Consumer Rights Bill

Nigel Adams Excerpts

Monday 12th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson). Her arguments have not got any better in all the years we have been going around the houses on this matter, but I admire her for persistence in flogging this particular dead horse.

There have been a number of reports on secondary ticketing, and the hon. Lady said that the Government have listened to no one apart from certain companies. Perhaps they have listened to the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, on which I serve, which looked into the issue and came up with a report that was unanimous, including among Opposition Members, showing that the market was legitimate and worked in the best interests of consumers. When a former Labour Minister, the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), came to give evidence to the Committee, she made it abundantly clear that she believed that as well, so I will be interested to see how she votes on the amendment. When the Office of Fair Trading looked into the matter, it reached the same conclusion. I am afraid that when the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West says that only a few big companies say that the market works in the best interests of consumers, she knows full well that she is talking absolute cobblers.

[Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)]

Can my hon. Friend throw some light on when that Culture, Media and Sport Committee investigation took place? I have a sneaky feeling that it might have been six, seven or eight years ago, and the market has moved on a bit since then.

[Philip Davies]

It was during the last Parliament that the Committee and the Office of Fair Trading produced their reports and the right hon. Member for Barking made her recommendations. Of course time has moved on, but principles do not, and I will come on to the basic principle of the matter. I do not blame the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West for making the point that she does—after all, she is a socialist, so of course she wants to stop the free market and does not believe in it. If I was a socialist, I would not believe in the free market either. I would want to interfere in every single nook and cranny of how the free market operates. That is what the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), who is on the Opposition Front Bench, wants to do, because she is a socialist as well and that is what socialists do. What astonishes me is that anybody who can call themselves a Conservative in any shape or form would want to interfere in the free market in this ridiculous way. [Interruption.] If my hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay) wants to intervene, I am happy for him to do so.

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[Nigel Adams]

I do not know whether my hon. Friend has looked online recently to try to buy a ticket for the first day of the Ashes, but I think he would find that £500 would not buy one. I believe that £545 is the going price. I have some sympathy with what my hon. Friend says about the amendment placing a cap on what tickets could be sold for—at face value, for example. Surely, however, transparency is crucial so people know that they will not get stitched up by buying a ticket that is behind a pillar, reserved for children or whatever. I know he is a great Conservative, so he should believe in transparency.

[Philip Davies]

The point is this. Places such as viagogo guarantee the tickets. If someone enters into a transaction on a viagogo site and anything untoward or amiss takes place, viagogo will stand behind the transaction and ensure that no consumer loses out. When it comes to selling something that is fraudulent or counterfeit or selling a ticket that does not exist, there are already laws in place to stop that. We cannot create another law to make something that is already illegal more illegal. If the ticket exists and is genuine, I could not care less who is selling it, as long as it guarantees me my place in the grounds to watch the game I want to watch. I do not care who the original owner was, particularly when the secondary market exists and respectable companies such as viagogo are there, guaranteeing to the buyer that nothing untoward will happen.

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[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.

[Nigel Adams]

I want to reiterate that point. Most bands nowadays have to sell merchandise to survive because very few people are paying full price, as they once used to, for the music itself. They therefore rely on selling merchandise on the evening; otherwise, they are not able to survive and produce the fantastic music that British bands do.

[Mike Weatherley]

Absolutely, and there is no doubt that merchandising plays a significant part in allowing bands to continue touring.

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[John Robertson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

This is not a free market; it is what I call a con market. I believe in a fair market. I believe that people should be treated fairly and given a chance to buy something at the advertised price. If 100,000 people want to go to a concert and they get to the tickets before I do, that is fine, as long as there are really 100,000 people. I do not expect the machines that the hon. Member for Hove mentioned to buy up all those tickets in a matter of seconds so that I cannot get one. That is not a free market, and it is certainly not a fair one.

The previous Labour Government, with whom I had lots of arguments, could not quite see this my way. I hope that the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson), will listen to these points, because she now has a chance to do something that my Government never did—put the situation right. Things are getting worse and as technology becomes more advanced, people use it for the wrong ends. They used it to prevent my kids from getting those Take That tickets all those years ago—my kids are still looking for those tickets, even though they are parents themselves now—and they are preventing me from getting the tickets I want.

We just want to be treated fairly. I do not mind paying the going rate of £68 or whatever, but I do mind someone buying up 100,000 tickets at £68 each and then selling them for £100 each. That is not right, and it should be against the law—it is taking ticket touting to an extreme. I am not talking about the happy chappie who sells tickets for a game of football before the match, although that used to upset me as well. We cannot allow people to do this on a large scale.

We can allow someone who has bought a ticket to pass it on to a family member or a friend, and I do not have a problem with them making a profit on it, provided it is not too much. However, I do have a problem with the guy with £500 getting ripped off by the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) with his Lord’s ticket. Why anybody would want to pay that kind of money to watch a game of cricket I do not know! Having said that, if someone really wanted to see the event, I can understand them paying it, but I do not understand why some people should be able to corner the market and then resell tickets to others at a vast profit. That undermines our music industry. At the end of the day, the issue comes back to the people who are trying to give us a service and the benefit of their life’s work.

[Nigel Adams]

Let me take the hon. Gentleman back to the discussions about the ticket from Lord’s. I am torn on this issue: I am sympathetic to the amendments, but I am also sympathetic to some of the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley. If someone is prepared to, and can afford to, pay £500 a ticket to go to the test match, that is their choice. However, that individual should be able to find out and know where that ticket is located—where in the ground they are going to be sat—and whether or not it is legitimate. That is where the transparency angle of these amendments is correct.

[John Robertson]

Therein lies a problem, because sometimes the tickets being sold are not even proper tickets—someone might just have made a very good copy. The person with the £500 would be taking that chance. I do not believe that is right—that is probably why the hon. Gentleman is sat on the other side of the Chamber and I am sat here. If the ticket says £25, £60 or £100—whatever the figure is—I expect to pay that. I do not have a problem if I have to pay a wee bit extra, but I would not be paying £500 or £1,000. The worst case I ever heard of was when two tickets for Wimbledon finals day, which were for disabled people, were being sold on eBay for £2,000 each, and the buyer had to buy the pair. That is not right, and I am talking about only a couple of tickets.