Digital Economy Bill

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Wednesday 26th April 2017 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Adams]

I could not agree more. It is despicable that Viagogo has dodged and been slippery around attending the Select Committee. There have been so many victims of Viagogo that it should have taken the opportunity to come and explain how it markets itself and presents its website. I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend.

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

I do not know if you are going to mention Claire Turnham and her campaign at this juncture, and I do not want to steal your thunder if you are, but I just wanted to mention—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)]

The hon. Gentleman’s thunder.

[Mrs Hodgson]

Correct—his thunder. I wanted to mention that I have had an email from Claire Turnham, as I know you have—[Interruption.] He has, I mean. You would think I would have got the hang of this by now, Madam Deputy Speaker—I have been doing it for 12 years. I am obviously demob happy. I do apologise, and I will try to get the protocol right. Claire Turnham has been in touch, and the numbers are shocking—£51,000 has already been refunded to the victims of Viagogo. I was astonished, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman was, that there are still 418 members waiting to join the group.

[Nigel Adams]

I can assure the hon. Lady that my thunder is still very much intact and has not been stolen. I totally agree. The campaign that Claire Turnham has run has been exemplary, but she should not have had to run it. The customer services team at Viagogo should have dealt with the complaints that were flooding in. We will see, but I suspect that we have not heard the last of Viagogo in this place.

Although we have not been able to conclude the inquiry due to the impending Dissolution, I hope that our successor Committee, however it is comprised, will adopt the evidence that we have already heard and continue this work. I thank the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), who has campaigned for years to get wider attention for the problems with secondary ticketing. Based on the number of people across the country who have shared their stories of being ripped off or missing out on a favourite show because of the practices of parasitical touts, I imagine that a large number of colleagues across this House have also heard from affected constituents how these practices are poisoning our cultural wells both for fans and creators.

Amendment 247 will prohibit breaches of ticket sales limits, helping to combat touts who use bot software to gobble up tickets before genuine fans can get them. I originally tabled a version of this amendment in Committee, and, thankfully, members of the Select Committee unanimously added their names. I am grateful to Ministers, particularly my right hon. Friend the Minister for Digital and Culture, a huge Paul Simon fan who has had experiences trying to gain Paul Simon tickets; to Members of the other place for their co-operation in fleshing out the legal details for a workable law; and to the Secretary of State for her work in engaging very closely with the industry.

It is particularly important that the amendment provides for an unlimited fine when someone is found guilty of this offence. Fans and ticket agents have been engaged in a technological arms race against increasingly sophisticated touts who can make tens of thousands of pounds of profit in one go from, say, just one pair of Adele tickets. To prevent fans from being fleeced and to protect the rights of artists to decide how they want to sell their tickets, we needed to make touting a genuinely bad proposition for those seeking to make a quick windfall, and a smaller fine could not have done that. I am very pleased that this law has teeth.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Hodgson]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Gentleman, who I have got to know very well in our time campaigning on this issue during this and the last Parliament. It is a real delight that we have reached this stage and I rise to speak in favour of Lords amendments 246 and 247 on the resale of tickets. It is with great delight that I welcome the news that the Government accept those Lords amendments and that they will make it on to the statute book before this Parliament dissolves.

It goes without saying that we would not be in this position without the concerted cross-party campaigning to put fans first in this broken market. None of that would have happened without the campaigning by me and others over the years. The list is very long, so I hope that the House will indulge me. It includes the steadfast support received from my own party’s Front Benchers, especially in recent years. The shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh), made an excellent speech today; I sincerely hope that she will be returned so that she can continue in that vein.

Conservative Members have also given support, including, most notably in the last Parliament, Mike Weatherley, the former Member for Hove and Portslade, who I know is a friend of the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams). Mike Weatherley and I founded and co-chaired the all-party parliamentary group on ticket abuse. In recent years, the hon. Gentleman, the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) and other members of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, including the hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston)—I was going to say the gentleman sitting over there wearing a red tie, but that would have made me sound like David Dimbleby—have worked tirelessly on its investigation into the secondary ticketing market. I sincerely hope that the Committee will pick up on the issue again in the next Parliament, so that all of the inquiry’s hard work is not lost. I am sure that that will happen.

I also acknowledge the Minister’s customary good humour and willingness to listen, which, along with the work of shadow Front Benchers in the Lords and those who tabled the amendments, has ensured that we have reached a satisfactory conclusion. I also thank the Secretary of State, who I am pleased to see in the Chamber. More than three years ago, when she was a Home Office Minister, she met me and the former Member for Hove and Portslade to discuss the fraud aspect of this issue. That proves that Ministers have long memories, so such meetings are worth it.

[Matt Hancock]

In response to a point raised by the hon. Lady and my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams), we are clear that section 93 of the Consumer Rights Act requires secondary sellers to provide information on ticket restrictions on resale.

[Mrs Hodgson]

Excellent. I was going to come on to that issue, following on from the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty. I will have to remember not to press the Minister on it, because he has already addressed it. That is welcome and I am pleased that he has put it on the record.

I also commend the sterling work over many years by colleagues on both sides of the House of Lords. Way back in 1997, the Labour peer Lord Pendry, the then shadow Sports Minister, was the first to coin the phrase “put fans first”, so I cannot claim credit for that, as I did not invent it. He campaigned on the issue way back then, but sadly for him and, indeed, for us, he was not made a Minister in the Government that followed, so he was not able to ensure that this happened 20 years ago. That shows that this day has been a very long time coming.

More recent contributions have been made by Lord Stevenson and Baroness Hayter from the Labour Front Bench, Lord Clement-Jones of the Liberal Democrats and the amazingly talented late Baroness Heyhoe Flint of the Conservatives, who tabled the first relevant amendments in the Lords and who sadly passed away a few months ago. She was a joy to work with. Without this campaign I would never have had the chance to know her and I wish I could have had that privilege for longer.

I also want to give a special mention to the former Sports Minister and Conservative peer, Lord Moynihan, whose renowned tenacity during debates on the Consumer Rights Act 2015 and the wash-up at the end of the last Parliament ensured that we got certain measures on to the statute book. Without him, we would not have progressed to where we are now, as we would still be at base camp waiting for the weather to shift. He has been the most amazing ally and expert in this crusade, and all fans across the country who are not ripped off in the future should know his name and thank him.

Having finished the thank yous, I turn to the business at hand. Lords amendments 246 and 247 will take us one step closer to ensuring that fans are finally put first in the secondary market, something has been sorely lacking for years. At this point, I was going to press the Minister on the point that he has clarified, so I thank him again for doing so. Accepting the Lords amendments is a fitting way to end this Parliament, and I am confident that any residual issues will be picked up quickly once Parliament returns following the general election.

None of us know or can predict what will happen come polling day, but if the good people of Washington and Sunderland West re-elect me, and if other Members present are re-elected by their constituents, I will definitely get right back to businesses and pick up where we leave off today, because there are plenty more issues to continue to campaign on. We have taken one step closer, granted, but we are still far from our cross-party vision of a fair market that ensures that fans are not ripped off.

We need to consider the enforcement of current legislation, such as that which is being investigated by the Consumer Markets Authority, as the Chair of the Select Committee mentioned. We need to support the victims of Viagogo, who, as the hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty mentioned, have been unfairly ripped off by one of the worst players in this market, which, disgracefully, did not attend the Select Committee when called to do so. We should definitely revisit that question to see whether there are ways to force companies that have their head office overseas to come and give evidence in this place. It seems wrong that they can evade that by saying that they are not based in the UK when all their customers are based in the UK. We should also ensure that the Waterson review’s recommendations are implemented fully and effectively. The list of things that we need to put right could go on, but those are just a few of the many issues that must be picked up in the next Parliament.