sells tickets for a game of football before the match, although that used to upset me as well. We cannot allow people to do this on a large scale.

We can allow someone who has bought a ticket to pass it on to a family member or a friend, and I do not have a problem with them making a profit on it, provided it is not too much. However, I do have a problem with the guy with £500 getting ripped off by the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) with his Lord’s ticket. Why anybody would want to pay that kind of money to watch a game of cricket I do not know! Having said that, if someone really wanted to see the event, I can understand them paying it, but I do not understand why some people should be able to corner the market and then resell tickets to others at a vast profit. That undermines our music industry. At the end of the day, the issue comes back to the people who are trying to give us a service and the benefit of their life’s work.

[Nigel Adams]

Let me take the hon. Gentleman back to the discussions about the ticket from Lord’s. I am torn on this issue: I am sympathetic to the amendments, but I am also sympathetic to some of the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley. If someone is prepared to, and can afford to, pay £500 a ticket to go to the test match, that is their choice. However, that individual should be able to find out and know where that ticket is located—where in the ground they are going to be sat—and whether or not it is legitimate. That is where the transparency angle of these amendments is correct.

[John Robertson]

Therein lies a problem, because sometimes the tickets being sold are not even proper tickets—someone might just have made a very good copy. The person with the £500 would be taking that chance. I do not believe that is right—that is probably why the hon. Gentleman is sat on the other side of the Chamber and I am sat here. If the ticket says £25, £60 or £100—whatever the figure is—I expect to pay that. I do not have a problem if I have to pay a wee bit extra, but I would not be paying £500 or £1,000. The worst case I ever heard of was when two tickets for Wimbledon finals day, which were for disabled people, were being sold on eBay for £2,000 each, and the buyer had to buy the pair. That is not right, and I am talking about only a couple of tickets.

[Jenny Chapman]

Would my hon. Friend like to say something about venues? I understand that millions of pounds are being taken out of the music industry, in particular. I support small venues in my constituency. They really do struggle. I do not mind paying top dollar for a ticket for a band I want to see, but I want to know that that money goes to the person who bought the ticket at a fair price, the venue or the artist.

[John Robertson]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I like to think that the small venues are for new bands—people who are up and coming and do not have a great following. I have bought a ticket to see AC/DC at Hampden Park, which I had no problem doing because it holds 50,000 people. That was easy, but there is a genuine problem in respect of the small venues. We have a new venue in Glasgow called the Hydro, which holds 13,000 people. I have been there and it is fantastic, but even there, depending on who is coming, the ticket touts are out selling the tickets.

[Pete Wishart]

The hon. Gentleman is making a fine speech and covering a range of new issues. One thing we have not thought about is that because the Government have failed to do anything about this, it has been left to the big festivals such as Glastonbury and T in the Park to try to put in place some sort of inventive, creative measure to protect their own audience. Why should it be left up to large festivals to deal with the problem? Surely it is the Government’s responsibility to protect fans.

[John Robertson]

The hon. Gentleman is right about that. I have met various promoters for T in the Park and they have done their level best to try to stop the touts, but even they admit that they cannot do it completely. If we make this illegal, that puts a different front on it. If we tell everybody it is illegal to do something and someone does it, they know it is illegal. If we do not tell them it is illegal, they will continue to do it. As we have already said, they will continue to use all the new technologies that are coming online and they will rip people off. There will be people who are so desperate to buy a ticket to see somebody that they will pay these prices, and as long as somebody is willing to pay them, the problem will continue and prices will keep increasing.

[Mr Redwood]

The hon. Gentleman is right that some things should be illegal, but I can reassure him that where someone creates an artificial ticket and it is not a proper ticket, that is either fraud or theft. We have already made that an illegal situation.

[John Robertson]

I appreciate what the right hon. Gentleman is saying, but what is the difference between that person making a forgery and other people having a machine that can buy up 100,000 tickets for a venue? Is that not illegal? Is it not outrageous? Would you not want to do something about it? I am not talking about you, Mr Speaker; I am talking about the right hon. Gentleman.

I feel very strongly about this issue, as you can probably tell, Mr Speaker. Sometimes it is difficult to put things into words, but as politicians and Members of Parliament we should be putting our constituents first, not big business. We should not be hindering big business, but we should not be putting it before our constituents. Some in the Chamber tonight would rather put big business before their constituents.

[Mr Nuttall]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (John Robertson). He makes his points passionately, but I disagree with them all. I am unashamedly on the side of the free market on this one. The whole problem with the Lords amendment is that it simply strikes at the heart of the free market—no more, no less. This is not really an issue about consumer protection, although it is dressed up as that—it is about the free market. If this measure were passed, it is likely to have the consequence—I accept this might be unintended —of providing less protection for the consumer.