Live Events Ticketing: Resale and Pricing Practices

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

Yes, I do. Incidentally, there is another point on which we want to make real progress. We must have not only the massive gigs that everybody loves going to—where you can celebrate with thousands—but very intimate gigs. One of the most special moments is seeing a band perform first in a tiny venue of just 100 or 150 people, and then seeing them in a massive venue, performing at Glastonbury or whatever it might be. We need to look at the whole of the music system in the UK. That means a creative education for every single child—wouldn’t it be good if every child had the opportunity to go to live music at least once a year, as well as the opportunity to learn a musical instrument or learn how to sing? Those are all parts of the whole-of-music approach that we need in this country.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)]

I warmly congratulate the Government on bringing forward these measures, which I wholeheartedly support. I was very surprised by the response from the Conservative Front Bench; I think they have got caught up in some garbled, ill-informed nonsense, but I really hope that in time, they come on board with these proposals, because they are important. For too long, music fans have been ripped off and abused by the touts and scalpers, who have been nothing other than parasites on our live music sector, so I wholeheartedly welcome these proposals.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson), as well as the FanFair Alliance—which has been campaigning on this issue for such a long time—and campaigning newspapers such as the Daily Record that regularly feature large articles on it. While we have this in place, I would like to hear more about the proposals on dynamic pricing, which I think is the issue that perplexed music fans more than anything else over the summer. We now have some sort of routeway towards resolving ticket touting, but we need to hear more about exactly what the Minister will do about dynamic pricing, because that is something that needs fixed.

[Chris Bryant]

It is always a delight to be able to please the hon. Gentleman—as I think he would confess, that is not an event that happens very often on the Government Benches. I am not sure whether any tickets are available for his music gigs, or whether they are selling at multiple prices, but he has been a doughty campaigner for the creative industries over the years, and I welcome that.

We were very clear in the general election about what we were going to do in relation to the primary issue. We did not make any commitments around dynamic pricing, which is why we are offering a much more tentative approach to that issue. We also know that there are forms of dynamic pricing that work extremely well; when a person buys a last-minute theatre ticket, that is a form of dynamic pricing, because you want to get the theatre full at the end of the day. We want to tread a bit more carefully in that area, which is why we are launching a call for evidence, rather than presenting our proposals at this stage. If the hon. Gentleman has got good ideas about what we should do, my door is open—do come and talk to us.