Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 7th February 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Leong, who gave an excellent introduction to Amendment 196, which I signed and very much support. All the amendments in this group are of a piece; we are very much on the same page. This arises from the fact that, despite a series of very long-running investigations—we had the Waterson report, which ran to 225 pages, back in 2016 and the Secondary Ticketing report, which the noble Lord, Lord Leong, mentioned—it is widely recognised that these platforms continue to benefit from large-scale ticket touts, many of whom acquire tickets through unlawful means.

I have not buried my head in the sand. I have had conversations with some of the secondary ticket sellers, but I am unconvinced by the story they tell. I am very grateful to FanFair Alliance, which has campaigned on this issue for many years, and I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, and Sharon Hodgson MP, who has been a tower of strength in her all-party group on this subject over many years. It is clear, as FanFair Alliance has uncovered, that there is substantial evidence of speculative listings on secondary websites, where sellers list hundreds and even thousands of tickets they do not possess. You have only to look at one or two headlines, such as:

“Viagogo accused of listing non-existent tickets on behalf of seller linked to firm”.


A 2022 report by ITV detailed how the vast majority of UK festival tickets listed on the same site were fraudulently advertised by just three people. We have some egregious behaviour there. These three sellers are still actively trading on that website.

Meanwhile, in March 2023, reporters for BBC Radio 4’s “You and Yours” highlighted how a new generation of touts are exploiting ticket systems with increasingly sophisticated software and bots. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, is conscious of all this. It is one of the issues that we have failed to tackle over the years.

As the noble Lord, Lord Leong, mentioned, the CMA published a series of recommendations in August 2021 that aimed to strengthen existing laws around ticket resale in order to protect consumers, including a ban on platforms allowing resellers to sell more tickets for an event than they can legally buy from the primary market and ensuring that platforms are fully responsible for incorrect information about tickets that are listed for sale on their websites. Regrettably, BEIS—actually, in May 2023 it was probably the Department for Business and Trade; it is hard to keep up with these changes in department names—opted to prioritise the

“power of competitive markets to give consumers choice and flexibility”.

That is not the same as consumer protection. As the noble Lord, Lord Leong, said, it is out of tune with public opinion in that respect.

Compounding this decision, it remains a source of immense frustration that Google and YouTube continue to permit ticket touting websites to buy themselves to the top of search results, signposting fans away from official sources of tickets. As a result, FanFair Alliance believes that it is now imperative for the UK to adopt legislation similar to that of many other countries—France, Italy, Belgium, Japan and Australia—outlawing the resale of tickets for profit while ensuring that customers who can no longer attend an event are provided with viable services to resell at the price that they paid or less. We agree.

The prime example of this is on our doorstep. In Ireland, a comprehensive piece of legislation to ban ticket-touting was introduced in 2021. Dublin shows for artists including Taylor Swift, Coldplay and Arctic Monkeys appear to be delisted by US-owned websites such as viagogo and StubHub as a result of this legislation.

A powerful and compelling case is being made for Amendment 196. I hope for this amendment. The third amendment, Amendment 198, ties some of this together. Given the situation that I have outlined and the situation that the Competition and Markets Authority has been in—its recommendations still have not been taken on board—we need a clause that would mandate the Secretary of State to submit an annual report to Parliament on the secondary ticketing market, specifically evaluating the adequacy of consumer protection against exploitative prices and other practices. As well as Amendments 196 and 197, we need to have that information and give the CMA the teeth to do this and report to the Secretary of State, who would then report to Parliament. That would allow Parliament to evaluate the functionality of the market and determine the most effective solutions to address issues related to secondary ticketing.

I very much hope that the Government will agree that they need to make a great deal more progress. Their views were expressed in May 2023, but the abuse continues. We need to do something about it.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 196 and 197 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, so ably moved by the noble Lord, Lord Leong, whose speech was exemplary in this context, well researched and absolutely right. I declare an interest as co-chair, with Sharon Hodgson MP, of the All-Party Group on Ticket Abuse. I echo what the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, said on the tireless work that Sharon Hodgson has undertaken over the years on this. She shares my deep disappointment that the Government have failed to act on this.

It is such an obvious and sensible legislative move to stamp out the abuse that takes place in the secondary market, which does not benefit any of the sports men and women who entertain us or any of the artists. It simply puts money in the pockets of those modern-day touts who, particularly in this day and age, use bots. I will move on to explain how they do that to our disadvantage and that of the true fans of sport and music.

Those who were in the House when we last had a major competition and consumers Bill will recall that we made significant changes. There was good all-party support at that point to see significant changes to ticket sales in the secondary market in what became the 2015 Act, but nothing has happened since then, and it is high time that we take action. In fact, since then we have seen a tsunami of rip-offs by the modern-day online ticket touts, at the expense of genuine music and sports fans.

The number of professional ticket touts who have migrated from the dirty mac brigade on street corners to the use of computer bots has moved from some hundreds to 3,000 to 3,500 in the UK at the moment. When Sharon Hodgson and I started work on this, the numbers were, as I say, just in three figures. As she said in another place when speaking to the Bill, professional touts

“are attacking everywhere, from stadium gigs to local venues and, increasingly, football games”.

Touting tickets for professional football fixtures is the one area of sport where that is illegal—yet it carries on. She went on:

“Yet according to Home Office figures, the yearly arrests of football ticket touts have been decreasing, dropping from 107 in 2011-12 to only 28 in the 2019-20 season”.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/11/23; col. 122.]


That is despite a rapid rise in the number of touts. There is simply not the resource available to track down these people. Criminalisation in the law is the only way that we are going to tackle this problem.

It is not as if we have not looked at it and said, “This works”. We introduced legislation for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games to ban the use of secondary markets for the sale of tickets. If that was brought before all politicians of all party persuasions and agreed, as an important measure, to make sure that we had a fair ticketing policy at those Games, why is it not appropriate for all sports and arts activities?

These amendments propose the further action that is necessary to restrict secondary ticket sites from listing tickets for sale where the seller has not provided proof that they are able to sell them, which happens quite frequently. There is many an occasion when tickets go on sale before the formal tickets are launched in the market, because the ticket touts are confident that they will be able to get them and then, as preferred buyers, sell them on to the secondary market sites.

These amendments in themselves will be welcome and are very important measures for consumer protection. Think of the family that gets a forged ticket because a preferred buyer cannot get the tickets that he has promised, maybe to viagogo, but who then goes out and has the money to forge those tickets and sell them. The family comes down from the north of England or potentially from abroad and is not let in, because the ticket is fraudulent. The family might eventually get only some of its money back from the credit card company—but after much fighting and difficulty, while trying to rescue something from the sadness and tragedy that are the non-financial aspects of the effects of this secondary market.

These measures would go some way to implementing the recommendations made by the CMA to tighten up the measures focused on restricting abuse in the secondary ticket market—measures that the Government pushed deep into the long grass. The noble Lord, Lord Leong, quoted from the letter of 10 May from the Minister, in response to the CMA. Paragraph after paragraph were just kicking this into the long grass, despite the fact that, as we have heard, Professor Waterson’s independent report was absolutely significant in advising the Government on a whole series of measures to take action against the abuses in this market.

We have the work of Sharon Hodgson, which I have spoken of, and the CMA has called for legislative action in this area. We have heard from UK Music, top sportsmen and music industry leaders—yet it was all too easy to say

“it is too soon to conclude that the only way forward is further legislation focused on this market”.

What will it take? I know that the Minister will be in agreement, because he knows about this economically from his days at Lazard. He knows from his young days, when he was up in Greenock, about the power of sport in that wonderful town—how much people love it and how they hate being fleeced by the secondary market abuses that go on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord. The Government’s approach is definitely always to protect consumers, where necessary, and to ensure that business regulation is proportionate. We do not believe that the evidence to date justifies new and onerous secondary ticketing measures. Indeed, it may drive sellers to try to avoid compliance by selling on social media or platforms beyond the reach of UK enforcers, making buying riskier. Banning resales or resale for profit altogether risks reducing consumer protection. For example, Ireland has banned resales, yet Taylor Swift tickets for Dublin are on offer for similar prices to those at Wembley.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

I have listened to my noble friend’s argument, but what does he think the reasons would have been for the Government to ban the secondary ticket market for the Olympic and Paralympic Games?

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

My noble friend Lord Moynihan, who was intimately involved in them, will know about the specific case arising there. In general, the feeling in the department is that we wish to protect consumers by keeping this activity within a regulated environment. If we ban it outright, we fear that we will drive the secondary market underground. We see evidence of that in everyday activity, including concerts and football matches. We worry about what happens as sales move out of reach of the local regulators and on to the black market.

I appreciate the points made by my noble friend, who speaks passionately about this topic; I know that he cares deeply about it. On his points about football, for example, I point out that ticket resale is banned in the football market in England and Wales for public order reasons. That does not mean that we should extend it to other markets, for the reasons I have set out. I hope that noble Lords will not press their amendments.