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Sale of Tickets (Sporting and Cultural Events) Bill

My hon. Friend's question helps to illustrate the point: where would it end if the Government went down such a road? Where would it all end indeed? It does not surprise me at all that the Labour party wants to interfere in every nook and cranny of everybody's lives—what they buy, how much they can sell it on for and all that kind of business; that is its raison d'être as a political party. However, I hope that the one thing that the coalition Government will not do is adopt that kind of socialist agenda. That would be very worrying indeed. The hon. Lady talked about how popular the issue was among the general public, if not among her own colleagues. However, I take issue with the notion that the reselling of tickets is unpopular; I am not entirely sure that there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that. ICM conducted some opinion polls on this matter. As I mentioned earlier, 86% agreed with the statement:"““If I had a ticket to a sporting event, concert or other event that I could no longer use then I should be allowed to resell it””." Some 83% agreed with the premise:"““Once I've bought a ticket it is my property and I should be able to sell it just as I can any other private property””." That point was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall). Some 86% agreed:"““It shouldn't be against the law for people to resell tickets that they no longer want or can't use.””" The hon. Lady, or her cheerleader on the Front Bench, made the point that the Bill would not ban the resale of tickets, but simply restrict the price at which they could be resold, and that therefore the opinion polls were irrelevant. However, the same opinion poll also found that 56% agreed that the price of a ticket should be determined only by what they were willing to pay, which seems to fly in the face of the hon. Lady's argument that everybody in the country is appalled by the current situation and that something needs to be done about it. Perhaps she has taken only a small or a biased sample of opinion; if she has a better mechanism for opinion polls than ICM, she should share it with the organisation. Furthermore, 61% agreed that the second-hand or secondary ticket market enables real fans to get hold of tickets that they would otherwise have missed out on. Contrary to the hon. Lady's contention that most people think that the secondary market stops real fans getting their tickets, 61% of people think the exact opposite.