---

Ticket Touting

No, I certainly do not. I shall deal with this in more detail later, but I shall deal with the hon. Gentleman's point now. It is not a question of whether we allow ticket touting or not. As my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford said, ticket touting has always taken place and always will, whatever rules and laws the Government pass. It is a bit like prostitution, in that, whatever people may think of it, it will always happen, and no matter how many laws are passed to stamp it out, it will always take place. The issue that we are debating is whether ticket touting—the sale of tickets in the secondary market—is allowed to be done only by people outside grounds, on a rather shadowy basis with a nod and a wink down a dark alley, or by respectable companies on websites, which give lots of consumer protection to the people who buy the tickets. Whether ticket touting takes place is not and will never be an issue. It will always take place. People involved in football will confirm that, even though there is a law banning the sale of tickets at premiership football games, it still happens. It just does not take place on some of the more reputable sites involved in the secondary market. Let no one be in any doubt that such touting still takes place; it is just under, rather than over, the counter. The analogy that I would give is buying a house. My hon. Friend the Member for Maldon and East Chelmsford quoted my friend Harvey Goldsmith's comment about ticket touts being like parasites, living off the abilities and intellectual property of others, and denying ordinary folk access to the events in question. It seems to me that there is a close analogy with buying houses. People buy houses off the ability—the intellectual property—of house builders and the construction industry. Those are the people who are capable of building houses, which the ordinary punter would not be able to build. However, those punters buy them, and then sell them on at a profit. I am sure that the hon. Member for Glasgow, North-West would agree that selling them on at a profit is one of the things that prevents first-time buyers from getting on to the housing ladder. If the Government are so obsessed with access to people's intellectual property, and not abusing it, presumably we should have a law to stop people selling their houses at a profit, to allow first-time buyers access to the housing ladder.