Sale of Tickets (Sporting and Cultural Events) Bill

Lyn Brown Excerpts

Friday 21st January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Hodgson]

No, I will not, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind.

Will the Minister tell us what his civil servants advised him ahead of this debate? I know my office provided them with advance sight of the Bill, so I hope they had enough time to come to a considered view. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response—if his colleagues allow him to get in.

Coming back to the point, the Bill does not aim to do away with the secondary market. It aims to make the secondary market work in the interests of genuine fans, by forcing out the people who are there simply to profit from the hard work, investment and creative talent of the live entertainment industry, a sector that I am sure the Minister will agree has become extremely valuable to the UK’s economic vitality.

The role of the Government and of the House is to legislate in the public interest. The public interest does not lie in a few touts and the channels they sell through continuing to make obscene profits at the expense of the general event-going public and of the live entertainment industry. The public interest lies in the Government providing a statutory framework for the industry to use in the interests of fans where needed. That is exactly what the Bill provides for.

Before I come to the substance of the Bill and go through its various clauses, I take this opportunity to thank my fantastic and hard-working team who have helped me on my route to introducing the Bill to the House. In particular, I thank two people: Mike Forster, my researcher, who only started in August, so the Bill has been a huge part of his job; and David Hopper, previously my intern but now studying to be a solicitor, who did a lot of the groundwork behind the scenes on legislation around the world.

The Bill addresses the problem I laid out. It creates two new offences, but that is not the starting point. The starting point is the creation of a voluntary designation scheme under which those involved in putting on live entertainment events can apply for protection from the unauthorised resale of their tickets. If they apply for protection, it would be an offence for an unauthorised individual to be concerned in the sale of a ticket for that event at a price greater than 10% above face value. For such purposes, face value is the printed value plus any service charges levied by the appointed ticket agent.

Such an approach broadly follows that set out in the Queensland solution, of which hon. Members on the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport will be aware. In Queensland, tickets for any event held at certain major venues are subject to price caps on unauthorised resale. I want to broaden that provision out, because it would not touch a large part of the market, such as theatre or mid-sized and small gigs, which are just as lucrative for touts as stadium events—if not more so, because they occur on almost every night of the year in towns and cities throughout the country.

Clause 1 sets out how that system of designation could work. I am open to its refinement or to alternative suggestions from the Government or other hon. Members in Committee should the Bill be successfully voted through today.

Clause 2 sets out the offences, the first of which I have already mentioned. The second offence is the advertisement for sale and taking of payment for tickets that have not yet been released by the primary retailer. The issue is separate from that of the secondary market, coming as it does before even the primary market. Websites spring up offering concert tickets—a recent example is the Take That tour—that the person running the site obviously does not even have. It is a risk-free business, because the person gets a lump sum of cash to buy as many tickets as possible to satisfy the orders, and simply refunds any orders that cannot be satisfied. In some cases, such sites have simply not delivered the tickets and done a bunk with the money. Other laws cover such activities, but why is it still legal for those sites to offer tickets that they do not have, at the risk of many consumers being left short-changed and without tickets?

Clause 2 sets out the sanctions for the offences, which include a fine up to the level 5 limit on the standard scale. There was a case for going higher than that, as for many major operators, £5,000 represents a drop in the ocean of their business.

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

As my hon. Friend knows, I am particularly concerned about the issue of ticket touts and the Olympic games. I do not feel that £5,000 is enough of a fine to deter unscrupulous touts. Does she agree?

[Mrs Hodgson]

I certainly do, and I shall come on to the Olympic games shortly. One of my suggestions is that we work with the Metropolitan police unit set up to tackle the issue. I am sure that my hon. Friend will meet it in the course of her work as a local MP. That unit also feels that £5,000 is nowhere near a big enough deterrent. There are measures in place, which I will come to in due course, but perhaps my hon. Friend will intervene on me again if I do not cover her point in detail.

I want to state explicitly that for the worst cases, the confiscation, under section 70 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, of assets and cash thought to have been garnered through this activity should be considered. Clause 3 assumes an exemption from the limitations where the proceeds of an auctioned ticket are to be used for, or donated to, charitable purposes. Any exploitation of that assumption would obviously be investigable under the Charities Act 1993.