Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, whether his Department’s plan to ban for-profit ticket resale will apply to (a) tickets sold through peer-to-peer messaging platforms and (b) tickets sold through encrypted peer-to-peer messaging platforms such as WhatsApp.

The government has recently announced plans to introduce a price cap on the resale of live events tickets, which will make it illegal for tickets to be resold for more than their original cost.

Our intention is that all businesses that facilitate the resale of live events tickets to UK consumers will be obliged to ensure compliance with the price cap.

Detailed work to prepare the new legislation is ongoing, involving further consideration of how platform obligations should be configured.

The government will legislate when Parliamentary time allows.