Waterson Review

Lord Addington Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Addington]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government when their response to the Waterson review of secondary ticketing will be published.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Baroness Neville-Rolfe) (Con)]

Professor Michael Waterson’s independent report on consumer protection measures applying to online secondary ticketing makes a number of recommendations which deserve to be fully considered by all those concerned with ticketing, live entertainment and law enforcement. The new Government are taking time to look very closely at the recommendations and will publish a response in due course.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

I thank the Minister for that response. What would be her response to somebody who discovers that they have purchased the wrong ticket, when the Government have yet to implement the Act in question?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

The Act has of course come into force and there have been prosecutions on ticketing, although they are often made through fraud law rather than consumer law. The advice I would give to consumers is to get in touch with the excellent Citizens Advice service. If they have evidence of fraud they should contact Action Fraud, and there is also the possibility of trading standards taking action. One of Professor Waterson’s recommendations is that more work should be done on that.