Ticket Abuse

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Philip Davies

Tuesday 21st January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby, and to follow the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson). I admire her persistence; she comes back time after time on the same issue, but I am afraid that time after time she is wrong about it.

I also commend the hon. Lady’s ingenuity. This matter, as she rightly said, has been extensively considered by the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, on which I serve. We found that the secondary market was perfectly legitimate and worked, on the whole, in the best interests of the consumer. The Office of Fair Trading has looked into the subject as well; it also found that the market worked in the best interests of the consumer.

The hon. Lady has decided to set up her own inquiry, from which she can at least guarantee the answer she wants. I commend her for doing that, because none of the objective looks at this issue have ever fallen on her side of the argument. I also commend her for persuading the shadow Minister, her hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford), that this is another populist bandwagon on which he must jump. It seems that there is not one he is not prepared to jump on at the moment. He has added this one to the list.

The premise that the hon. Lady starts from is false. She believes that, by definition, all ticket touting and all reselling of tickets must be done at a profit, but ticket touts can make a loss—some 50% of the tickets sold on viagogo are sold at face value or below. When she and, I hope, the Minister go back over the Select Committee reports and the Office of Fair Trading reports, they will note the excellent contribution to our Select Committee inquiry made by the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), who gave evidence as a Government Minister. We all know she does a fantastic job as Chair of the Public Accounts Committee. She was robust in her defence of the secondary market and explained the reasons why we should not intervene and why it works in the best interests of consumers. I hope everyone will look over the evidence that she gave.

I see my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Mike Weatherley) in his place, and I have no doubt he will be looking to trouble the scorers as well. He speaks consistently about intellectual property rights for event promoters, but I take a different view. My belief is straightforward: if someone sells something to somebody, they have sold it on for that person to do as they wish with it. It happens all the time in the world of retail, which is where I came from.

When I was at Asda, we sold products, people bought them and whatever they did with the products was up to them. We used to get lots of letters from people saying that our Asda-branded whatever had been spotted being sold in a corner shop down the road. Our view was that that was fine, because it was their product. If they wanted to sell it on at a higher price than they paid, that was fine, because that is how the free market operates.

My advice is that if someone does not want a person to sell a product on, they should not sell it to that person in the first place. The first rule of the free market is that if a product is sold to someone, the product belongs to them and they can do with it as they please. That happens in all walks of life. People buy stamps off other people as an investment and hope that one day they can sell the stamps on to someone else at a profit. People do it with gold. I am sure that the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), would have loved, when he sold the gold off at a ridiculously low price, to have said, “By the way, you cannot sell it on again at a price higher than what I have sold it to you at.” All that would have done was emphasise what a ridiculous mistake he made in the first place.

[Kerry McCarthy]

In a way, I am reluctant to intervene on the hon. Gentleman, because I know that is simply rising to his bait, but the difference surely is that in his examples—they are faintly ridiculous—the secondary market does not in any way, shape or form distort the primary market. The sort of secondary market that my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) is talking about completely and utterly distorts the primary market. The hon. Gentleman says that people can walk into Asda and buy whatever they like at the price that is charged to everyone, but they cannot do that with ticket prices these days.

[Philip Davies]

I do not agree with the hon. Lady. For example, when a new designer handbag comes on to the market and gets a lot of hype, there are massive queues in department stores of people hoping to buy one of the first 25 to go on sale. When new gadgets come out at Christmas time, there are massive queues of people hoping to be one of the few to get the few in stock.

The same happens with toys. I remember that a few years ago there was a massive craving for Buzz Lightyear toys and people queued up to get one. We all knew that the first 20 or 30 people, or however many could buy one, would resell the toys at a massively inflated price, in much the same way as happens with tickets. That is exactly what happened. Is anyone suggesting that the Government should intervene in the law to stop people reselling their Buzz Lightyears or their designer handbags, or whatever goes on sale in department stores with a lot of hype, at a higher price? If they do not want the Government to intervene to stop that—Lord help us if people want us to intervene in the market in that way—I do not see why they would want the Government to intervene with tickets. I do not see how tickets are a different commodity from designer handbags, toys or anything else.

Antarctic Bill

Debate between Kerry McCarthy and Philip Davies

Friday 18th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that clarification.

Obviously we have to keep a close eye on the costs that are incurred in any legislative measure, particularly at a time of austerity, but I am not sure how quantifiable these costs and benefits would be. Immeasurable environmental benefits arise from this move; the benefit for future generations of protecting the natural environment in the Antarctic and preserving the continent for scientific research cannot be reduced to a simple cost-benefit analysis on a financial basis. So, again, I question whether the hon. Gentleman is going down the right path in suggesting that we should have one. Nor can we measure the effect of this Bill on the UK’s foreign relations, but it is clear that the Falkland Islands Government and others believe that the Bill, once passed, will help to uphold the UK’s position in the region and the UK’s tradition of strong leadership in respect of the Antarctic. Again, we need to send out a strong signal in that regard.

I have a few questions about the other amendments. It is entirely sensible that the Bill should contain a requirement that people organising activities in Antarctica should take reasonable preventive measures and make contingency plans to avoid an environmental emergency. I do not see why the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) does not think that such a provision is appropriate, but we will hear from him in a moment. I think it is entirely reasonable to expect these people to take preparatory measures, and I simply do not understand why clause 5 should be removed. Preventive measures are included in article 3 of the liability annex; the subsections requiring contingency plans relate to article 4. I would be grateful if the hon. Gentleman would clarify whether he does not want the UK to implement the annex in full. Alternatively, does he not believe that any party should sign up to this?

I would also be grateful if the Minister would advise us on the extent to which organisers already comply with the preparatory measures. In Committee, the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the right hon. Member for East Devon (Mr Swire) explained that the existing permit process includes an environmental assessment and contingency planning. I would be grateful if today’s Minister would clarify that.

[Philip Davies]

First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) on getting his Bill to this stage, as it is no mean achievement to get a private Member’s Bill through to Report. He should be commended for the customary skill he has deployed in ensuring it has got this far. I do not think anybody in the Chamber today wishes to bury or scupper the Bill; everyone’s motive is, if anything, to improve the Bill. We all wish the Bill well and we are grateful to my hon. Friend for introducing such an important piece of legislation, which is particularly appropriate for the private Member’s Bill route.

I also commend my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) for once again giving us his insightful views. I also commend the way he critically looks at pieces of legislation. The absolute role of people in Parliament is to scrutinise legislation and make sure that what we put on to the statute book is fit for purpose. To be perfectly honest, without my hon. Friend, many private Members’ Bills would fail the test of proper scrutiny, so he should be once again commended for the way he introduces amendments.

I have tabled only one amendment to the Bill, which, as the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) made clear, relates to clause 5. I intend it to be a probing amendment, and I am hoping that my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud and the Minister will be able to explain exactly why the clause is necessary. I should make it clear that the reason I propose leaving out clause 5 is not because I do not agree with what it contains; the necessity for the clause is the point of dispute.

I am certain that if the Bill were starting from scratch in terms of protecting the Antarctic, clause 5 would be an essential part of it; my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North said that clause 5 went to the heart of the Bill. But what we are doing in this piece of legislation is, as is stated at the back of the Bill, making

“provision consequential on Annex VI to the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty”

and amending the Antarctic Act 1994 in the process.

Clause 5 implements articles 3 and 4 of annex VI—the liability annex. Subsection (2) places a requirement on people who are organising activities to be carried out in Antarctica and which are connected with the United Kingdom to take

“reasonable preventative measures designed to reduce—

(a) the risk of environmental emergencies arising from those activities, and

(b) the potential…impact of such environmental emergencies.”

The requirement must be fulfilled before the person carrying out the activities enters Antarctica, as is set out in subsection (6). Subsection (7) makes it an offence not to comply with the requirement, while subsection (9) establishes that any offence under subsection (7) is punishable by a maximum of two years’ imprisonment or a fine, or both if the person is convicted on indictment. On summary conviction the person may be liable to a fine not exceeding the statutory maximum, which is £5,000 at the moment but that could be amended. Subsection (3) gives examples of preventive measures that could be taken, including specialised equipment, procedures or training.

Subsection (4) places a further requirement on people organising these activities to make contingency plans for responding to environmental emergencies and other incidents with potential to have adverse impacts on the environment of Antarctica that might arise from their activities. Again, the requirement applies only to activities that are

“connected with the United Kingdom”,

as is made clear in subsection (1). That requirement must also be fulfilled before the person carrying out the activities enters Antarctica. Subsection (8) makes it an offence not to comply with that requirement and subsection (9) establishes that any offence under subsection (8) is punishable by a maximum of two years’ imprisonment, a fine or both if the person is convicted on indictment. The same statutory maximum £5,000 fine applies on summary conviction.

Subsection (5) provides examples of what a contingency plan may contain, including plans for taking response action to an environmental emergency or other incident and for informing the Secretary of State of its occurrence. Clause 13(9) defines activities connected with the UK as activities that are

“organised in the United Kingdom, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man or a British overseas territory”

and are to be

“carried out on a British expedition, within the meaning of the Antarctic Act 1994”

or require a permit under that Act.