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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether his Department plans to make ticket touting an offence for theatre and musical performances that receive funding from the Arts council England.

We have taken several measures to crackdown on unacceptable behaviour in the online primary and secondary ticketing markets and to improve fans’ chances of buying tickets at a reasonable price. In line with Professor Waterson’s independent review into the ticketing market, however, we do not have plans to ban the secondary market.

The Consumer Rights Act 2015 already includes rules about tickets offered for sale on the secondary market. The Digital Economy Act 2017 adds an additional requirement for ticket sellers to provide a unique ticket number when re-selling a ticket, and provides the power to create a specific offence, of electronically purchasing more tickets than the maximum permitted. We intend to enact this power via secondary legislation later this year.

We welcome the work of the Competition and Markets Authority and Trading Standards in taking enforcement action against those who are suspected to be in breach of consumer law.