Consumer Rights Bill

Debate between Mike Weatherley and David Nuttall

Monday 12th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

indicated assent.

[Mike Weatherley]

My hon. Friends are nodding away, which is great, but that is a mistaken point of view. On taking money away from the artists and putting it in the pockets of these “classic entrepreneurs” and others in the entertainment industry, let us just say—[Interruption.] Let me explain to my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North, who is shouting from a sedentary position—

[Mr Nuttall]

May I ask a question on an intervention? My hon. Friend has said they are taking money away, but how can that be as the vendor has received full price for the ticket? They have not lost a penny.

[Mike Weatherley]

That is a very good intervention as I have the answer in the very next sentence of my speech.

Let us say that my hon. Friend has decided that he has £200 to spend on his entertainment budget for the year and he would like to go to four concerts at £50 a throw. If he has to pay his entire annual budget on buying just one ticket, he is going to go to only one concert, not four concerts. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley mentioned the cricket. If someone has paid £500 to go to the cricket game, he will not be buying the T-shirts, the food and all the other things the promoters and artists rely on. Almost more money is paid for merchandise than for tickets. Promoters and artists want people to buy things at the concerts, not for that to be taken away. [Interruption.] If my hon. Friend will not listen, there is no point in his coming to the debate.

The bands will make it clear that it is not just the ticket price for the gig that gets them the money that allows them to tour; it is also merchandising and other things. If my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North has spent his whole annual budget getting to one gig, he is not going to buy the T-shirt and the other things. That is how bands lose out. It is not possible to argue with the economics of that; it is entirely right.

Ticket Abuse

Debate between Mike Weatherley and David Nuttall

Tuesday 21st January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mike Weatherley (Hove) (Con)]

It is with trepidation that I follow my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). I enjoyed his speech very much.

Music, theatre, comedy and sport are vital to British society and the British economy. Our creative industries are worth more than £36 billion a year. They generate £70,000 a minute for the UK economy and employ 1.5 million people in the UK. I have consistently been a champion of the free market and I want to make it clear that I do not have a problem with artists or sports teams charging whatever prices they want for the services that they offer. That is their prerogative and they should be allowed to set the prices of their tickets or, if they choose, to sell them through secondary ticketing or auction websites. However, as the online marketplace has become quicker and easier to use, a large number of unsavoury and illegal practices have sprung up surrounding ticket reselling websites. That is why I, along with colleagues, have set up the all-party group on ticket abuse.

One of the key aspects of an honest and transparent ticket purchasing process is the intention of the buyer at the time of purchase. No one would begrudge a Rolling Stones fan who has become ill the day before the show the opportunity to sell their ticket on to someone else. However, an increasing number of people are buying tickets with no intention of going to the event. Furthermore, the situation does not affect only those fans who waited too long to buy tickets. With internet selling becoming more streamlined, touts are able to use sophisticated computer systems to buy large volumes of tickets automatically, mere seconds or minutes after they go online. It can often be practically impossible for the target fans to access the event, so they are forced to rely on an artificially created secondary market, and the content creators—and the Treasury—are deprived of revenue from the event. That is unacceptable.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend said that the creators would be deprived of income, but surely a sell-out is a sell-out, and they have got as much as they expected to.

[Mike Weatherley]

The argument goes that the creator will still get the same sort of money, but that is not true, especially if there is an audience that they want to target. Taking away control from performers also takes away control of how money is distributed. I have no problem with a band giving a promoter tickets to sell on the secondary ticket market, if they want to generate additional income. However, the process should be transparent.

My hon. Friend did not mention the fact that the Treasury is disadvantaged by the practice. There are people who do not pay VAT or tax on their secondary ticketing sales, and that is wrong. If they make a profit from someone else’s activity, I do not see how he can disagree about their paying that.

In 2011, I supported the private Member’s Bill on ticket touting promoted by the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson). The sensible suggestion that profits from re-selling should be limited to 10% more than the face value of the ticket has already been adopted in some Australian states. We can argue about whether 10% is the correct amount, as there could be ticket fees and so on in addition.

Squatting

Debate between Mike Weatherley and David Nuttall

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mike Weatherley]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and I very much agree with him. I will go on to make some specific points about “The Squatters Handbook” shortly.

I said that squatters know the law well but the absolute opposite is true when it comes to the public in general, who would be shocked if they knew just how powerless they are to take on squatters. Many members of the public do not find that out until it is too late. Section 6 of the Criminal Law Act 1977 makes it an offence to use violence, or threats of violence, to gain access to premises when

“there is someone present on those premises…who is opposed to the entry”.

That section is what is usually referred to as squatters’ rights, but I do not believe that it exists to assist squatting. It is in place to prevent unscrupulous landlords from using violence or intimidation to evict legitimate tenants. Squatters, therefore, have such rights only by accident.

A local resident asked me a question in my local paper, The Argus:

“If squatting is a practice that is socially unacceptable, how is leaving a property empty for more than a year any more acceptable?”

My answer is simple—it is not acceptable at all. I have contacted my local council on a number of occasions about the issue of empty buildings belonging to exploitative developers. We should be careful, though, not to embrace squatting on the principle that “our enemy’s enemy is a friend”. We must get tough on bad landlords—and soon—but buildings can be temporarily empty for all sorts of reasons and many of those reasons are entirely acceptable.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

One reason why a house remains empty is the death of the occupier. Such a house can very often lie dormant for months, sometimes years, while the family and the executors sort out probate, and it can be very worrying and distressing if squatters move in during that time.