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Ticket Touting

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Weir. I congratulate the Select Committee and its Chairman on the report. Although I do not necessarily agree with everything in it, it is a report on a subject of some importance. The report poses the question, ““What is ticket touting?”” I think it is fairly clear that a tout buys tickets and exploits demand to resell them at a profit. In my view, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport was absolutely right when he said that touting"““doesn't add anything to the cultural life of the country, but instead leeches off it and denies access to those who are least able to afford tickets””." As chair of both the all-party group on music and the all-party group on communications, I am disappointed that neither the Select Committee's report nor the Government's response reflected that. Although I welcome the attention given to ticket touting and much of the discussion in the report, I feel that the recommendations give a green light to touts and will ultimately prove counter-productive and lead the industry down a dubious path. There are two main classes of victim of touting: first, the fans and consumers and, secondly, the primary sellers and the entertainment industry itself. I have little doubt that everyone here will know someone who has attempted to buy tickets, but missed out and then seen them on sale on auction websites going for vast multiples of the face value. In fact, last year, my daughter found tickets for a Take That concert on sale on a site before they went on sale officially—so the 20 minutes that the hon. Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale) was talking about did not exist. They were actually on sale on sites before being released to the public. How is that possible? With every ticket sold in that way, those who missed out originally, those whose bid was insufficient and the person who eventually bought the ticket at a vastly inflated price are all victims of this exploitation. The Select Committee's final recommendations failed to bear that in mind. One reason for that was perhaps a lack of evidence from individual consumers, but then, it should hardly surprise anyone in Parliament that so few individuals submitted evidence to the Committee's inquiry. I wonder whether a more proactive approach is required. We can all reflect on this sentence from the report's conclusion:"““it is not realistic to expect to find solutions in a forum where that market is virtually unrepresented.””" The majority of constituents and music fans to whom I speak are overwhelmingly against ticket touting. On the consumer side, the Committee mentioned conflicts of opinion in a number of polls. That could be summed up by Pink Floyd's lyric:"““Money, it's a crime. Share it fairly but don't take a slice of my pie.””" It is interesting to note that both opinions cited in favour of touting came from eBay and viagogo—internet auction sites. Against that, a poll by the New Musical Express, a magazine for music fans, showed seven out of 10 people against touting; that was backed up by a poll from YouGov.