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Ticket Touting

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow, North-West (John Robertson). I disagree with him on virtually every point, and shall come to that in a minute, but it is always beneficial to a debate to have his insight. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale), who chairs the Select Committee with great panache; he is an outstanding Select Committee Chairman. I think that most hon. Members present know of his background, working for Lady Thatcher, and I sometimes feel that the purpose I serve on the Select Committee is to remind him of some of the free market principles that she held so dear, and on which I sometimes feel he lacks the consistency of his esteemed former employer. However, I commend him on trying so hard to get a consensus in the Committee on the issue in question. Anyone who observed the discussions about the report's recommendations would realise what a challenge it was to do that. We did a reasonably good job of reaching a largely settled view. There were, as my hon. Friend pointed out, some specific areas on which I could not support the rest of the Committee, but on the whole the majority of the report was unanimously agreed. That was largely down to my hon. Friend's skill. There are two issues concerning ticket touting; one is a matter of principle and one is a matter of practicality. The matter of principle is that if I buy something—whether it is a book, something from the supermarket, a house or a ticket—I have bought it and it is mine; if I choose to sell it on to someone else, that is no business of anyone else, least of all the Government of the day. They should not interfere. There are many examples of things that appear in limited editions that sell out rapidly. Often there are limited editions of handbags, which sell out in five minutes in the shops. Within five minutes they are all on eBay being sold at a hugely marked-up price. No hon. Member here is arguing, as far as I am aware, that that should be made illegal. I should be very concerned if Parliament decided to make such activity illegal. It is exactly the same when tickets for events are sold out rapidly, and soon afterwards go on eBay or other websites at a marked-up price. That happens not just with tickets but with many other things.