Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 17th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

As co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on ticket abuse, I believe the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill has real potential to overhaul the secondary ticketing market, which is rife with fraud and scamming, affecting consumers every day.

The Minister will be aware of the issues in the ticketing market. They are far from being rectified by current legislation, with tickets being obtained in large quantities from the primary market using specialised software and fraudulent means, and regular consumers missing out before then being fleeced on the secondary market. That is why I was concerned last week to read that the Department for Business and Trade had, after sitting on it for 19 months, decided not to implement the proposals from the CMA’s 2021 report, which would have improved its capacity to enforce legislation and made life much harder for professional touts, and made the CMA’s consumer enforcement powers sufficiently strong enough to tackle illegal bulk-buying and speculative selling. But instead, sadly, the Government effectively gave the bad actors a free pass, ignoring the overwhelming evidence of the uncontrolled black market, with unlawful practices still rife on websites such as Viagogo and StubHub.

There is enough available evidence to indicate that consumers are still being ripped off and harmed as a result, and still will be, sadly, after this Bill becomes law in its current form. For example, three particular Viagogo sellers attempting to speculatively sell thousands of festival tickets that they had not bought; or the Golden Circle, an online rent-a-bot group illegally buying masses of tickets for Eurovision, Beyoncé and others, resulting in less availability at face value for genuine fans, who are then priced out when the touts put these ill-gotten tickets for sale on the secondary platforms—blatant profiteering.

The Government’s recent approach, ignoring the recommendations of the CMA, seems to rely on the conviction of just two touts some three years ago as a deterrent. This conviction—important and groundbreaking though it was—actually relied upon the Companies Act 2006 and the Fraud Act 2006, not the purpose-built Consumer Rights Act 2015 that I was involved in, or the Digital Economy Act 2017. That suggests that the actual enforcement of legislation is insufficient—something that this Bill must surely look to fix. I will say more about that later in my remarks.

Even in a negative outlook whereby we might believe that ticket touting will never be completely eradicated, the fact that artists and fans are equally appalled by how touting goes unchecked must surely put fire behind the need for policymakers to take further action. Otherwise, we should assume that the Government want to control the loopholes, corruption and profiteering that is rife within this marketplace.

The Government are failing consumers, as bad-faith actors and harmful practices continue to harm them with industrial-scale touting. I worry that this is because of a widespread lack of knowledge of the industrial scale of touts and the bad-faith actors engaged in the practice. The fact is that between 1,200 and as many as 1,600 professional touts still operate, committing the exact same offences that those two were convicted for. That is an appalling track record, and not at all evidence that the current laws or law enforcement in this area are working, regardless of what the Minister would have us believe.

Consumers face an unfair market in primary sale, before then being ripped off in the secondary market. Most of us in this House will know the injustice that fans feel. At times, we are those fans who miss out when we try to get tickets. As MPs, we see the often heartbreaking letters from constituents who have been ripped off. This is genuine consumer detriment—exactly what this Bill is supposed to try and fix. It is detriment and harm that this Bill will not help or bring to an end in its current form, as the Government have refused to implement the small but much-needed proposals requested by the CMA in this area.

It is important to point out that these activities also pejoratively affect the live music industry and the value chain, with knock-ons for not only consumers but that vital part of the UK economy. Touting is not limited to live music or theatres; it affects sporting events too. Take football, for example, where touting is already supposed to be illegal. There are, on average, 20 to 30 active touts selling tickets for premier league fixtures with impunity. This is illegal. Let us bear in mind that the inconspicuous nature of touting means that this number is likely to be a large underestimation. According to Home Office figures, yearly arrests of football ticket touts have been decreasing, dropping from 107 arrests in 2011-12 to only 28 in the 2019-20 season.

What real assessment would the Government make of the capacity of enforcement agencies, such as National Trading Standards, Action Fraud or even the police, to clamp down on this malpractice? Two prosecuted touts is hardly the bragging rights that the Minister thinks.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I certainly do not ask for any bragging rights. May I thank the hon. Lady for the work she does on the all-party parliamentary group on ticket abuse? On the case she refers to, she is right to say that it is three years since the conviction took place, but the confiscation order, which was for £6.1 million, took place only in December last year. Does she think that sends a strong message to the cohort of people she refers to that there are strict and strong penalties for people who engage in that kind of activity?

[Mrs Hodgson]

We would all like to think that it would with right-minded people, but I do not think professional touts think like the Minister or any of us in this House, so they probably have not seen it as a deterrent. From what I am hearing from the experts I work with, it is still going on—it is business as usual for the touts. We really need more enforcement in this area. More laws are good, but laws without enforcement just do not work.

The UK is rightly proud of its live event industry, but do the Government really know what the consumer experience often is? I would be interested to learn which experts, campaigners or live music representatives the Government worked with or consulted when they rejected the CMA’s advice so firmly. I have written to the Minister to ask him that, so he can respond in writing if he does not have that information to hand or in his memory from those meetings.

The Minister rejected the advice on this area, saying that resale sites like Viagogo may

“still provide a service of value to some consumers”.

The many tens of thousands of victims of Viagogo may disagree. That misses the point entirely. Resale sites allow touts to commit fraud every single day and permit them to charge inexplicably high prices for such tickets. Illegal activity is happening on those sites right now, as we sit here discussing the issue. Such sites are profiting from that, and the CMA has no power to do anything about it, which is why the Bill needs additional measures. I hope the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology will take a different approach to its forerunner Department, because the Bill is a perfect and timely opportunity to rectify the situation.

If, as the Minister has said, broader changes to consumer law are the priority, I look forward to learning what changes to the proposed legislation his Government will allow. At present, despite the enhanced consumer protection in the Bill, which he spoke of in his opening remarks, it will not be able to tackle all the problems in the online secondary ticketing market, as the enforcement is just not there. Speak to any National Trading Standards officer: they want to go after the touts, but their budget of circa £16 million is for everything they need to do and is not sufficient. I am sure they could spend that on enforcement against illegal ticket touting alone.

The Bill looks to provide the CMA with stronger tools to investigate competition problems and take faster, more effective action, including where companies collude to bump up prices at the expense of UK consumers. Is that not exactly the case in the secondary ticketing market, where sites like Viagogo allow individuals, as well as themselves, to profiteer from a manner of resale that contradicts legislation? As part of the Bill, will the Government take the necessary steps to make sure that laws, including those in the Bill, are upheld and enforced properly?

I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response on this matter. Our cross-party group, the all-party parliamentary group on ticket abuse, would be delighted to work with him and his Department to strengthen the legislation and to protect consumers from the abomination of ticket abuse.

Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 20th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Every little helps.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. We all have that image in our head now, of which particular supermarket you are talking about.

As other hon. Members have said, this Bill is much needed and will help in so many ways. Hon. Members have sought to address a number of vexed issues in this legislation. This includes an attempt, through our Opposition amendment 225, to address drip pricing, which I know as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on ticket abuse is especially prevalent in the primary and secondary ticketing markets. In these markets, customers often have to wait until the payment screen to see a complete price breakdown. In the secondary market, customers are often drawn in by Google-paid ads to professional looking sites such as Viagogo, which are selling tickets for many times their face value and engaging in illicit business practices. Initial prices, while eye-watering, are present, but there is no breakdown of the exact amounts for service charges or VAT.

The consumer is left in the dark about what they are actually paying for until it is time to pay, usually after having navigated many more time-wasting pages on the website and almost losing the will to live and the power of rational thought. Even then, the prices are often still estimates when the customer eventually hits “Buy now”, after feeling that they will lose the tickets if they do not make the decision quickly. Lots of customers still get a nasty surprise when the payment confirmation email comes in and they see the actual amount that has been taken from their bank account or credit card.

Moving on more broadly to the Competition and Markets Authority, I am aware that the CMA made its recommendations on tackling abuses in the ticketing market to the Government in August 2021, which the Department for Culture, Media and Sport then sat on for over 18 months before making an outright rejection of them. Principally, these recommendations called for stronger laws to tackle illegal ticket resale, and this Bill could and should have been—and could still be—the perfect place to introduce those powers. I am therefore very disappointed that the Government are still resisting these modest calls from the body set up to regulate our markets.

I support efforts in the Bill to ensure healthy competition online, but why not extend it to tackle online ticket touts? Sites such as Viagogo have been allowed to grow and gain a monopoly over ticket resales while being accused of benefiting from the illegal bulk buying of tickets and the wholesale speculative selling of tickets that they simply do not have. This includes Viagogo sellers attempting to sell thousands of festival tickets that they had not purchased and did not have the title to, as well as something known as the golden circle, an online rent-a-bot group illegally buying masses of tickets for the upcoming tours of Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, even when artists such as Swift actively speak out against touting and take measures to protect their tickets from ending up in the hands of touts instead of fans.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Penrose]

I do not know whether the hon. Lady heard my earlier remarks, but let me reassure her that new clause 31 would not reduce the CMA just to that; it would still have all its other powers. In fact, the total number of staff employed by the RPC to do this at the moment is relatively small. I also mentioned that if the Minister were able to come up with alternative ways of delivering a fully independent and therefore much more objective way of doing the RPC’s job—perhaps by strengthening the RPC—I would be delighted to accept that instead.

[Mrs Hodgson]

I agree. I am sure that would be a much better way. I definitely do not think that the CMA should have to do what the new clause is seeking to do.

I have it on good authority that professional touts now number anywhere from 3,000 and 3,500. In all the time I have been campaigning and speaking on this issue, which is getting on for 15 years, those numbers were in the tens, the fifties and the hundreds. It shocks me to know that we are now trying to deal with this level of professional touts. They are attacking everywhere, from stadium gigs to local venues and, increasingly, football games. They should not be able to tout tickets for football games, but they do. Yet according to Home Office figures, the yearly arrests of football ticket touts have been decreasing, dropping from 107 in 2011-12 to only 28 in the 2019-20 season.

In my opinion, the lone conviction of just two touts nearly four years ago, which we discussed with the Minister in the last debate on this Bill, is not a strong enough deterrent, especially as it relied on outdated legislation such as the Companies Act 2006 and the Fraud Act 2006, rather than the purpose-built Consumer Rights Act 2015, which I was substantially involved in, or the Digital Economy Act 2017.

I appreciate the efforts in the Bill to protect consumers online, and I can see that there are measures in the Bill to be welcomed, but for me, ticket touting and the widespread fraud that comes with it must be properly addressed and regulatory bodies must be fully empowered to tackle these sites. I will leave my remarks there.

Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 30th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

It is not our intention. Our intention is to strike a balance. As I have said, the courts’ approach to proportionality was set out by the Supreme Court in Bank Mellat v. Her Majesty’s Treasury (No. 2), when the Court described the elements to be considered, including, most notably,

“whether a less intrusive measure could have been used”

and whether there is a fair balance between the intended objectives of the measure and the effects on the business that the measure applies to. That is a sensible balance to strike. Of course, some stakeholders want to go further in certain directions, while others do not want us to go as far, and we are trying to strike that balance. We welcome big tech’s investment in the UK, but we also welcome investment by challenger tech, and through this groundbreaking Bill—the only one of its kind in the world—we are striking that balance.

We have listened carefully to arguments relating to the Secretary of State’s approval of CMA guidance. Lords amendment 38, which was tabled by Lord Lansley, adds a timeline for the Secretary of State approving CMA guidance relating to the new regime. In response, we have tabled amendment (a) in lieu, which would achieve a similar effect by introducing a statutory 30-working-day timeline for the Secretary of State to approve the necessary guidance. We believe that that addresses concerns about the ability of the digital markets regime to start tackling competition problems without delay. We hope that hon. Members will support amendment (a).

On secondary ticketing, a non-Government amendment —to which the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) referred—was made in the other place to the consumer part of the Bill. Amendment 104, which was tabled by Lord Moynihan, seeks to introduce additional regulatory requirements on ticket resale sites. Those requirements would cover proof of purchase, ticket limits and the visibility of certain required information, such as the face value of a ticket. Both Lord Moynihan and the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) have spoken passionately on that topic during proceedings on the Bill. We are hugely grateful for their work highlighting the malpractice in the resale market.

To be clear, the Government are absolutely committed to protecting consumers from fraudulent activity in the secondary ticketing market. However, it is our view that protections for consumers are already provided by existing consumer law. The law imposes specific information requirements in relation to secondary ticketing that go above and beyond those in general consumer law. That includes the requirement for all resellers—be they traders or consumers—and secondary ticketing platforms to inform a buyer about the face value of a ticket and the restrictions on its use. The Government’s position is therefore that the secondary ticketing market is already suitably regulated. That said, we recognise the strength of feeling on this matter, which has been expressed by Members of the other place and in certain quarters of this House, so we commit today to undertaking a review of ticketing practices and how they impact on consumers. The review will look at both primary and secondary markets—in other words, sellers and resellers. We believe it important to consider both markets together.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I am very grateful to the Minister for giving way. I know that we have debated this point before, and I will discuss it further in my contribution, but I make the point again that there may be legislation, but it is not working. There have been only two prosecutions in all the time since the Consumer Rights Act 2015 was passed. If further legislation was not needed, why did we bring in legislation to protect tickets for the Olympics?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

It is not right to say that there have been only two prosecutions—

[Mrs Hodgson]

rose—

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I will just finish this answer. There have been two sentences. Two people got a £6.1 million fine. There were four more successful prosecutions in Leeds Crown court only very recently, and sentence is due to be imposed on those individuals. The hon. Lady raises important points, and did great work on the all-party parliamentary group, and I will always listen to her. We are undertaking a review looking at primary and secondary markets, and she will have every chance to give her input to that review, just as anybody else will. I look forward to hearing her representations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Hodgson]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Sir Chris Bryant]

I feel the fingernails.

[Mrs Hodgson]

I waited until my hon. Friend got to the end of all those disgraceful, abhorrent examples. Will he clarify for me a fallacy that the touts often put around about me and my hon. Friends—they will say the same about him? They say that we want to stop people being able to resell their tickets when they cannot go—they have bought them in good faith and genuinely cannot go. Will he clarify that that is not what any of us seeks to do? I of course want people to be able to resell their tickets, but at face value. Does he agree?

[Sir Chris Bryant]

I completely agree, and that is Labour party policy. I am used to fallacies being written about me, and I have seen many written about my hon. Friend as well. I am sure we will all get over it. Incidentally, that is why, as I shall come on to say later, it is very important that we have a free press that is able to say what it wants, free from the intervention of state owners from other countries.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course, it is perfectly legitimate for somebody who has bought a couple of tickets for Saturday night and who suddenly finds that they are ill, that they have to go to a family engagement or that they have bought tickets for the wrong night to be able to sell them on at face value, or perhaps for a little bit more simply to cover the cost of administration and things like that. However, this is a market that is not working. It is an example of market failure, not an example of market success.

--- Later in debate ---

[Barbara Keeley]

I rise to speak against the Government motion to disagree with Lords amendment 104. As we have already heard, the amendment seeks to safeguard fans from fraudulent abuse, which is rife in the secondary ticketing market. It is an important amendment on an issue that, as we have heard—it is worth saying again—has had much work invested in it by my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) and her colleagues on the all-party parliamentary group on ticket abuse. It also had great attention in the music industry, which is loud in its support for tackling ticket touting. Anyone who has tried to buy a ticket for a popular concert knows the frustration of losing out on tickets, only then to see the same tickets at 10 times the price on the secondary market.

Touting goes deeper than mere frustrations: it prices fans out of attending music, cultural and sports events; it damages the relationship between venue, artist and fan; and it undermines confidence in our live music industry. Yet, despite the calls of major UK music industry bodies, including UK Music and Live music Industry Venues & Entertainment, the Government have consistently failed to act.

Last year, the Government rejected the recommendations of the Competition and Markets Authority to strengthen legislation and protect UK consumers from illegal practices in the secondary ticketing market. At the time, the CMA warned that unless there was reform, illegal reselling prices would become worse. Lords amendment 104 would implement the recommendations of the Competition and Markets Authority to provide safeguards for consumers. Those are basic protections, such as ensuring that a reseller cannot sell more tickets than they can legally purchase on the primary market, and ensuring that tickets cannot be sold without proof of purchase. It is deeply disappointing that the Government cannot commit even to those basic safeguards.

Under the Government’s watch, the situation has become much worse. In 2007, there were an estimated 150 full-time ticket touts in the UK. Now there are about 4,000 touts attacking ticket systems for UK events, using bots to harvest tickets in bulk. Instead of being used as a resale platform for fans who can no longer make it to an event, ticketing websites are increasingly being used by large-scale touts who harvest tickets on the primary platform—using bots to skip the queue—and sell them on at many times the original price, sometimes speculatively. Ordinary fans do not stand a chance against that; they are the ones who are losing out. The situation has become so bad that police forces in some areas are having to launch public awareness campaigns warning about ticket touts after hundreds of reports of ticket fraud.

Lloyds Banking Group was recently forced to issue a warning to its customers about the risk of buying resold tickets after 600 of its customers reported being scammed when they tried to buy resale tickets for Taylor Swift’s Eras tour. It has been estimated that resale for the UK leg of that tour alone has led to more than £1 million being lost to fraudsters so far. That is happening despite clear messaging from the promoters of the tour that resale tickets bought outside approved channels will be turned away at the door.

As I said earlier, the Government can claim that they are doing enough, and the Minister seems happy with that, but he should look again at those secondary ticketing sites, where he will see three tickets for Taylor Swift’s show on 21 June going for over £72,000. That obviously shows a completely malfunctioning, dysfunctional market.

The Minister cannot claim that the market is functioning for fans and artists—it is actually functioning for touts and the platforms they use. Lords amendment 104 is just one measure that would begin to counter the damage done by ticket touts. I am glad to say that Labour has now committed to going a step further.

Labour would significantly strengthen consumer rights legislation to restrict the resale of tickets at more than a small set percentage over the price the original purchaser paid for it, including fees. Labour would limit the number of tickets that individual resellers can list to the number that individuals can legitimately buy via the original platform. Labour would make platforms accountable for the accuracy of information about the tickets they list for sale, and would ensure that the Competition and Markets Authority has the powers it needs to take swift and decisive action against platforms and touts in order to protect consumers.

The Minister cannot keep sticking his head in the sand. As the Competition and Markets Authority warned in 2021, illegal reselling practices have become worse due to a lack of action. We are now getting to a situation where artists and venues are on the cusp of losing the ability to sell tickets to genuine fans at an affordable price, and working families are being priced out of seeing their favourite artists or their favourite sports team.

Music, culture and sports events must not just be for the elite—the people who can afford thousands of pounds. How can the Government and the Minister justify their opposition to Lords amendments that would keep open access for fans to sport, to arts and to culture? I hope that he will listen to Opposition Members and not press the motion to disagree with this reasonable and modest amendment.

[Mrs Hodgson]

I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate, and it is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), who is doing some great work in this area, formulating our policy for when we will hopefully be in government after the election. I am speaking in the debate in my capacity as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on ticket abuse and to support Lords amendment 104, which relates to the secondary ticketing market.

Before I begin, I reiterate that the sole purpose of the amendment is to protect British consumers from organised crime and to reduce the harm caused by the unlawful and exploitative activities of online ticket touts. Aspects of the amendment have already been recommended by the Competition and Markets Authority, which recognised back in 2021 that the UK needs stronger legislation to tackle the resale of tickets. It is not just me who has been banging on about this since forever—the CMA is also calling for it, having looked at the market for many years.

It has to be said that Lords amendment 104 will not come with any cost to the UK taxpayer either. If it fails to become law, the only beneficiaries will be scammers, fraudsters and the overseas websites that they operate from. So Members will be voting either in the interests of the British public or in the interests of ticket touts.

The Minister said in his opening remarks that all Opposition Members are doing is crowd-pleasing; I am sure I heard his words correctly. I think he will find that the crowd all have votes. This has been a fan-led campaign. Perhaps pleasing the crowd is not always a bad idea. We are here to represent the people, after all. For too long, this Government have allowed an online black market for ticket resale to thrive via websites such as Viagogo, StubHub, Gigsberg, Ticombo and Seatsnet. The public—the crowd, as the Minister called them—are sick to death of it.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

I commend my hon. Friend for all her work over a very long period on this important issue. It is important to support the Lords amendment because so many of our constituents are deprived of even the chance of getting a ticket for a sports match, pop concert or whatever, as they cannot beat the bots. Is that not the inherent unfairness?

[Mrs Hodgson]

It absolutely is. It is not a level playing field at all. I was going to come to the bots, and the fact that nobody has yet been put behind bars for having used bots, even though they are illegal, and are the tool that touts use to harvest tickets, so that they can scam the rest of the population and all our constituents. I am happy to stand here and crowd-please—I will do it until my dying breath—because that is what we are here to do. We should do the right thing for the public, and they are calling for us to regulate this market.

[Sir Chris Bryant]

I do not want my hon. Friend’s dying breath. Did she notice that the lovely Minister did not even present a single argument against any of the elements in the Lords amendment? He did not make the argument on why the Government do not support it, even though it is a patently obvious and sensible measure.

[Mrs Hodgson]

That is a good observation. To hazard a guess, the Minister probably agrees with the Lords amendment. He is a decent chap, and I think he sees the right in it, but he is sitting on the Government Benches. He is always welcome to come and join us on these Benches—it is quite a popular thing to do lately. If he wants to come over here, we will sort this out. It would be great if he was part of that, which is probably deep down what he would like to do.

All the websites that we are talking about are based outside the UK. They employ, essentially, no British staff—maybe a handful at most, but it is hard to check. They all masquerade as marketplaces where fans can buy and resell with other fans, but we know that is not true. All are dominated by large-scale online touts committing criminal offences to harvest tickets in bulk, as my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) said in his excellent intervention. That has led to a highly lucrative resale market worth hundreds of millions of pounds.

This is not small fry anymore. Face-value tickets are syphoned away from genuine fans and sold back to them at highly inflated prices. My hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) said in her excellent speech that the number of touts has gone from hundreds to many, many thousands. It is getting out of proportion. This is best summed up by Chris Allison, the former deputy assistant commissioner at the Metropolitan police. Following a four-year investigation of touts post the Olympics—those tickets were protected in law, as I mentioned earlier—he stated:

“Touts are part of organised criminal networks often involved in other crimes”.

In recent years, enforcement bodies such as the CMA, National Trading Standards and the Advertising Standards Authority have tried, with varying degrees of success, to intervene in this broken market, either to prosecute the touts who are unlawfully defrauding music and sports lovers, or to force the ticket resale websites to comply with consumer protection legislation. And, oh my, the CMA has tried so hard to force those websites to comply, using the measures that it has to hand, which are not enough. It has even asked for further measures; as we heard in the last debate on this subject, the Government rejected that.

This has become an increasingly complex situation to sort out. That is why the Labour party is seeking to follow the examples of countries such as Ireland, France and Australia by capping the price at which tickets can be resold. Let me draw the House’s attention to my private Member’s Bill in 2011, which sought to do just that: cap resale at face value plus 10%, as the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant), said. That would allow someone reselling tickets to reclaim extra costs, such as booking fees.

Contrary to what has been written about me over many years, I do not want to stop any fans from reselling their tickets if they can no longer go to the event. I just want the industrial-scale, parasitic scalping to stop. However, until we get to that point—and while the Conservatives are still in government—it is important that current legislation is made as effective as possible. They could ensure that now. The small measures that we are talking about do not go as far as we plan to go, but they would be a start in preventing consumer harm and making it harder for bad actors to thrive.

I support Lords amendment 104, introduced by my friend and co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on ticket abuse Lord Moynihan, with the assistance of Lord Clement-Jones, Baroness Jones and others. We have Lord Moynihan to thank for the amendments to the Consumer Rights Act 2015 that got through small measures that we hoped would be the panacea for all the problems in the secondary market, but nine years later, that Act has not fixed this broken market. That is why we need this amendment.

In the amendment, proposed new section 92A(1) of the 2015 Act would compel touts to provide proof of purchase to the ticketing facility, or evidence of title to the tickets offered for resale. That is common sense, pragmatic and cost-free. The provision would target traders and businesses only, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South said, would eliminate the speculative selling that is endemic on platforms such as Viagogo, and the emotional devastation and physical risk that comes with it. I have seen numerous cases of what she spoke about: people being turned away, after having travelled from one end of the country to the other at great expense, and having booked overnight accommodation. They find that they cannot get into the theatre, the O2, the concert or whatever it may be, because they have invalid tickets.

Someone wrote to me recently who got in touch with Viagogo before the event because they feared that they had an invalid ticket. They were told to try their luck on the door, regardless of the fact that it was an invalid ticket. They knew that they would be turned away at the door with this Taylor Swift ticket, but were told, “Just try your luck. If you can’t get in, we’ll give you a refund.” They would have to fight for it first, and it would take six months if they were lucky. This person was also told, “Why not sell it on? List it again, and we won’t charge you a fee.” It is outrageous that she was supposed to pass it on. I have emails between her and Viagogo to back this up. She was being encouraged to sell on a ticket that she knew was invalid, causing more victims. Those are the sorts of practices that these websites use.

In August 2022, an ITV investigation based on data from FanFair Alliance found that two thirds of festival tickets on Viagogo were fraudulently listed by just three individuals. These resellers are relatively few in number but account for 90% to 95% of the tickets sold on platforms such as Viagogo. Let us think about that: just three major touts were selling 90% to 95% of festival tickets. Other platforms, such as Gigsberg, are 100% reliant on businesses and traders, many of whom my APPG and the CMA believe are acting illegally.

Subsection (2) of proposed new section 92A would crack down on the industrial harvesting of tickets by preventing resellers from selling more tickets to an event than they can legally purchase from the primary market. That is just common sense, surely. This was first recommended by the CMA in August 2021, almost three years ago. It made the proposal after a six-year enforcement investigation that concluded, as I said, that the CMA needed “stronger laws” to tackle illegal ticket resale. This change would make it easier for genuine fans to access tickets instead of professional touts looking to make a parasitical profit.

Despite the fact that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish said, using bots and other malicious software is illegal, touts do so without fear of prosecution, as no one has yet been prosecuted for using bots for the industrial harvesting of tickets. Artists such as Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift have repeatedly stated that they do not wish for their tickets to be touted. Artists get upset when their loyal fans blame them for not protecting them from touts, even though they do try. Both Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran have gone to great lengths to try to protect their fans from the touts.

Subsections (3) and (4) of proposed new section 92A force touts to clearly state the face value of any ticket listed for resale—again, surely that information should be provided—and to ensure

“the trader or business’s name and trading address are clearly visible, in full, on the first page the ticket is viewable on.”

The information

“must not be hidden behind an icon, a drop down menu or other device”,

which is what actually happens. The Consumer Rights Act states explicitly—these are Lord Moynihan’s reforms, which were added to the 2015 Act—that platforms must legally provide buyers with seat locations, face-value prices and restrictions, for example. They should be provided

“in a clear and comprehensible manner”

and

“before the buyer is bound by the contract for the sale of the ticket.”

Before they purchase, consumers have a right to know what they are buying, and who they are buying it from. That is in current law, but Viagogo has a track record of hiding face value behind what we call “hover text”, or small, tiny icons marked “FV”, so you have to know what you are looking for to find it. It obscures trader identities behind a tiny star icon, and only reveals a trader’s identity after the user enters their credit card details and has gone through the CAPTCHA process, so the user has often committed to buying before they know who they are buying from and what the face value is. That is in straight contravention of the 2015 Act.

On 99.9% of other websites, CAPTCHA is used to protect consumers. On Viagogo, it is used to protect the identity of its commercial suppliers—in other words, touts. Details of any ticket restrictions—for example, the information that resale is only allowed at face value—are provided in an unclear and incomprehensible manner, and are often buried in the middle of other small print, and then negated by claims about Viagogo’s “guarantee”—that is a very loose term if you are on Viagogo’s website.

Those practices are purposely misleading for most, but even more so for those who are visually impaired, tourists who do not speak fluent English, or older people without niche technical skills, who could be buying tickets for a grandchild’s birthday. I have had lots of grandparents in touch with me. As someone said—I think it was my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South—they then feel stupid. I have had such a number of emails from people saying, “This is my fault. I was stupid. I should have known better. I should have checked.” We should not allow companies to exist that do this in such a big way. They say, “Buyer beware”; that is Viagogo’s motto, I think. It is probably hidden on its website. What is happening is not right, and it is up to us to protect consumers; that is what Parliament is for. We should not allow this to happen on such a scale.

Furthermore, experts involved with the all-party parliamentary group on ticket abuse have found that large numbers of sellers are based abroad, or have links to forms of organised crime all the way up to convicted drug dealers, money launderers and bank robbers. The secondary ticketing market is not full of “classic entrepreneurs” as a former Chancellor and former Culture Secretary, the right hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Sir Sajid Javid), would have us believe. They are serious criminals. If Members want to see when he said that, it was in 2011 when he was helping to talk out my private Member’s Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is making a really important point. She rightly points out the degree of criminality at the highest end of the organisations that are responsible for the touting industry, and the lack of prosecutions. It is actually quite a good business proposition for them, is it not? It is relatively risk-free. They are probably more likely to get sentenced for being an international drug dealer than for selling the tickets.

[Mrs Hodgson]

It is very interesting that my hon. Friend has come to the same conclusion I have. I have made that exact point in many interviews over the years: why would anybody go out and rob banks or do any sort of crime for which they might get caught, when they could just be a ticket tout? They’ll make a fortune and nobody will come after them, not even the taxman. There will be no hand of the law on their shoulder. There have been only two cases and six prosecutions in all the time I have been campaigning on this issue. So yes, it is time we sorted it out. It is just not acceptable.

The recent case that I think the Minister referred to earlier involved individuals being convicted for buying and reselling tickets worth £6.5 million—£6.5 million. They have been caught, but that is because they are right up at the top end. There will be people making £1 million, half a million pounds, £2 million or £3 million who have not been caught. There are so many touts. The case involved using multiple, often fake, identities to buy large numbers of tickets with multiple credit cards. However, convictions are extremely few and far between, despite thousands of professional touts operating.

Finally, those who trade in the UK must be subject to UK laws—surely we all agree with that. Subsection (5) of proposed new section 92A states:

“A secondary ticketing facility must make it clear to traders and businesses based overseas that sell tickets to UK consumers and target UK consumers through paid or sponsored advertisements”—

in some cases using Google and trusted publications, or even sponsoring podcasts by trusted influencers—

“or paid infomercials that they are subject to UK legislation.”

The vast majority of suppliers to Viagogo and other secondary platforms are commercial businesses. A significant proportion are based outside the UK, as I said, but they target UK events to derive the highest possible profit. Likewise, none of the websites have offices in the UK. There are no UK jobs at stake, apart from a handful. It has been quite hard for me and my team to check and be sure of the numbers, as these companies are all registered in tax havens and overseas. However, the damage and exploitation occur in the UK at the expense of artists, athletes and fans, without any fear of the current toothless UK law.

Viagogo has already had its wings clipped, partially, by CMA orders over the years, but in my opinion it is nowhere near enough. It has repeatedly shown that it cannot be trusted to mark its own homework. For instance, elsewhere Viagogo was fined 7 million Australian dollars for misleading consumers, €20 million for breaking the law in Italy and €400,000 in France for breaking the law around rugby world cup tickets. Yet we heard the Minister’s colleague, the Minister for Media, Tourism and Creative Industries, spouting the Viagogo lines of defence from the Dispatch Box just a couple of weeks ago—go figure! This is all on the record, because my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South raised it in a point of order a couple of weeks ago, just after the Minister for Media, Tourism and Creative Industries did it.

Unless legislative action is taken to stop this black market, it will continue to grow and cause further damage. This modest amendment effectively plugs loopholes in legislation, and ensures that music and sport fans of all ages have the information that they need before they make that purchase. I implore everyone here today to please support Lords amendment 104 and start putting fans first—or else move aside so that we can do so.

[Alex Davies-Jones (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

It is an absolute privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson)—my good friend—who has been a tenacious campaigner on this issue for so many years, and I implore Ministers to listen to her and note her expertise. I ask them please to back Lords amendment 104. A review is not good enough in the dying days of a failing Government; we desperately need action now.

It is a pleasure to speak in the debate. I proudly saw this Bill through part of its Commons stages in my previous role as the shadow tech and digital economy Minister, and it is fantastic to see it so ably steered through the House today with the support of my good friend and neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant).

As we have heard, what was draft legislation for so long has been woefully slow to materialise. It had sat on the shelf since 2018, so it is nice to finally see it brought back to the House today and to see the Government taking action. I welcome it, as does the Labour party more widely, having led the way in calling on the Government to ensure that large tech companies are governed by proper regulations to allow for competition in our digital markets. Labour has long called for measures to protect consumers, enhance innovation and promote competition in digital markets in order to unlock growth and level the playing field for smaller businesses. In the midst of a Conservative cost of living crisis, this measure could not be more timely, and the need for it has been constantly confirmed in conversations I have had with constituents in Pontypridd.

Let us not forget that it is been over a year since the legislation was first proposed here. Owing to internal chaos and conflict, the Tories have long delayed the Bill, and it is disappointing that we are now being given a watered-down version of the original Bill and that its delay is causing us to fall behind our European partners. The UK has the potential to lead the way, but the Government have instead chosen to take a back seat and to be led. To say that the Bill is overdue is an understatement. Since it was promised, we have seen the digital world continue to change, grow and expand at an incredible and exponential rate. We have seen a significant growth in artificial intelligence technology hitting the mainstream, and tech is becoming more and more central to our homes, jobs and social lives. Our post-covid world has adapted to hybrid, tech-dependent working styles, and jobs in all sectors have accommodated that preference.

Whether it be for work, shopping or our social lives, we are all spending more time online. I see that—sadly—in my own habits, as well as those of my colleagues and constituents. I believe we can all agree that a thriving digital economy in which all sectors and all businesses become digital is vital for the UK’s economic growth, but the Government have nevertheless failed to keep up. Now that they have finally decided to deliver this albeit watered-down legislation, it is up to them to ensure that it survives and, if it does, to protect it from further watering-down changes. So far, I am not convinced that that will be the case. The Government have tabled an amendment in lieu of one of the Lords amendments, but they are ignoring the remainder. While most of the disagreement relates to different semantic interpretations of the wording, it is important that we get the wording right so that the Bill works in practice and not just on paper.

I am afraid that these frustrations are not new. Many of them are not dissimilar to those that my colleagues and I raised during the Committee stage of the Online Safety Act 2023. Let us be clear: while big companies have a significant impact on our economy, that power should never be extended to our legislative process. The process of forming and scrutinising legislation should be entirely independent from any private company interest. Parliamentarians and our Government should not be influenced in any circumstances, because we as public servants should be here for our people—our constituents— rather than being here to promote and advance the interests of big companies and big tech. What is more important to the Government: appeasing big companies or acting for the good of the people they are supposed to represent? If it is not appeasing big companies, why will they not revert to ensuring that the CMA’s interventions are appropriate rather than proportionate?

We all know that this change will have a significant impact on the scope of the big tech firms to challenge CMA decisions under judicial review. Given that courts have to navigate these new and broader grounds for judicial review appeals against those decisions, big tech firms are provided with huge, limitless legal budgets and bottomless pockets to tie up the CMA in lengthy legal disputes. It is imperative that the Lords amendments remain in their original form to hold big tech firms accountable, to limit their scope to appeal and to reduce the ambiguity in relation to court interpretation about which we have heard today.

Moving beyond those concerns, this Bill is still absolutely necessary, which is why it has the support of the Labour party, as do the Lords amendments. We all know that the digital economy has opened new markets for businesses and has given consumers access to new information, but with rivals unable to compete with the world’s most powerful global companies, they do not sit on an equal footing. Google has a more than 90% share of the 7.3 billion search advertising market in the UK, and Facebook has over 50% of the £5.5 billion display advertising market. That is completely unfair, and constitutes both a challenge to businesses and a detriment to consumers.

This means that everyday consumers have little to no autonomy over their online choices, or in how much data they have to give out. As for businesses, this is limiting their innovation, as their ideas are likely to be quashed by an algorithm and they are therefore unable to compete by any reasonable and fair means. For example, Amazon’s use of its position as a marketplace, a publisher and a bookseller has been detrimental to the potential and work of independent booksellers who are pushed aside because they cannot compete with these huge companies and the advantages that the marketplace affords them. I am glad to see that the Lords amendments recognise the importance of user choice, autonomy and independence from the big companies that are pushing an agenda and escaping scrutiny.

Why, then, have the Government shied away from this? If, as they claim, the wording maintains the same high threshold, why will they not clarify the fact that the “indispensable” standard and the new standard are equal? What exactly are they afraid of? Big tech must be held accountable, and must not be able to complicate legal proceedings and escape scrutiny. Surely that point should not cause disagreement. Why have the Government again moved to a merit appeals approach to penalty decisions? This is completely unworkable. Proceedings must take a judicial review approach, which means that a decision will be judged on the basis of its lawfulness rather than its correctness or the views of a tribunal. This approach will fail to incentivise big tech firms to comply with CMA decisions.

While the Tories’ watering down of the Bill may initially appear trivial, in fact it will only encourage big tech to challenge the decisions of the CMA. If we want the Bill to be workable—to be worth the paper on which it is written—we must ensure that it is clear, precise and unambiguous. Given that the judicial review and merits elements of appeals could bleed into one another—which is causing concern—ambiguity is already rife in this Bill.

The Government must reverse their watering down of this all-important legislation or, at the very least, clarify exactly what the changes to the wording represent. That is exactly why the Lords amendments are so necessary. I urge the Government to reconsider them with the seriousness that they deserve and, at the minimum, to make efforts to compromise, as they have done with one of them. The same must be done for the other three in question.

The Lords amendments would bring small businesses on to a level playing field, and protect the autonomy and pockets of our consumers. If the Bill fails to do that and is watered down any further, it will not be worth the paper it is written on. The Government can do the right thing. They should take the opportunity to do so, and I implore them to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Hollinrake]

We believe that those measures, such as on the face value of the ticket, are already covered by the current legislation and enforcement. The Government have certainly gone a lot further than previous regimes have: we strengthened the terms and guidance in 2017; we banned ticketing bots—the hon. Gentleman mentioned that but did not seem to understand that it had been outlawed in 2018; and we improved enforcement action by the regulators, as we have seen six successful prosecutions under the new regime. I remind him that where other jurisdictions have supposedly gone further in banning resale, such as in Ireland, no prosecutions have taken place. We are trying to ensure that we have a balance and that our provisions work well.

[Mrs Hodgson]

rose—

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I will address the hon. Lady’s points in a moment, as I am keen to respond to some of them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Lady is right to say that there is a difference between legislation and enforcement. We urge the authorities that have responsibility to enforce those provisions to make use of them. In Ireland, where the resale of tickets has been banned, inflated prices are still a feature of the ticket markets. Tickets for Taylor Swift’s Dublin shows are selling well in excess of their face price on the internet in Ireland, but no prosecutions have been made.

[Mrs Hodgson]

rose—

[Kevin Hollinrake]

May I make it clear that I was not accusing the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South of crowd pleasing? As I said in my earlier remarks, and as I will say to the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West before she intervenes, we should not simply take measures that are crowd pleasing in the hope they will work but they are ineffective. That is not to say that we do not think further measures are required.

[Mrs Hodgson]

On the point about Taylor Swift and whether any of her tickets have been sold on the secondary market in Ireland, I challenge the Minister to take another look at that rather than taking the word of his officials or whoever has told him. I have been told that no Taylor Swift tickets are on sale on Viagogo in Ireland. She has stated that her tickets will not be valid if they are resold on a secondary platform, so they will not be found on a secondary platform in Ireland.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Yes, I have just googled sellers of tickets in Dublin, and people can buy tickets well in excess of face value on the platform. I could not find them on Viagogo, but other platforms are selling those tickets. We are trying to do something that is effective. I am very happy to continue to engage with the hon. Lady, as she makes a very compelling case. I shall continue to look at what she says and continue to engage with her. I am very keen to ensure that we get to the right place, so that we protect consumers, but allow a fair, free market to work properly.

Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Tuesday 21st May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I just want to help the Minister correct the record. Through the Olympics legislation, we as a Parliament did not ban resale; we said that resale had to be authorised. I did not want him to have that wrong on the record.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Philip Davies]

I am very grateful. As the hon. Gentleman was struggling so much with the previous intervention, I thought I would intervene and give him a way out. If he gets his way, all that will happen is that all of these tickets sold on the secondary market will be sold by spivs outside the location of an event. Why does the hon. Gentleman think that consumers will be better protected by spivs selling these tickets outside the event than by their being sold on official secondary ticket markets?

[Mrs Hodgson]

Because of the scale!

[Sir Chris Bryant]

The secondary ticket market is the spivs: it is precisely the same set of people scamming the system and the public. They are taking advantage of people’s desire to get tickets, and thereby making the market simply not work in the interests of the creators of the art, the fans, or the stadiums and venues themselves. That is why we want to take action.

--- Later in debate ---

[Barbara Keeley]

It is just not happening. As we heard the last time we debated this issue a few weeks ago, just six people have been convicted of ticketing fraud—four of them in the past week. The exploitative practices that my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant) and I have talked about continue to be rife on resale platforms. The Minister must accept that this derisory and dismal record must not continue. Labour has committed to a range of strong measures to crack down on ticket touts and fix this broken system for fans. Will the Government start to accept the weight of evidence and do the same?

[Mrs Hodgson]

I am thrilled to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), who has done so much work on this matter in the past few years, especially since she took on the brief. She made an excellent speech.

Here we are again. I see that we have been joined by the hon. Member for Shipley (Sir Philip Davies), who back in 2011 did the terrible thing—he might not think it was, but I do—of talking out my private Member’s Bill, the Sale of Tickets (Sporting and Cultural Events) Bill. If it had been passed, we would not be here today, because we would have already fixed this broken market well over a decade ago. I welcome him to his place—I know he likes to keep an eye on his handiwork.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

It is a great shame that the hon. Lady was not listened to 13 years ago, but I have a feeling that, unfortunately, after the Euros, with a political microscope on this issue, we will be back here an awful lot sooner than we think.

[Mrs Hodgson]

Sadly, if amendment 104B is not accepted today, that might be the case.

I welcome the opportunity to speak in today’s debate, as short as it might be. I am sure that the Minister is aware that I am here in my capacity as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on ticket abuse, which has done some great work in this area. I support the Opposition’s manuscript amendment, and therefore support the revised Lords amendment 104B as it relates to the secondary ticketing market. As others have done, I thank the excellent Lord Moynihan for his continued efforts as co-chair of the all-party group to regulate black market resale sites such as Viagogo. He is right to do so, and I commend his tenacity and brilliant work over many years. I fully supported the original amendment 104, but I warmly welcome the difficult decision to reintroduce the amendment with some notable changes.

The Government’s reason for rejecting the original amendment was:

“Because protections for consumers in relation to secondary ticketing are adequately provided for under existing legislation.”

However, despite uncontrolled touting taking place on an industrial scale, with tickets resold through sites such as Viagogo, there has not been a single prosecution under the Breaching of Limits on Ticket Sales Regulations 2018, no convictions for using bots under the Digital Economy Act 2017, and only two major tout prosecutions, with six individual convictions, since 2017. I can hardly see how the Government can describe current legislation as adequate.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

The hon. Lady mentioned Lord Moynihan. For context, it should be remembered that he was a sports Minister in Margaret Thatcher’s Government. If a Thatcher Minister is anti-market—the charge made from the Conservative Benches against anyone who supports his amendment—either the world has gone topsy-turvy or the Tory party has gone so far to the right it has lost itself.

[Mrs Hodgson]

The hon. Gentleman makes exactly the correct point. Lord Moynihan was a highly respected Minister, and he is hardly a lefty—or whatever it is that people call people like me.

--- Later in debate ---

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

The hon. Lady has touched on the industrial scale of this practice, and we have heard about touts outside venues. Families may be thinking of buying tickets, and committing themselves to travelling and spending money on hotels, and that is what is wrong. If that happens again, the Government should face those families and explain why it has happened.

[Mrs Hodgson]

That is a very good point. As much as none of us wants to see any unhappy, devastated fans at any of these venues, we will probably have to face those images, in the emails from those fans, on our television screens and maybe on the front pages of newspapers. We have to be prepared for that, and I am sure that the Minister would be sad to see it.

If the Government are truly committed to another review, I know that Lord Moynihan—as we have heard, a highly respected Conservative Lord and a former Minister—has already been recommended to them as a possible chair. [Interruption.] I hope that the hon. Member for Shipley is agreeing with me. I hope he agrees that that would be a very fair and pragmatic selection. It is one that I would wholeheartedly support.

I will conclude. On two occasions the Lords, having listened to evidence and the stated views of the CMA, have voted through these amendments, but Ministers seem hellbent on ignoring the views of the other place. The Lords have sent a clear message to the Government, asking them to look at the facts and think again. I ask the Minister once again: will he finally side with fans, artists and athletes, support Lords amendment 104B today, and not let this be another opportunity wasted by the Conservative Government? As I said in our last debate on this matter, they should either start putting fans first, or move aside so that we can.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

With the leave of the House, Mr Deputy Speaker, I will address the points that have been raised during the debate.

The hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant) presented a cap on ticket prices as his solution to this problem, but that flies in the face of the evidence given by the CMA in its report. It said that such a measure would not significantly diminish the incentive, and the misconduct would therefore continue. However, it was good to hear the hon. Gentleman finally admit that the market is a good thing—that, coming from an Opposition Member, is a revelation.

There is a common factor between what was said by the hon. Gentleman and what was said by the other contributors to the debate. He said, for instance, that face value was not made sufficiently clear on the various secondary sites, but there is a key saying clearly what face value is on the first pages of the Viagogo and StubHub websites. All those points relate to one thing and one thing only, namely enforcement, because the requirements are there in the existing legislation. We are keen to bolster enforcement. He says that we are somehow kicking and screaming to do so with this amendment, despite the fact that this Government have unilaterally brought forward this legislation. Part 3 offers huge new powers that were not added through an amendment in the Commons or the Lords; they were on the face of the Bill from day one.