Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Thursday 23rd May 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business and Trade (Lord Offord of Garvel) (Con)]

My Lords, it is an honour to speak for the final time on the Bill. Noble Lords will be aware that we have one issue remaining, relating to secondary ticketing.

Lords Amendment 104B tabled by my noble friend Lord Moynihan would introduce additional regulatory requirements on resale sites. The Government’s position remains that this amendment adds new regulation without a clear purpose; this is because the consumer protection it seeks is already covered by existing law. There are important consumer protection issues in the secondary ticketing market, but simply adding new rules and regulations which add little to what is already there is not the answer. This is not a problem with the rules; it is about strengthening their enforcement. Already, this House has radically strengthened the CMA’s enforcement powers through Part 3 of the Bill. The strengthening applies to all consumer law, including secondary ticketing.

However, the Government have listened to the strength of feeling in both Houses on the issue of secondary ticketing. As such, the Minister for Enterprise, Markets and Small Business tabled government Amendments 104C and 104D in another place further to strengthen these enforcement powers, first, to enforce existing rules we have against unfair buying-up of tickets with electronic bots and, secondly, to enforce existing rules on information that platforms and resellers must present to consumers. This is in addition to the Government’s previous commitment to review the primary and secondary ticketing markets. Taken together, the new enforcement powers for the CMA and the upcoming government review represent a very clear strengthening of consumer protections. I hope noble Lords appreciate the steps the Government have taken on this issue and, as such, will not insist on their amendment.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his work on my amendments. As he rightly pointed out, they are the last amendments outstanding on this Bill. I thank the usual channels for their assiduous consideration of whether this should go further at this stage. We have seen some concessions from the Government, which are much appreciated. There is a huge amount of additional work still to be done, and obviously I am sorry that the amendments tabled originally were not accepted in full, but I am very grateful to the Minister for taking some action in the new clause which was agreed in another place the day before yesterday.

I conclude by saying that I will do everything in my power to return to this campaign on behalf of the true fans of sport, music festivals and music events in what I hope will be just a matter of months. In the meantime, I thank the Minister and his outstanding civil servants for all the hard work they have done, not least with the CMA in recent months, and express my gratitude to the whole House for its support.

[Lord Clement-Jones (LD)]

My Lords, I do not propose to go over old competition ground, but like the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, our attitude to Motion A is not to oppose it but to be somewhat disappointed at the Government’s response; on the other hand, we welcome the fact that they have added new enforcement proposals and provisions and the promised review. I think it is quite unaccountable that they have resisted the almost irresistible force of the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan; it has been a sight to behold his persistence throughout not only this Bill but previous Bills. I am quite confident that eventually his campaigning will bear fruit because, when we look at the terms of the amendments that were not agreed to by the Commons on providing evidence of proof of purchase and of title to tickets, among other things they are only common sense and very good consumer protection.

I add my thank you valedictory to the Minister, his colleague the noble Viscount, Lord Camrose, who I see is riding shotgun today, and the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, who made a cameo appearance on the Bill and was the Minister involved very heavily in the Online Safety Bill proceedings. Both Ministers have always been willing to engage. They have not always conceded, but they have always listened, so I thank them very much indeed for all their service. It has been a pretty long ride when one looks back to the beginning of the suite of digital Bills in the past two years, starting with the Online Safety Bill, then the digital markets Bill, and now the non-lamented data protection Bill, and I look forward to further digital legislation in the autumn or the beginning of next year.