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

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of prohibiting the sale of tickets for events at a sum greater than their face value.

The Government is committed to cracking down on unacceptable behaviour in the ticketing market and improving people’s chances of buying tickets at a reasonable price. That is why we have strengthened the law on ticketing information requirements and introduced a criminal offence of using automated software to buy more tickets online than allowed. Ticketing sites can help fans buy and resell tickets, but they must comply with the law and should never be used as a platform for breaking it.

Enforcement agencies such as the Competition and Markets Authority, National Trading Standards and the advertising industry's own regulator, the Advertising Standards Authority, have a track record of investigating breaches of consumer law and improving transparency in the ticketing market, and are prepared to go after those who flout the law or abuse the ticketing market. The recent conviction of ticket touts for the unlawful mass reselling of Ed Sheeran tickets at inflated prices and obtained by fraudulent means, is just one example.

We do not believe that price capping is an appropriate solution at this time, as experience in other markets has shown that it would not be an effective tool to address the problem at hand, and would present significant practical challenges in implementation and enforcement. Individuals are able to seek advice or report problems with goods or services bought from a trader based in the UK, and the appropriate advice agency is the Citizens Advice Consumer Service.