Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Baker Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Ian Murray]

I will meet him halfway and say seven and a half seconds. These are very exciting projects. As I said, I have already been lobbied by Wigan and Scunthorpe as I have been sitting on the Front Bench, and now I am being lobbied by Salisbury, so that shows the excitement around both the competitions. That is why we introduced the town of culture competition. I look forward to bids coming in and I am happy for officials to work with the right hon. Gentleman to ensure that the bid goes to the right competition.

[Richard Baker (Glenrothes and Mid Fife) (Lab)]

8. What assessment she has made of the potential merits of introducing a cap on the resale of concert tickets.

[The Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Lisa Nandy)]

For too long, fans have been exploited by touts seeking to profiteer from the UK’s booming live events industry. Last week, we announced that time is up for ticket touts and that change is coming, by introducing a cap on the price that tickets can be resold for. We estimate that this will save fans over £100 million a year.

[Richard Baker]

This summer, thousands of music fans in Scotland were dismayed at having to pay hugely inflated prices to see their favourite bands, including Oasis, so my right hon. Friend’s announcement on capping the resale price of tickets will be welcome news for all those fans. Will she consider what further measures can be taken to ensure a fair deal on ticket prices for concert-goers across the UK?

[Lisa Nandy]

I can update my hon. Friend. Among the measures that we announced recently, we have introduced resale volume limits, which will prevent people from reselling more tickets than they were entitled to buy in the primary sale. Alongside the price cap, the Competition and Markets Authority will be able to fine non-compliant platforms up to 10% of their annual turnover, which could mean multimillion-pound fines for rogue firms if they target UK consumers.

In the case of Oasis, as many in this House will know, one of the great challenges was that many of the fans going into that queue did not know that the surge pricing model was being used, so they did not realise that they would paying vastly inflated prices by the time they got to the front of the queue. The CMA has looked at this and is taking steps to ensure that consumers have the full range of information that they need to prevent that from happening in future.