Oral Answers to Questions
Richard Bacon Excerpts(6 months ago)
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Julia Lopez
I spoke to my noble Friend the heritage Minister in preparation for this question and in doing so got to know a bit more about Piece Hall, a fantastic heritage site in the hon. Member’s constituency. I commend the work of all local activists to protect that building and bring it into public use. It is a wonderful example of an 18th century northern cloth hall, which now has a modern purpose. We are very grateful for the work that has gone into it. She may be aware that we also have the cultural development fund, which has allowed communities across the country to retain important public buildings with heritage value, repurpose them and breathe life into the communities that most need them.
Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)
On the subject of heritage buildings, may I add my own thanks to yours, Mr Speaker, to the Clerk of Legislation, Liam Laurence Smyth, who really is an institution in this place? He was for many years a close colleague of my late father-in-law, Stephen Panton, who served this House as a Clerk for 33 years. Mr Laurence Smyth has done a great deal for many of us in this House and has been personally enormously helpful to me. While I am still in order, Mr Speaker, and on the subject of heritage buildings, does the Minister agree that for many people in South Norfolk the Diss Express feels like a heritage building and should be protected and celebrated accordingly?
Julia Lopez
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the Diss Express, which I presume is a heritage railway—
Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)
Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk)
The National Audit Office does have adequate resources to scrutinise the cost of artificial intelligence and, indeed, produced a report in March that found that AI presents Government with significant opportunities to transform public services and that the Government have identified that artificial intelligence could deliver substantial productivity gains, potentially worth billions.
Mr Jones
My hon. Friend has identified the report in which I am interested. That report, as he rightly says, noted the importance of artificial intelligence in delivering transformational public services, but also noted a number of challenges. In the dying embers of this Parliament, would he be willing to leave a message for the next Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, urging that an inquiry be carried out into that report, as I believe its findings are of considerable importance?
Mr Bacon
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right that it is an important subject, and the Public Accounts Committee was due to take oral evidence on it on 17 June. I will certainly draw his concerns to the attention of the new Chair of the Public Accounts Committee when I know who he or she is.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his response. This is a massive subject and will have to be scrutinised greatly in the next term of government. What assessment has been made of the potential negatives of AI within the defence industry and Government, and what steps will be taken to combat them?
Mr Bacon
I think the short answer is that there is inadequate awareness inside Government—although there is some awareness—that there are potentially very large negatives with artificial intelligence. Indeed, one of the inventors of artificial intelligence has written a book on precisely that subject. I suspect that it is something the Government will continue to assess.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Mr Richard Bacon
In its January report, the National Audit Office established that the NHS supply chain has great potential to secure further savings by aggregating the NHS’s spending power, but that so far it has not fulfilled that potential.
Mr Hollobone
In its January report on the NHS supply chain, the National Audit Office made seven recommendations to improve the efficiency of the NHS’s £8 billion annual procurement programme, including the need to improve prices and make ordering as straightforward as possible. The National Audit Office reports twice a year on whether Departments have implemented its recommendations, so will it use that mechanism to monitor the progress of the NHS supply chain?
Mr Bacon
I am sure the Comptroller and Auditor General and his staff at the National Audit Office will want to listen very carefully to what my hon. Friend has said, although I must tell him that the inability of the NHS to use its huge spending power more successfully on behalf of taxpayers and patients has been a hardy perennial throughout my entire 23 years in Parliament. While I wish him well in his endeavours, I would advise him not to hold his breath.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a little-known fact that from 1979 to 1981, I was a member of the Public Accounts Committee. I really enjoyed that experience. This is one of my last questions in this House after nearly 45 years here. Can we do more to show incoming Members of Parliament how powerful a body the Public Accounts Committee is and what an amazing resource it is for Members of Parliament in getting inquiries, looking at funding and looking at the wise spending of Government? Could we have a programme—again, perhaps there could be a note on the desk—to teach new Members how important this national treasure is?
Mr Bacon
Having spent 16 years on the Public Accounts Committee, I completely agree with what the hon. Gentleman says. It is, in my view, one of the best places to spend one’s time as a parliamentarian, checking that our constituents’ money as taxpayers is safeguarded and well looked after by whichever Government of the day happens temporarily to be in office. I commend what he has said to everyone.
Oral Answers to Questions
Richard Bacon Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk)
In line with its statutory duties, the Public Accounts Commission sits formally to discuss the NAO’s main supply estimate, taking evidence from the Comptroller and Auditor General and other NAO officials. On 1 March last year, the Commission approved the NAO’s supply estimate for the financial year that will shortly end, and it also approved an adjustment in November to allow the NAO to enter into a lease in Newcastle. On 8 March this year, the Commission is due to consider the NAO’s supply estimate for the forthcoming financial year, which will end in March 2024.
Mr Hollobone
The National Audit Office does superb work with penetrating analysis of public expenditure, but it now covers the greatest ever number of public sector organisations. Will the Public Accounts Commission take that into account when arriving at the estimate for next year?
Mr Bacon
Yes, it will. The National Audit Office is affected by inflation, which is now at 9.2%, as well as other cost pressures relating to its statutory role, including the greater work required by updated international audit standards and the fact that when more public bodies are created, they need to be audited. The Commission also notes that the NAO is competing against private sector audit firms in recruiting and retaining staff, and needs to take that into consideration. The Commission will discuss those issues in more detail when the NAO presents its main estimate on 8 March.
Oral Answers to Questions
Richard Bacon Excerpts(1 year, 11 months ago)
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Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk)
The National Audit Office’s report on road enhancements has recently been published and it is excellent. The Public Accounts Commission itself, in line with its statutory duty, has no plans to examine the report, but many of the NAO’s reports are taken up by the Public Accounts Committee and while, of course, it is a matter for the PAC to determine its own programme, I will draw the interest of my hon. Friend to the Chair of the PAC.
Mr Hollobone
Delays to projects in road investment strategy 2 primarily because of development consent difficulties have meant that fewer road projects have been delivered than planned and at a higher cost. Should the commission study the report, may I urge my hon. Friend to examine the potential negative impact on the next road investment strategy—RIS 3—of future road projects being shelved because of hold-ups and cost pressures in RIS 2?
Mr Bacon
In its September 2020 delivery plan, National Highways expected that it would spend £5.5 billion in the third road strategy on projects approved since 2020. Since then, this has increased to £11.5 billion largely because of project and planning delays. Taxpayers may well feel scandalised that they are paying more money and getting fewer road enhancements. I know that my hon. Friend has a particular interest in the proposed junction 10a of the A14 east of Kettering and I urge him to consider pressing his case with Ministers as I know he was doing as recently as last week.
Oral Answers to Questions
Richard Bacon Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Margot James
Opting in is a potential solution. In the past 12 months, we have extended opt-in as the means of controlling calls from pensions providers and claims management companies. I trust this will make a significant difference as they are a significant proportion of the problem.
Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)
Why is the liability limited to only half a million pounds?
Margot James
It was decided, after much deliberation, that half a million pounds was a sum of money that would be a disincentive to the majority of individuals. I accept that there may be exceptions to that, but they are relatively few and far between.
Secondary Ticketing
Richard Bacon Excerpts(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)
I am pleased to have the opportunity to discuss secondary ticketing, which is the process of reselling tickets for admission to events such as live music concerts, rock festivals, football matches, other sporting events, exhibitions and so on. The term “secondary ticketing” refers to tickets that have already been sold for the first time by the organiser of the event, and are then sold on by the ticket holder in the secondary marketplace. In the ticketing industry, the original issuers are generally known as “primaries”, and later sellers are known—for obvious reasons—as “secondaries”, or more typically as “secondary websites”, because the secondary ticketing business overwhelmingly takes place on the internet through online transactions paid for by credit cards.
I began to take an interest in this issue because of a constituency case, which was the reason I originally applied for this debate. However, those specific matters have recently been caught under the terms of the House’s sub judice rules—I consulted the House authorities and the Principal Clerk of the Table Office at length about that case, and I regret that I cannot now refer to it directly today. None the less, secondary ticketing is clearly a matter of widespread concern among the public whom we represent, as well as among hon. Members, who have held numerous debates on the subject in the House in recent years. The hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) is in the Chamber this evening.
Secondary ticketing is an area of great controversy that raises important questions about consumer protection, business freedom and responsibility, the ethics or legality of certain types of behaviour, and indeed the clarity of the law and whether it is applied correctly. There are also questions about the structures of the entertainment industries that put on events that require tickets. This is an area in which public policy must be got right and implemented properly, and it is fair to say that there is still considerable work to do.
Last year, two hon. Members who were active in the all-party group on ticket abuse—the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West and my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams)—were threatened with arrest when they visited the offices of Viagogo, a notorious secondary ticketing website that was operating from premises at 71 Fenchurch Street in the City of London while claiming that it did not have a proper UK office. That happened simply because they wished, as Members of Parliament, to raise concerns with that company about constituents who had been repeatedly ripped off by Viagogo, after it had repeatedly ignored correspondence and requests for meetings.
Research by the consumer watchdog Which? found that as many as a quarter of tickets to popular concerts and events end up on secondary ticketing websites such as Viagogo. Which? found that 26% of tickets for a show by the comedian Jack Whitehall, and nearly a fifth of tickets to see Lady Gaga at the O2 arena in London, were available on Viagogo and three other resale sites—Get Me In!, Seatwave and StubHub. About 15% of tickets for last year’s first night of the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall were found on secondary ticketing sites, including a £38 ticket with a mark-up of 279% on StubHub, and one with a 300% mark-up on Get Me In! Crucially, Which? discovered that 49% of consumers who bought those tickets believed that they were buying from official sellers, and it is clear that proper consumer protection is required in this area.
As well as the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West, who has campaigned on this issue for many years, and my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty, another active campaigner is the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), who secured a debate on this subject, to which the Minister responded, only last month. The Minister might be getting rather tired of having to come back to the House of Commons, but that is an index of the concern felt by hon. Members across the House.
There is a wide range of views on what reform is required and what that should look like. One might say that the bookends of the argument could be loosely characterised as ranging from the views of the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire, an experienced rock musician, to that set out in an Institute of Economic Affairs paper written by Dr Stephen Davies. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire stated his view clearly:
“I question the need for a secondary market at all. Why is there one? If someone cannot go to a concert they have a ticket for, they should give it back to the venue, which can then resell it to someone who can go. What is wrong with a simple arrangement such as that? We usually hear from people—we have seen it in a couple of articles—that this is all about tickets finding their natural value, as if there is a sort of stock market where tickets find their real value at the hands of the touts reselling them.”—[Official Report, 2 May 2018; Vol. 640, c. 165WH.]
The IEA, as one might expect, takes a different view, stating:
“The fundamental cause of disappointment for many would-be buyers or their having to pay more than a nominated but below-market price is that in these cases”—
that is to say where there is enormous interest in obtaining the tickets—
“(which to repeat, are not the norm) there is a massive excess of demand over supply. Far more people want to go to the event than can physically attend.”
The IEA paper is certainly worth reading, although personally I do not think it places sufficient emphasis on the very serious consumer protection issues that have become apparent.
It is of course true that for any good or service where there is a fashion or fervour to obtain it, the price can be bid up very easily. That happens with Nike, where the manufacturer of very popular training shoes tries to limit supply. It is every supplier, every manufacturer, and every commercial business’s dream to have people fighting over their product and bidding up the price. I remember that when the IKEA store opened in north London, there were literally fights outside because so many people wanted to get in. That might have created a small disturbance, with the police having to be called, but the fact that there was now an IKEA store in that part of north London was all over every newspaper in the country.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that in the cases he outlines, with regard to how much the tickets should be sold for and whether face value is below market value, artists such as Ed Sheeran, Adele, Kate Bush and others should be able to set that price on the basis of what they deem their fan base can afford and what would be fair for the majority of their fans?
Mr Bacon
I do agree. Of course, there are a variety of other considerations that also help to set the price. Some artists only do a small number of shows. A Korean boy band is coming over to the UK shortly. I would tell you its name if I could remember it, Madam Deputy Speaker, but to be honest when I was told, I had to admit I had never heard of it and I cannot now remember its name, but apparently the band is very popular—God, I sound like Sir Bufton, don’t I? There are people flying in from Korea to hear this boy band and the official ticket price has been set at £165. That is an indication of the importance of this extremely successful sector to the UK economy, given all the flights and hotels, and the tourism that will take place while people are here. It is therefore very important that there is probity and regularity in the sale of tickets, and that the artist and promoter can set the price.
There are other considerations. If the performer is a bloke with a guitar—yes, I have heard of Ed Sheeran—the cost of putting on a simple show may be much lower than that for a very sophisticated show that, while still a rock concert, may be more akin to a west end or Broadway show, with the concomitant costs. That will also influence a promoter’s decision about the ticket price, as will how much the artist wishes to get or how much the promoter is willing to pay the artist. The hon. Lady is quite right that those are decisions for the promoter and the artist, but they cannot be taken in isolation.
As for the other issue, this is where people sometimes struggle with the argument from those who think that there should be no secondary market at all. I remember when I first tried to buy an iPad. I knew, because I had been past the shop, that there was a big Apple store on Regent Street. I foolishly thought that by going to the Apple store, I would be able to buy one, only to discover when I got there that the fervour that often occurs was such that there was either the actuality or the illusion of great scarcity. I was told after wandering around the store for some time that there was absolutely no possibility of my buying an iPad from the store, and that I had to do that online and it would take several days before I could possibly get my hands on one. This was of course because of the excessive demand for iPads compared with Apple’s ability, even working at full tilt, to manufacture them through its plants. Again, that is a nice problem to have, but when that sort of thing happens, we cannot be surprised that it ends up pushing up prices.
I had the opportunity to discuss some of these issues briefly with the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West yesterday. I pointed out that tickets for the 100 metres final at the London 2012 Olympics were going for £2,000. I do not mean that they were being traded on the secondary market for £2,000. If someone wanted to sit at the finishing tape for the final of the 100 metres—the blue-riband event, which is watched by billions all over the world—that was the price that LOCOG, the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games, was charging them. Of course, people could sit elsewhere in the stadium and still get a reasonable view. I had the pleasure of selling souvenir programmes for the 1978 Commonwealth games, which was an alarmingly long time ago, and had the chance to see some very exciting live athletics. I can understand why people want to do that—it is a very exciting thing to watch—but the point is that many people thought that it was worth paying a lot of money. I am sure that many of the people did not spend the £2,000 personally—perhaps wealthy corporations paid for them—but the fact is that the promoter decided to set the price at that level, and I think that we need to have some regard for that.
Mrs Hodgson
Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that the organiser set that price for all the reasons that he cited and was confident that tickets would not be touted? The tickets were protected, which was a proviso of the International Olympic Committee, although that was not extended to the Rugby Football Union for the Rugby world cup, for example. Those tickets could probably have gone for £20,000 on the open market, but they were protected at the price that the event organiser decided. Does he agree that that should be the way that this goes forward?
Mr Bacon
I would like to see a regular and orderly market. In a moment, I will say something about the analogy with the stock market made by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire, because for different reasons from the ones that I think he meant, it has some interesting things to tell us. The regulation of the stock market is very concerned with an orderly market. I am sure that the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West is right that those tickets could have gone for considerably more, and I do not understand why the provisions that were extended to the Olympics—that was mainly because the contract that our country had to sign with the International Olympic Committee in order to get the Olympics to come here absolutely required us to put in those provisions—were not also extended to the Rugby world cup, particularly when we know that the Rugby Football Union was begging for that to happen. I do not personally understand that at all. I think it was a mistake.
I was talking about the IEA paper and, as it were, the IEA view of the world. Although I do not necessarily subscribe to every jot and tittle of what is in the paper, I found it interesting to read. As I said, it did not necessarily focus on the consumer protection issues as much as I would have wished, but it is certainly true that many consumers have been seriously ripped off by secondary sites and have found huge difficulty in obtaining redress. There is a need for proper consumer protection and the right regulatory environment.
I think it is probably fair to say, as a generality, that I might be a little more interested in the papers produced by the Institute of Economic Affairs than the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire, but the reason why I like his stock market analogy is that there are a number of areas of read-across. The stock market of publicly traded securities is subject to very tight regulation and strict rules. Participants in the market must all be treated fairly. Information conveyed to the marketplace must be conveyed to all participants simultaneously. There are strict rules about how minority shareholders must be treated. For the issuing and trading of Government securities, it is normal to have a primary dealer, or a set of primary dealers, who are allowed to buy Government securities directly from the Government, or Governments, and in return for the Government’s conferring these privileges on primary dealers, the dealers also have to agree to specific responsibilities.
When I left university and started work in an investment bank, I had to pass an examination in order to become what was then known as a registered representative. It was binary: either you were a registered representative or you were not, and if you were not, there were certain activities that you could not undertake. I do not want to stretch the analogy too far, but it seems to me that in the area of secondary ticketing, consumers and campaigners are looking for clarity and simplicity. They want strong rules that are fair, enforced, and easy for everyone to understand. I believe it is possible that part of the solution would be registered ticket dealers—a solution that is analogous to what I have just said about the stock market. At the moment it feels like the wild west, and people are getting hurt.
I might add that some who have been in the business of offering tickets to events for many years, and who have great knowledge and experience of the sector, also feel that they are getting hurt. The Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 allowed for the freezing and seizure of assets by administrative fiat, without the process of going through a court trial of a prosecution. That legislation, which was designed to deal with international money launderers and drug dealers,
“undermines the very foundation of our freedoms, which is that people are innocent until they are proved guilty, that the state cannot merely seize the property of the individual but must establish that the individual has forfeited his liberties under the rule of law… The new power of civil forfeiture is born of an understandable frustration at our inability to pin things on certain individuals, but it is a sloppy and dangerous short cut to improving our criminal law.”—[Official Report, 30 October 2001; Vol. 373, c. 814.]
Those are not my words, but the words of George Osborne during the passage of the legislation on 30 October 2001. I believe it is at least possible that that legislation is now being misused and misinterpreted.
Let me return to the question of what a suitable regulatory framework would look like. I think it is obvious that self-regulation through the assorted trade bodies that have cropped up from time to time in recent years has failed, and that the consumer rip-offs have been continuously getting worse—even in recent years, during the very period in which parliamentarians, the Government and the competition authorities have been paying more and more attention to the subject.
We need firm and clear rules, including, where appropriate, adjustments to the statutory framework, as well as vigorous enforcement, for which the required resources could be found quite easily. For example, a 1% levy on all tickets sold on websites for events in the UK would produce tens of millions of pounds to pay for consumer protection. It would not be very difficult. Many industries pay part of the cost of their own regulation: Ofwat is an example of that. The system could be revenue neutral, or—I think my hon. Friend the Minister would like this even more if she were trying to persuade the Chancellor—it might even make a profit.
A prime area for attention are the massive conflicts of interest that exist within the events industry. One company, Live Nation, is a venue owner, a promoter of events, an artist management company, and an operator in the primary ticketing business through its ownership of Ticketmaster. It also owns two of the leading secondary websites, Get Me In! and Seatwave, which have attracted so much controversy. That is a very obvious source of conflicts of interest.
The most common complaint is that when tickets for a very popular and oversubscribed event such as a rock concert are sold out at their face value within a few minutes of going on sale, the same tickets appear only a few minutes later on the secondary sites at a much higher price. The old question “cui bono?” applies: who benefits? Well, plainly the holders of the tickets purchased at face value, who have now sold those tickets at a much higher price, benefit considerably; but so does the secondary trading website through which the exchange takes place, because the website charges a commission for facilitating the transaction. The commission can easily be 20%, 30% or even 40% of the new sale price. If, say, a £55 ticket is resold at an inflated price of £250, which is perfectly plausible, the commission alone on the resale of the ticket, at just 20%, will be £50, and could easily be £75 or £100—more than the total original face value of the ticket.
If the secondary trading website is owned by the primary providers of the tickets—the concert promoters—they may make more money from the resale of the ticket than by having originally issued it, although in the second transaction they are acting only as brokers; provided, of course, that the secondary trading websites have enough tickets to sell. There is, then, a massive incentive for any primary provider that owns a secondary platform to ensure that the secondary platform has enough tickets. That type of conflict of interest is very clear and should be dealt with firmly. There is also, of course, a massive incentive for secondary platforms to encourage other ticket holders to engage in dubious behaviour to make sure they have enough tickets to sell on the platforms. There should be an investigation into firms such as Live Nation and whether their vertically integrated ownership structure is harming consumers and leading directly to abuse. My personal opinion is that it is.
There is even controversy—the Lord alone knows why—about whether the secondary trading platforms are brokers. They plainly are—they make promises and offer guarantees—and if they were correctly seen as brokers taking money in payments, they would fall under the supervision of the Financial Conduct Authority. As brokers, they routinely lie. They offer for sale tickets that they purport to have access to but which they do not have access to—what are called specs, or speculative tickets—in the hope that they will find the required ticket in time. If they were treated and regulated as brokers, this would be much easier to stop.
I would like to offer the Minister some propositions that I think command widespread consent and which should inform the Government’s thinking as they reform this area. First, the promoter or vendor should have the right to choose to whom it wishes to sell its tickets. Secondly, the promoter of an event should have the right to decide at what price the tickets should sell and to impose terms and conditions, so long as they are not unreasonable. The prices for those tickets will vary considerably depending on the nature of the event, and it should be perfectly in order for there to be massive price variations that reflect the desirability of the event.
As a constituent told me this morning—he was a Chelsea season ticket holder so had access to the tickets—he paid £140 to go to the FA Cup final, in which Chelsea were victorious. He would expect to pay on average £20 per normal premier league game, having paid £940 for a season ticket. Somebody attending a game against Accrington Stanley would expect to pay considerably less. I mentioned the £2,000 charged for the best seats at the Olympics for the 100-metre final. That price was set by the promoter. There is nothing wrong with such massive variations; it reflects the reality.
Fourthly—this goes back to the first point—it should be entirely in order for the promoter to operate a discriminatory pricing policy for favoured customers for a wide number of different reasons, which may include assisting activists in the sport, as happens often in rugby, assisting supporters clubs or exposing an event to young people, as theatres and opera houses often do. It may, of course, be a more expensive package for corporate clients that helps the event make more money.
If a promoter sold every ticket at £40, it is possible that, in the case of many shows, if they were of the elaborate variety, it would not cover its costs. Promoters need to be able to discriminate in their pricing and to offer packages to favoured customers. A few years ago, Wimbledon had a people’s Sunday—it was not expecting to have games on the Sunday, the rest day, but it did because of rain—for which unreserved seats were readily available at low prices, which allowed those of more limited means to sit on the best show courts and see the best tennis. That sort of thing ought to be within the gift of the promoter to decide.
Fifthly, it should not be possible for a promoter to cancel a ticket because it has been resold, unless it has been acquired unlawfully or in breach of the promoter’s reasonable terms and conditions. Sixthly, one should not be able to oblige a vendor to repurchase a ticket, but equally, and seventhly, a ticket holder who can no longer use a ticket should, at the ticket holder’s own choice, have the clear right in law to sell it either back to the vendor, at the vendor’s discretion, or to another party. From that, it follows that there should be registered ticket dealers that can have different classes of licence—rather like different classes of drivers licences—depending on whether they are operating online or outside venues. Anyone doing business with the public should also have liability insurance, which should be visible to the customer. That is not a complete list, but I hope it is a useful contribution for the Minister.
There is one area of considerable importance that I have not had time to mention so far but would like to touch on before I sit down. Some of the worst offenders in harvesting tickets for immediate resale using sophisticated software are to be found in the organisations with the most up-to-date IT infrastructure—the fastest fibre links and the mainframes with the fastest processing speeds—such as the big banks in the City and big accounting firms, and certain people in the NHS and even in one or two police organisations. I hope the Minister will reflect on that because sometimes Government investment in IT is assisting this pernicious trade. Members who have read the book “Flash Boys” about high frequency trading will immediately get the point.
I hope my remarks have given the Minister a little food for thought and I look forward to hearing her reply.
Oral Answers to Questions
Richard Bacon Excerpts(7 years ago)
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Karen Bradley
We are discussing with Channel 4 the appropriate way forward and what is appropriate for it to do. I make no comment on an appropriate place for it to relocate to. I have heard a number of bids just today. I suggest that right hon. and hon. Members contact the Channel 4 board to put their propositions forward. This is a decision for the board, but clearly if we cannot reach an agreement, we would need to legislate, and I welcome the fact that there is cross-party support for the private Member’s Bill on this matter.
Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)
Given that Norwich University of the Arts produces many digital and creative graduates each year, does the Secretary of State agree, notwithstanding the fact that she is not going to make a public endorsement, that Channel 4 should carefully consider the merits of Norfolk for a new location when it moves outside London?
Karen Bradley
What we have found through this process, which is still ongoing, is the vast number of incredible creative locations that we have across the whole of the United Kingdom. I urge them all to continue to put forward their suggestions and proposals, not just for Channel 4 but for all other creative industries, because getting creative clusters and a centre of gravity in an area means that creativity can flourish.