Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what steps her Department is taking to reduce the prevalence of the resale of tickets at inflated prices for theatrical, musical and other artistic performances.

We are determined to crackdown on unacceptable behaviour and improve fans’ chances of buying tickets at a reasonable price.

The Consumer Rights Act 2015 already includes rules about tickets offered for sale on the secondary market, and the Digital Economy Act passed earlier this year adds an additional requirement for ticket sellers to provide a unique ticket number when reselling a ticket resale, and provides the power to create a specific offence, where tickets are purchased electronically, of purchasing more tickets than the maximum permitted.

We have provided funding for enforcement action to be taken by Trading Standards against sellers who are in breach of consumer law.

The Competition and Markets Authority has also launched an enforcement investigation into suspected breaches of consumer protection law in the online secondary ticketing market which is hoped will drive further transparency in the secondary market.

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