London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (Amendment) Bill

Mike Freer Excerpts

Thursday 28th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Hugh Robertson]

The answer to that is, “Not quite.” The powers would normally be exercised by the police. Obviously, because of the considerable security obligations on the police at the time of the games, which my hon. Friend will understand, we have decided in the Bill to pass responsibility for enforcement officers to the ODA. The ODA will use only trained people who understand what they are doing and who will act proportionately. The suggestion is that those people are most likely to come from local authorities, which have such enforcement officers anyway. They have the necessary expertise and—I hope—sense of proportionality to carry out those functions satisfactorily.

[Mike Freer (Finchley and Golders Green) (Con)]

The Minister spoke of the ODA being the enforcing authority in respect of ambush marketing, but then spoke of the venues. However, the ODA controls the venues, so it would not need the power to enforce. There is therefore an inherent exclusion zone around the venues. How big is the exclusion zone in which the ODA protects against ambush marketing?

[Hugh Robertson]

If I understand my hon. Friend correctly—he can ask again if I do not answer him—the venues are not controlled by the ODA. The ODA hands the venues over to the London organising committee as part of the preamble to the games. At the time of the games, there is a clean area around each of the venues, for all the reasons we have discussed. If there are any contraventions of the advertising regulations in those clean areas, the enforcement officers come into play.

[Mike Freer]

To clarify, is it true that there will be no further enforcement outside those clean areas?

[Hugh Robertson]

Correct—yes.

Infringing articles seized will be dealt with in accordance with clause 1, which sets out rules on how long articles can be held, when they must be returned, and conditions that must be met before they may be disposed of. Clause 2 will introduce a quicker procedure for making any amending advertising and trading regulations. The first and hopefully final set are out for consultation now.



Finally, the 2006 Act does not give us the ability to amend the regulations quickly once they have been made, but requires the ODA to give lengthy notice of any regulations at specified times before they come into effect, and provides that they must be laid in draft and approved by Parliament before being made. Effectively, that means that we are unable to alter the regulations in exceptional circumstances, for example if a games venue or road event changes at the last minute for security or other reasons. To resolve that, we propose to change the procedure used for any amending regulations under the 2006 Act to the faster, negative resolution procedure. The procedure for the principal regulations will remain as it is now.

On ticket touting, the games will be the largest sporting event this country has ever staged, with around 11 million tickets on sale. Unfortunately, ticket touts may seek to exploit the opportunities that that presents to profit at the expense of genuine sports fans. That is why the 2006 Act made the touting of games tickets, by which I mean selling or offering to sell tickets in public or in the course of business other than with LOCOG consent, an offence that attracts a maximum fine of £5,000.

The Bill contains a provision that will increase the maximum penalty for touting of Olympic and Paralympic tickets from a fine of £5,000 to a fine of £20,000. That increase is driven by the support of the Metropolitan police as a way of providing a more effective deterrent to the touting of Olympic and Paralympic tickets. In effect, it means that the police have recognised the threat of organised crime, rather than individual ticket touts, to the London Olympics. In doing that, we are not criminalising any new conduct; we are simply increasing the maximum penalty available to the courts in response to the obvious threat that touting poses to the games and to the UK’s reputation.

Visitors will come to the Olympics and Paralympics from all over the world, and we want to encourage them to do so. We would not want their visit, or their memories of the experience, tarnished by being confronted by strings of ticket touts, as has happened at some previous games. We intend to make the disincentive very strong and want to send a clear signal to touts that their activities will not be tolerated.

I should emphasise that this measure is aimed squarely at touts. Nothing in the law at present, or as a result of this change, prevents those who have games tickets from selling them at face value to family and friends. LOCOG will also run an official ticket exchange—this answers a point that was made earlier—so that people who find that they can no longer use tickets that they have bought legitimately can dispose of them.

Therefore, the law-abiding public have absolutely nothing to fear from this measure. The people who will—I hope—think twice are people and organised gangs who might be tempted to engage in touting and whose threat has been identified by the police. They should get the very clear message that the Government and the police take this matter seriously, and that the financial penalties for this conduct are severe, and indeed sufficiently severe to disincentivise them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Freer]

On the general point about the extent of the Olympic route network, especially the alternative network, which includes the north circular in my constituency, can the Minister confirm what traffic impact studies have been undertaken? Obviously, a commitment has been given to suspend all roadworks on the network, but what about in the neighbouring areas? If there is a problem and traffic is diverted, we need to ensure that the surrounding streets can cope with that diverted traffic, so we need measures to ensure that all roadworks in the area are suspended.

[Hugh Robertson]

I can confirm that part of the commitment on the Olympic route network is that there will be no roadworks on that network. It would be slightly self-defeating otherwise. However, the Mayor, with whom we have discussed the matter at great length—we also discussed it with his predecessor—is aware that London’s reputation hinges on keeping the city moving during this very busy period, when the eyes of the world will be upon us. Everybody involved knows that a logjam would have serious national implications, so roadworks will be suspended on the ORN and, I hope, in the areas around it.