Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, whether she plans to take steps to limit the ability of online robots to purchase tickets for entertainment events.

We are determined to crackdown on unacceptable behaviour in the online ticketing market and improve fans’ chances of buying tickets at a reasonable price.

The Consumer Rights Act 2015 already includes rules about tickets offered for sale on the secondary market, but the Digital Economy Act passed last year adds an additional requirement for ticket sellers to provide a unique ticket number when re-selling a ticket resale, and provides the power to create a specific offence, where tickets are purchased electronically, of purchasing more tickets than the maximum permitted. We intend to enact this power via secondary legislation later this year.

We welcome the work of the Competition and Markets Authority and Trading Standards in taking enforcement action against those who are suspected to be in breach of consumer law.