---

Ticket Touting

That is true, of course, but it is a novel concept that a Minister should have a particular view one day, because they are working in one Department, and an entirely different view the next day, when they move to another Department. If that is the way in which the Government conduct their business, it strikes me as rather perverse. The Minister of State's evidence was not in any way equivocal—it was very unequivocal—that the secondary market works in the best interests of the consumer and that the Government do not want to go down the route of regulating the sector, for very good reasons. Equally, the Office of Fair Trading concluded that the market worked broadly for the benefit of consumers, rather than against their interests. Also, in the Government's response to the Committee's report, they acknowledge that the OFT made it clear that it received very few complaints from people about ticket touting. Of course, the OFT does not receive many complaints of that kind because people enter into this area voluntarily. No one forces anybody to pay any particular price for a ticket, whether it is in the primary or secondary markets. The event organisers and promoters want to have and maintain a monopoly on selling tickets in the primary and secondary markets. That is good old-fashioned self-interest. I believe in the free market and that a plurality of supply works to the benefit of consumers, rather than against them, and that monopolies work against the interest of consumers. That is why I very much hope that the Minister will not pander to the kind of simplistic arguments that we hear—the instinctive opposition to people making a profit by selling on tickets—that he will look at the evidence and the whole issue seriously, and that he will understand the huge pitfalls in which the Government will get themselves by restricting this market. Instead, they should abide by the Select Committee report, which concluded that the secondary market was very legitimate.