Agriculture Bill

Debate between Sharon Hodgson and Kerry McCarthy

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Money resolution & Programme motion
Monday 3rd February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Virginia Crosbie) on her maiden speech. Her Welsh pronunciation sounded absolutely fine to me, but what would I know? Perhaps my colleague here, my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Gerald Jones), is in a better position to judge.

I do not want to repeat everything that I said on Second Reading or in Committee last time round. I hope to be on the Committee again. I will start on a positive note by saying that an addition to the Bill will now give financial assistance to farmers to share information about agroecology. Those of us in the all-party parliamentary group on agroecology have been involved in this for a long time and we would like to see a little bit more clarity in writing from the Minister about how that will work in practice. We are rather disappointed that there is not more of a commitment to financially rewarding the transition to and practice of whole-farm agroecological systems. There is a concern that we are still looking at small tweaks to a system in which environmental stewardship will be located very much on the margins, rather than being done at farm scale. That is one of the weaknesses of the Bill.

We have talked in the past about county farms, and I know that there was a commitment to support county farms, but it is not in the Bill. I would like to hear more about that if the Minister has time when he winds up.

There is no commitment to net zero by 2040 in the Bill. The NFU supports that, and I would have thought that the Government felt able to commit to putting it in the legislation. That ties in with the whole debate that we need to have about land use, which ranges from the impact of the deforestation of the Amazon and the importation not just of meat but of livestock feed, which has a direct connection with our farming here, to the burning of peatlands—the natural carbon sinks that ought to be protected and preserved, not burned to a cinder because of grouse shooting.

It is widely acknowledged that the common agricultural policy was a failure. It was a blunt instrument that led to the inefficient and unsustainable use of farmland. Landowners and farmers were often rewarded for how much land they had, rather than what they did with it, so I very much support the public money for public goods approach, but there is concern that the future environmental land management scheme could end up failing in the same way if it does not adopt that whole-farm approach to landscape-scale delivery. We also need to build in natural climate solutions to that, and to have far more debate about rewilding, peatlands, the planting of trees, agriforestry and so on. I hope that we will do that in Committee.

The Bill is also silent on the baseline of environmental standards that all farmers should adhere to, whether they are in receipt of financial assistance or not. We discussed that in Committee before, and it is really important that we establish that baseline in law and make it clear not only that farmers will be rewarded for going above those standards but that they will be punished if they go below them. This morning’s report by the Institute for European Environmental Policy highlighted the fact that hedgehogs, birds and mammals could all be at greater risk because of the gaps in domestic regulation as a result of our leaving the EU.

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

As a member of the Children’s Future Food Inquiry, which I co-chaired, my hon. Friend will be aware that we made recommendations to the Government to establish an independent children’s food watchdog to implement policies that could improve families’ access to affordable and healthy food. Does she agree that the small nod to food security in the Bill by way of a report to Parliament every five years is just not good enough in this regard? Does she also agree that the Government should look into implementing a food watchdog?

[Kerry McCarthy]

Yes, I think that that is very much the case. As I am fond of saying, the F in DEFRA stands for food, not just farming. Food is quite cheap and there are question marks about who is paying the price. We only have to look at the breaches of human rights and the modern slavery that is prevalent in our food chain, as well as the difficulties involved in trying to find people to work here. Despite food being cheap, many people still cannot afford to feed their family in a healthy, nutritious way and are forced either to go to food banks or to buy food that is barely worthy of the name. It might have calories in it, but it has very little nutritional value. I want to pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the brilliant work she has done with the Food Foundation and on school food. She has done so much to make the case that food is intrinsically connected with our health. That is such an important thing, and I hope that we can carry on talking about it.

On trade, I tried to introduce new clause 1 on Report in the previous Parliament, but the Bill mysteriously disappeared as we were gearing up for victory. It is so important to have a black-and-white commitment, because I do not believe that many Back Benchers are prepared to accept the Government’s word. Without such a commitment, we will offshore our nature and climate commitments, exacerbating the crisis we face, we will undercut UK producers, creating a race to the bottom here at home to compete on price, and we will leave consumers unprotected against low-quality imports produced to standards that would be illegal on British soil.

Whenever we question the Secretary of State, junior Ministers, the International Trade Secretary or even the Prime Minister, we must listen carefully, because they tend to say, “No lowering of UK standards,” but that is not good enough. This is about the standard of goods that we allow into this country, so it is completely irrelevant to make promises about UK standards. A leaked DEFRA briefing stated that the Department would come under “significant pressure” from the Department for International Trade to weaken our food and environmental standards to secure trade deals, particularly with the US and Australia. I happened to be in Washington at the same time as the previous International Trade Secretary, who was on television saying that he did not think there was a problem with chlorinated chicken.

Now, with the publication of the leaked US-UK trade talk papers, we can see just how determined the US is to weaken our standards. Taken with the evidence American farming lobbyists provided to the US Trade Policy Committee last year, the US wish list now includes: abandoning the precautionary principle for food and farming; accepting hormone-treated beef, chlorine-washed chicken and meat raised with high levels of antibiotics, when we know that there is a crisis in the routine use of antibiotics in farming and its impact on human health; lifting the ban on ractopamine in pork and stopping parasitic tests on pigs; allowing genetically modified foods to be sold with minimal regulation; scrapping mandatory labelling on GMOs and for E number additives and food colourings—if anyone is lost, this is what the US has said its priorities are—ditching rules that protect traditional food and regional specialities, such as pork pies and the salt from Anglesey; removing our safety-first approach to chemicals; and legalising hundreds of pesticides currently banned in the UK under EU law. The latter is a particular cause for concern if we are serious about transitioning to a sustainable food and farming system, because the US currently allows around 1,430 pesticides compared with just 486 in the EU.

That is why those of us who have been engaged in these issues for a while have always been clear that while chlorinated chicken has become totemic, it is just the tip of the iceberg. While the Secretary of State’s commitment on “Countryfile” that we would not import hormone-treated beef or chlorinated chicken was welcome, it does not cover the million and one other issues that we ought to be equally worried about. There are questions, for example, about how easy it would be to unpick the statutory instruments that underpin that position and, frankly, all SIs that contain transferred EU food safety legislation.

I look forward to serving on the Agriculture Bill Committee, Whips permitting, to bringing back my new clause 1 on Report if the Government do not make any concessions—and to winning this time.

Cystic Fibrosis Drugs: Orkambi

Debate between Sharon Hodgson and Kerry McCarthy

Monday 10th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Hodgson]

I agree with my hon. Friend. I hope that the Minister will have some ideas about how this drug company can be held to account and not be allowed to continue in this way. I hope the Minister agrees that the situation should never have been allowed to get to this stage.

Lucaftor has the same active ingredients as Orkambi, and the Argentinian pharmaceutical company Gador is offering a price of £23,000 per patient per year, which drops to £18,000 if patients and their families can get together a group of more than 500 patients to purchase Lucaftor as a collective. That is significantly lower than the £104,000 Vertex wants for Orkambi. I say “want” deliberately—it is not the cost, but what Vertex wants. Of course, for many patients in the UK, Lucaftor will still be way too expensive to access, so it is not a feasible alternative at all. That is why NHS England and Vertex need to come to a conclusion that puts cystic fibrosis patients first, and ensures that they have access to the life-saving drugs they need and deserve.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I thank my hon. Friend for all her support on this issue. I agree that the issue with the Argentinian solution is that in a buyers’ club where people have to pay privately, the drugs will still be out of reach for many people. However, the fact that Gador is offering this drug for so much less than Vertex is charging for a similar product means that the NHS could, if it decided to trial the drug, buy it for 4,000 patients who would benefit from Orkambi. Therefore, no one would have to pay for it privately. The NHS could fund it, but at much less than Vertex is asking for. I ask the Minister: why is that not the solution?

[Mrs Hodgson]

I was going to come on to that, but if a point is worth making once, it is worth making twice. I will make it to the Minister as well, so she will have plenty of time to think about it.

As we all agree, patients and their families should not be put in the position—as some are—of having to pay thousands of pounds for their treatment. Family income should not determine who lives and who dies. That is why the NHS was founded—so that all could have access to the same excellent treatment, regardless of means. That was true 70 years ago when the NHS was formed, and it is still true today.

As the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam pointed out, our NHS is there for us all and should not be held to ransom by a pharmaceutical company, but neither should access be denied because of unfit processes and systems in the NHS. Over the years, as a shadow public health Minister, I have met many patient groups, including those with cystic fibrosis, who are missing out on life-changing medicines because their condition is not rare enough and is therefore not deemed by NICE to be cost-effective. We need an appraisal process that is fit for purpose and that will capture rare diseases such as cystic fibrosis effectively.

Without drugs such as Orkambi, patients and their families are being harmed physically and psychologically. Every day without the drugs that patients need makes their condition worse and threatens their lives. What steps will the Minister take to ensure that patients with rare diseases have access to the medicines that they need and deserve? It is about access not just to Orkambi, but to other precision medications such as Symkevi and the next generation of cystic fibrosis drugs that could help patients who are suffering.

Vertex recently announced the headline results for its fourth cystic fibrosis medicine, a triple combination therapy that could radically transform the lives of nine in 10 people who live with cystic fibrosis in the UK, delivering unprecedented improvements in acute lung health. That is amazing news, but patients fear that they will never be able to access this ground-breaking drug. I urge Vertex to put patients first and consider the real-life impact of this cost dispute on patients and their families.

Vertex and NHS England must come to an agreement urgently, because patients have already waited far too long. If an arrangement cannot be made soon, will the Minister personally step in and pursue the alternatives that my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East mentioned, such as a Crown use licence or a clinical trial? Cystic fibrosis patients need urgent access now to the drug that they have been denied for three years. It is time the Government considered all alternatives.

No-deal EU Exit: Public Sector Catering

Debate between Sharon Hodgson and Kerry McCarthy

Tuesday 5th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Hodgson]

That is the worry. As Bidfood worked out, the cost will have to go up by 69p a child just to stand still. In areas that are trying to keep the price as low as possible, that initiative disappears, but in other areas that are already paying £2.30 or £2.40, what will happen? Parents cannot afford to pay much more than that, so the quality of the food, children’s health and the health of the 10.5 million people who rely on this food every day will suffer as a consequence.

If the Government do not cover the shortfall, menus may have to be reduced so that providers do not overspend. As my hon. Friend has just said, that will compromise the nutritional value of the meals given to service users. An increase in the costs of public sector meals could therefore see an increase in poverty, childhood obesity and malnutrition in hospitals and care homes, which could have serious implications for the health and wellbeing of service users.

The affordability of food post Brexit, especially in the event of no deal, is an incredibly alarming issue. That is the case for all our constituents, but even more so for those who rely on public sector catering for their food. General food shortages due to panic buying or an impact on deliveries due to fuel shortages are of particular concern, especially for public sector catering in hospitals and care homes. The Government should communicate openly and factually about the food challenges ahead and encourage the food industry, caterers, institutions and organisations to do so too.

One person wrote to me to say that the Government had given them

“no real guidance, other than to stockpile food”.

One local authority caterer told Food for Life that it had invested more than £1 million in stockpiling ingredients, including 250 tonnes of meat. However, the caterer is concerned, as that food will only last for a short period. Not every caterer has the capacity to stockpile food. What advice have the Government given to suppliers and caterers? Is advice being updated clearly and regularly?

The Federation of Wholesale Distributors has expressed concern about the continuity of food supplies to schools and hospitals in the event of a no-deal Brexit. It has suggested that food supplies should be triaged and prioritised for those most in need, but that could happen only with Government intervention. Is that something the Minister has considered? Concerns have also been raised with me about products being diverted to more lucrative customers, rather than being prioritised for vulnerable people. Will the Minister address that point too?

The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 does not deal directly with food—probably nobody ever thought that we would be in this position—and nor does it identify responsible agencies with a food remit. Has the Minister had any conversations with his Government colleagues about including food in the 2004 Act, particularly for vulnerable people?

The meals distributed in schools, universities, hospitals, care homes and prisons each day are crucial to those who eat them. Caterers are already beginning to remove higher quality produce from menus, with some school caterers considering a move from hot food to cold meals. That could result in a reduction in the nutritional value of meals, which would be detrimental to children or to service users in the case of the other provisions.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend does amazing work on schools through the all-party parliamentary group, and through the children’s future food inquiry, which I am pleased to be involved in. She will know that there is real concern about children living in food poverty. Indeed, the Food Foundation assessed towards the end of last year that around 3.7 million children are living in households that would have to spend 42% of their annual income to meet the guidance of the “eatwell plate”. That is simply unaffordable and if food prices rocket because of Brexit, it will become even more so. Does she share my concern that we are reaching crisis point?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Hodgson]

That is another very good point. Often, those who supply local authority caterers are some of the best for supplying food banks and FareShare. When they have to trim and trim again, that will be one of the charitable aspects of their operations that will sadly have to go. Again, that will have a knock-on effect on the poorest and most vulnerable in our society.

[Kerry McCarthy]

My hon. Friend is being very generous. I am involved in something called Feeding Bristol, which is an offshoot of Feeding Britain—an organisation that aims to eradicate food poverty. We were discussing this matter at a meeting last week. Food prices going up will create an affordability issue, and if people stockpile and panic-buy food and the supermarkets run dry, donated food to hostels and food banks will dry up completely. Not only will people be more likely to have to go to food banks because they will be unable to afford food—and they might not be getting such good quality food through public sector catering—but food banks will run out as well.

[Mrs Hodgson]

I hope that the Minister acknowledges the picture being painted of the potential knock-on effects. I appreciate that this is the worst-case scenario—a no-deal, catastrophe scenario—but, given that there is no deal on the table that the majority of the House can vote for, a responsible Parliament has to prepare for it. These doomsday scenarios could become the reality for many people’s lives, despite none of us in this room wanting that to happen.

Does the Minister share my concern about a reduction in the safety and nutritional quality of food served to those using public sector catering, especially given that those meals are, as we have heard, the main source of nutrition for millions of people—10.5 million people, day in and day out, up and down the country? Equally, public sector caterers must provide food that meets specific health or cultural needs, such as kosher, gluten-free, vegetarian or allergy-specific food. There are many other examples. For some, it could be a matter of life or death. For others, a failure to provide nutritionally complete meals would slow down their recovery and increase the risk of malnutrition, or result in a deficiency in other nutritional values.

I received a message from the National Association of Care Catering that reads:

“We have 60 plus residents in our home, so have to provide 60 meals three times a day, with the average age of 86, how do we ensure regular supply?”

That is of great concern across the industry. Even where contingencies can be made, it may involve people eating very bland or repetitive menus, which I know goes against the entire ethos of public sector catering.

Finally, the workforce are crucial to public sector catering. Have the Government engaged with the catering sector to understand the challenges that a disorderly Brexit might pose to its workforce and services? The public sector employs a considerable number of EU nationals, and I am told that some are already returning home. The threat of a no-deal Brexit will only make the situation worse, thereby posing a threat to the services that the sector provides, and having an impact on safety.

Although new members of staff can, of course, be recruited, it takes time and money to train them. A workforce gap in the event of a no-deal Brexit would limit the effectiveness of public sector catering, which is already facing all the challenges that I have highlighted. What steps are the Government taking to ensure that the public sector catering workforce are trained, equipped and funded to provide vital services in the event of no deal?

Public sector catering is fundamental to the care provided in schools, universities, hospitals, care homes and prisons. A delay in food deliveries, an increase in the cost of food and a decrease in nutritional standards or safety could be detrimental to service users and, in some cases, a matter of life or death. When we talk about the impact of no deal on our health and wellbeing, we must also consider the availability of food to the most vulnerable in our society, which a number of my hon. Friends have spoken about.

What about those who cannot afford to stockpile or lack the capacity to do so? What about those who are in hospitals, care homes or prisons? They cannot stockpile food in their little bedside cabinet. I do not have time to discuss this issue fully now—thankfully others have mentioned it—but we must remember that a surge in food prices could mean a reduction in donations to food banks from public sector caterers, some of whom are very generous to not only food banks but to holiday provision. I know that Bidfood supports holiday clubs. My hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) spoke in glowing terms about Bidfood’s support for her holiday clubs at the last APPG meeting. All of that will have implications for families already living in poverty.

Brexit should not be the reason that millions of people go hungry, and I hope that after the debate the Minister will have considered another aspect of a no-deal Brexit that perhaps the Government had not already considered. I hope that he will urgently relay what I have said back to his Government colleagues. In closing, I reiterate that no deal should not mean no meal. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Sale of Puppies and Kittens

Debate between Sharon Hodgson and Kerry McCarthy

Thursday 4th September 2014 Commons Chamber

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

I am extremely grateful to have this opportunity to speak in this important debate. As my inbox attests, it is an extremely important issue for many of my constituents. It is also important to me, as I am the owner of a lovely springer spaniel called Leo. My family adopted him when he was seven months old, and he is now nearly nine.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) and his colleagues for securing this debate and for introducing it so well. I also pay tribute to the members of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee for their report on dog control and welfare.

As any dog lover would agree, the crux of this matter is that we simply cannot see dogs or kittens as commodities. They are not an asset or a piece of capital from which a producer seeks to extract as much financial gain as possible. They are future members of our families, future best friends for our children and future companions for us when our children flee the nest. They are sentient beings, with similar feelings and reactions to us. We would not stand for our children being mistreated in the way that some domestic animals are at birth, as they are ripped apart from their mother and the nurture that she instinctively provides. We would not stand for that because we know how that kind of trauma affects them later in life, whether it is to their personality, their health or both. We all want to encourage more responsible dog ownership. I cannot think of any responsible dog owner who would be happy in the knowledge that their new puppy or kitten, which they thought had been bought from a reputable breeder or at least from a pet shop that deals exclusively with responsible breeders, had actually had such a traumatic start in life.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is right to point out that often the people who purchase these animals do not realise the animal’s background or where they have come from. A report by the RSPCA said that breeders in eastern Europe and Ireland were selling so-called handbag dogs—little Chihuahuas that the likes of Paris Hilton carry around in their handbags. The breeders were only charging about £25 each for them, but they were then being sold on for between £800 and £1,500. Obviously, the people who are paying £1,500 for such a dog think they are getting a top-of-the market dog that has been very well looked after, but that is not the case.

[Mrs Hodgson]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Often those dogs go on to have terrible health conditions, which then cost the loving owner a fortune in vets’ fees, as they have to mitigate some of those terrible breeding practices that the poor pup suffered in its early life.

Obviously, the breeding and sale of puppies and other animals provides a living, and in some cases a good living. The vast majority of breeders have chosen that as a way of life because they love animals and love the joy that they can bring to the families to whom they go. Many are very particular about ensuring that their puppies go to a good and loving home. I do not want to see the lives of those breeders made more difficult by any change in the law. None the less, I am sure that they would be the first to agree that we must ensure that the law is strong enough to be able to stamp out the minority of breeders in the country who do not share their high standards of care.

My constituents are particularly concerned when they see puppies for sale in pet shops without their mothers present. I understand that that practice persists in a very small minority of pet shops in the UK—about 2% according to Pet Care Trust. None the less, I agree with my constituents that that practice should be ended completely. It has been pointed out that some councils have successfully eradicated this practice in their areas through their licensing requirements, but, like buying a car, buying a pet involves the kind of purchase that people are prepared to go further afield to make. Indeed, my dog Leo is an Essex boy, and we travelled all the way there to adopt him. Although such actions are welcome, they mean little if all the surrounding councils do not feel able to follow suit. I therefore think it is worth looking at what more can be done at a central Government level to spread best practice across the country.

I do not know what the right balance is in securing regulations that are enforceable and effective but that do not represent an onerous duty on local authorities or other agencies or place unnecessary restrictions on the many good, responsible and caring breeders, but it is clear that we are not striking that balance at the moment.

Ticket Abuse

Debate between Sharon Hodgson and Kerry McCarthy

Tuesday 21st January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Hodgson]

We have not already made up our mind—obviously that is the purpose of the inquiry—but we have already received evidence from the Metropolitan police that has proved that abuses are taking place. We are looking for solutions, as Ministers asked us to do when we met them. I hope that the inquiry will uncover solutions to some problems that have already been identified. We are not self-selecting, and if the hon. Gentleman wants to come to give evidence, we will be happy to hear from him.

The Minister and hon. Members are no doubt aware of where I come from on this issue. In 2010, I promoted a private Member’s Bill, the Sale of Tickets (Sporting and Cultural Events) Bill, which was debated on Second Reading on 21 January 2011. I will try not to repeat the speech I made that day, because it was around an hour in length, but many of the points I raised then are as true and as worthy of being made today. Other hon. Members who attended that debate are present today, and I hope that they do not use the same arguments—they might have come up with some new ones. Perhaps this debate will convince them to change their minds.

I am going to go through what has happened since that debate and what should happen in the future. It is worth restating first, however, why I embarked on this campaign all those years ago and what has sustained me, despite the continued stonewalling of the current Minister’s predecessors. My daughter is a second-generation Take That fan—I being the first generation—and I was alerted to this scandalous practice by her sense of great unfairness that she had not been able to acquire Take That tickets for us, despite being ready to buy them online the minute the tickets went on sale, only to see them moments later on other websites for many times the original price.

I looked into the practice further and found that neither my daughter nor Take That were alone. In fact, that day I found just the tip of the iceberg, because this happens week in, week out with music, comedy, sport and theatrical events up and down the country. The same situation affects not only Wembley arena gigs and international matches, but small and medium-capacity concerts in provincial towns and cities throughout the country. It even affects art exhibitions; someone would have been very lucky to pay face value to see the recent David Bowie exhibition at the Victoria and Albert museum at a convenient time or, similarly, the da Vinci exhibition at the National Gallery last year. The Chelsea flower show regularly makes the news when its tickets hit many times face value on secondary sites. The most recent example to hit the headlines and inspire columns and features about the secondary market was the Monty Python reunion, probably because lots of journalists and editors wanted to go themselves.

My daughter’s experience started me on this crusade, but I have kept fighting in the light of the experiences of countless other fans of all kinds of events who are disgusted by this practice. I thank all those people who have e-mailed and tweeted me over the past few years for their support.

This is not just an emotive issue, however, although that is often the case—bear in mind that famous line about football being not a matter of life and death, but more important than that. As I did my research and more people supported my campaign, I met more stakeholders in the live events industry and became increasingly aware of the real concern that this kind of parasitical practice is detrimental to our creative industries. It stands to reason that if someone is creaming off money from the sector without putting anything in, the industry will suffer. In the case of the creative and live events sector, it would make sense for the Government to do everything possible to protect and support it, given that it sustains more than 1 million jobs and accounts for a significant proportion of our exports to the rest of the world, especially with regard to music.

Tourism is important to the UK economy as well, and our creative industries are particularly important to tourism. How many tourists come to the UK to see a show in the west end, to attend one of our many excellent festivals or to see a gig at one of our growing network of regional stadiums, such as the Stadium of Light in Sunderland? According to a UK Music’s recent report “Music Tourism: Wish You Were Here”, music tourism is worth £2.2 billion to the economy, with each overseas tourist spending on average more than £650. Those tourists will not come over here to spend all that money in our service and retail sectors if they cannot get a ticket for a fair price.

In the same vein, domestic event goers with limited funds are not likely to go to other events, or to spend a great deal at or around an event for which they do have a ticket, if their ticket has cost them many times what it should have. Even worse, if people are priced out of going to a gig, game or comedy show, that could be the end of their relationship with the band, sport or comedian that they were planning to go and see, thus harming long-term sustainability. Ticket touting is bad for not only fans, but the live events business, which was why the fifth recommendation in the UK Music report was that the Government address the issue, including through legislation if necessary, to ensure that the sector keeps going from strength to strength.

Many within the industry have had to adapt their business models to fit the market following what I would call the green light that the secondary market got from the previous Government—I am sorry to say—and the Culture, Media and Sport Committee back in 2008. Both said that the secondary market served a purpose for fans and that it could regulate itself.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on her work, about which I know that she is absolutely passionate. She highlights a point that is made over and over again by people who seek to defend the practice. Yes, there is a value to secondary ticketing when people want to offload tickets because they happen not to be able to make an event, or if people are able to snap up tickets at the last minute after thinking that they would not be able to attend. However, there is a big difference between those practices and the market manipulation that is taking place on a huge scale, and that is what my hon. Friend is talking about.

[Mrs Hodgson]

That is exactly the point that I want to expand on. We all agree that the secondary market can serve a purpose—if we have tickets to an event that we thought we could go to, but then find that we cannot attend because of a change in work patterns or whatever—but the exponential growth in online resale that we have seen since 2008, with major players coming from America to get a slice of the growing pie, proves my “green light” point. If the brakes were on before 2008, while we were waiting for the decisions, they were certainly smashed to pieces afterwards, and people in the industry have seen touts making more and more money from their work and investment without putting anything in. After all, when a ticket sells for double its face value, the tout makes more money than everyone involved in putting on the show.

People in the industry tried unsuccessfully to convince the Government and Parliament to do something about the situation. Having failed in that attempt, they decided—reluctantly, in my opinion—that if someone was going to make that money, it might as well be them. Some are doing so openly by selling premium packages or appointing a secondary website as an official partner, as Jessie J did recently. Some, however, are doing it through back channels because they do not want their fans to know that they are effectively being ripped off by the artiste they admire, as that would inevitably hurt their relationship.

The practice of allocating blocks of tickets directly to the secondary market was exposed by a “Dispatches” documentary in 2012, which I took part in. I hope the Minister watched it—I have a copy in my office that I can pass on to her if she did not. Such under the table dealing is a direct consequence of successive Governments failing to do anything to protect fans. At the very least we need to bring those dealings out into the open.

It is not as if there is no precedent for protecting fans, as we protected Olympic tickets from being exploited by touts. I am aware that doing so was a condition of being granted the games by the International Olympic Committee, but I would like to think that that would have happened anyway, given the national significance of the games and the obvious security considerations.

I note from the excellent Library debate pack—I put on record my thanks to our exceptional Library researchers for putting it together in such a short space of time—that the Scottish Parliament has passed legislation protecting tickets for the Commonwealth games, which is welcome. Colleagues will know that the unit set up to monitor Olympic touting and other crimes associated with the games, Operation Podium, also looked at the wider secondary market in the years it was in operation—from 2005 to 2013. It estimated that that market was worth £1 billion, and its initial findings resulted in the fine for touting Olympic tickets being quadrupled. I sat on the Public Bill Committee that considered the legislation that put that in place, and during our proceedings, a representative from the Metropolitan police told us that the people they were tracking who were trying to tout Olympic tickets were the same players who control most of the inventory on sale on a day-to-day basis. During our questioning, I nearly coaxed him into agreeing that action was needed to regulate the wider secondary market, but he stuck to his brief very professionally.

I might not have been successful on that occasion, but the recommendations in the report on ticket crime that Operation Podium published shortly before it was disbanded last year could not have been clearer. “Ticket Crime: Problem Profile” found:

“Due to the surreptitious way that large numbers of ‘primary’ tickets are diverted straight onto secondary ticket websites, members of the public have little choice but to try to source tickets on the secondary ticket market.”

Its findings led the unit to conclude:

“The lack of legislation outlawing the unauthorised resale of tickets and the absence of regulation of the primary and secondary ticket market encourages unscrupulous practices, a lack of transparency and fraud.”

The unit therefore recommended:

“Consideration must be given to introducing legislation to govern the unauthorised sale of event tickets. The lack of legislation in this area enables fraud and places the public at risk of economic crime…The primary and secondary ticket market require regulation to ensure transparency, allowing consumers to understand who they are buying from and affording them better protection from ticket crime.”

The Minister’s predecessor, the right hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Hugh Robertson), told me repeatedly that if we provided evidence of market failure he would reconsider his position; I refer Members to Hansard, volume 551, column 997W from 25 October 2012, and volume 542, column 66WH from 13 March 2012. The latter refers to the long-awaited report from the Office of Fair Trading, which I hope we will see later this year.

Even given the damning report from Operation Podium, the Government have still refused to engage on how to protect fans. I hope that the new Minister will differ on that and agree with me and other colleagues that, when the police say that a market needs to be cleaned up because it is acting as a front for organised crime and fraud, we should probably listen to them.

If we needed confirmation that the secondary market is allowing fraud to be perpetrated, we got it in July last year, when it emerged through an investigation by Radio 4’s “You and Yours” programme, working with security expert Reg Walker, that thousands of counterfeit tickets had been sold through the major secondary market platforms. Those platforms tell people that tickets are guaranteed because sellers receive their money for a ticket only once the buyer has been to the event without incident. That would be the case if someone were to try to shift a few tickets for an event they could not attend or if they were small-time casual touts. However, the fraud could be perpetrated because the restriction does not apply to the big players, otherwise known as power sellers or brokers—although I would call them industrial touts.

The secondary platforms compete for inventory from those major players and the commissions from their sales, so they bend over backwards to win their business. That means preferential rates and premium services, and even the odd party, with drinks and networking opportunities; but importantly it also evidently means disbursing money paid for tickets before those tickets have been verified by the end user.

Unscrupulous individuals—they would be called “gangsters” or “organised criminal networks” in common parlance—were able to establish themselves as power sellers by selling large amounts of genuine stock, although we do not know from where they got it. When they then carpet-bombed the market with false tickets, they had ensured that they got their money within days of the sale. By the time the reported thousands of fans were knocked back from concerts by the likes of Beyoncé and One Direction, those criminals were long gone.

I am not saying that the four major secondary platforms that were stung by that fraud were complicit in any way, although my understanding is that they did not exactly run to the police about that criminal activity, probably because it would harm their reputation; it was an issue of damage limitation. However, the fact that their processes allowed the fraud to happen shows that the market is not foolproof—or gangster-proof—and desperately needs reform and transparency. I have heard it argued that if those websites did not exist, all those fans would be out of pocket, whereas now they will be reimbursed eventually, if they are tenacious. However, without those websites, with their aggressive marketing and their promise of safe transactions, the criminals or criminal organisations would not have been able to sell nearly as many counterfeit tickets in the first place.

The Minister will be well aware of the trouble that rugby union has had with the resale of tickets for high-profile games. Some have credited the Rugby Football Union with driving viagogo out of the country to the safety of Switzerland, after it won a High Court battle to be told the identities of people who had broken its terms and conditions by reselling tickets to high-profile games. Of course, it is only the company address that has moved abroad; the business retains an operation in London and trades here as before. However, we have to ask ourselves, why did viagogo run away if it has nothing to hide?

Like many national sport governing bodies, the RFU is conscious of the need continually to feed the grassroots and drive participation at every level of the game. That is not all altruistic; if the grassroots are neglected, every level of the game suffers very quickly—gate receipts fall and talent does not come through, meaning that our clubs and national teams are not as competitive. That then feeds back again, damaging interest in the sport.

For that reason, the RFU ensures that a significant number of tickets for high-profile games are distributed to the 2,000 or so rugby clubs across the country. Indeed, it even announced before Christmas that that would include at least one ticket per club for the rugby world cup final in 2015. The RFU knows that it could get much more for those tickets—indeed, for all the tournament tickets—on the open market, but that is simply not the point. It wants to ensure that not just wealthy individuals and corporate buyers can afford to see the best rugby teams and players in the world.

The RFU wanted the identity of those reselling tickets to be known to ensure that they contribute to the long-term fostering of grass-roots participation, instead of making some individual a nice wad of cash. That is why the RFU and England Rugby 2015 have continually asked the Government to legislate to protect tickets for the 2015 rugby world cup from being touted. It is disappointing that, so far, the Government have refused to do that.

I hope that when the World cup comes around, our streets will not be littered with counterfeit tickets bought innocently from people who were selling them all over the place, or because they were available from unofficial outlets and fans could not tell the difference from legitimate tickets. The World cup organisers must do as much as they can to limit the number of tickets that fall into the hands of touts and to educate consumers about the official resale mechanism through which they will be guaranteed genuine tickets, as happened for the Olympics.

I am sure the Minister will be aware that touts cannot be blocked completely. She will be aware, from the last Department for Communities and Local Government questions, that if someone is desperate to secure a ticket now for the World cup final, they could do so today, on at least one of the secondary websites, for around 10 times the face value of one of the lowest priced seats. Some of the posh seats in the west lower tier would set them back almost £18,000 a pair, and that is despite the tickets not yet having gone on sale to the public; that will not happen for a further eight months. The touts obviously know that they will be able to obtain tickets, so they are selling them in advance at huge profits.

Does the Minister recognise that the situation is a direct consequence of her Department’s choosing not to get involved? The problem does not apply only to rugby; the governing bodies and major event holders in cricket and tennis have been at pains to try to enforce the non-resale clauses that they put on their tickets, for much the same reason. Alienating fans with ordinary means from prestigious events means risking the loss of their continued involvement with and patronage of the sport.

Top-flight football is the one sport in which there has historically been some protection for fans, but legislation introduced in 1994 to tackle hooliganism is increasingly being circumvented by people doing deals and accepting money from the secondary websites to authorise them to resell their tickets. That loophole must obviously be closed immediately, and there are growing calls from fans—including Spurs fans, as reported in local papers yesterday—in favour of that happening.

The websites are always at pains to point out that it is individuals, not them, who are selling the tickets. In that case, is it all right for someone to buy a season ticket for a premiership club, never to attend a match, and to make a fortune reselling their 19 home tickets on an “authorised” secondary market, when it would be illegal for a genuine fan who cannot go to one match to sell a single ticket at face value to their mate?

I asked in a written question a few months ago what conversations the Department had had with the football world about this issue, and the answer was “none”. I hope that the issue is now on the Minister’s radar, that she will give us her opinion on the practice and that she will have conversations with the football world. Does she think what is happening is in the spirit of the original legislation and will she close the loophole?

When the hon. Member for Hove secured a short Westminster Hall debate on this issue back in March 2012, the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) intervened on him and perfectly distilled the problems in the market. She asked:

“Does my hon. Friend agree that we should be putting the fan, not the salesman, at the centre of the ticketing process for live music and other events?”— [Official Report, 13 March 2012; Vol. 542, c. 59WH.]

That is exactly what we should be doing. We should put our constituents first, closely followed by the legitimate and important businesses that employ them and generate wealth for the UK. We should put last those who seek only to exploit. We can do that by legislating to make the secondary market more transparent and making people who profit from it more accountable to both the end consumer and those who own the intellectual property, on the back of which they are getting rich.

The all-party group will hear evidence on the best way of doing that. The intention is to table new clauses to the Consumer Rights Bill when it comes before the House later in the year. I will not prejudge the results of that process and the ideas that it will no doubt turn up. However, I suggest that the following is the minimum the Government can do to shut me and others up. Websites facilitating the unauthorised resale of event tickets should be made to reimburse a buyer for all costs incurred when tickets purchased through their service are found to be fraudulent. That should include all fees involved in purchasing the ticket, travel to and from the venue, and any accommodation and subsistence costs when evidence can be provided.