Breaching of Limits on Ticket Sales Regulations 2018 — House of Lords, 2018-06-13
Topic: Law and Crime
Leslie John Griffiths (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, I am delighted to add my voice to those who have spoken, some of whom have of course carried the burden of this subject for quite a long time. A few years ago, I wanted to see David Tennant performing in "Richard II" at the Barbican. Because of the activities of the organisation already named, I was obliged to pay hundreds of pounds for a ticket, greatly inflated from the face value, in order to get a rather poor seat. I have never told my wife about this expenditure and now that I have made my confession on the Floor of the House, I hope that she will not read Hansard. However, I have been a victim of touts and it was only the grandeur of the performance that rescued the whole thing in my mind It is of course scandalous that these things take place. It is perhaps unfortunate that trading standards people, who are accustomed to dealing with infractions of this nature and empowered to do so, are given less than helpful advice when it comes to pursuing matters in this area. The police have all the powers necessary to bring cases and all the rest of it. It seems important that the police are not burdened with what, for them, will be a marginal or lesser activity. They face so many serious things these days. Perhaps we can look at that in due course Since I have mentioned drama and quoted Shakespeare, perhaps I can quote the words of the Minister back to him. He said in an earlier debate that, "with the new offence on the statute book, the Government will work with industry to enforce it. An offence is only worth having if criminal acts are reported. We have industry groups in place that are now willing and able to take action in partnership with our law enforcement agencies".—[Official Report, 29/3/17; col. 660.] We are promised constant review of the outcomes of these regulations once we have approved them. Of course that is good, but are we convinced that if we wait a statutory amount of time—a year or two—to monitor what is happening that the police might not feel that this was their priority and we will have rather little to report at that time, and that we cannot anticipate already the likely shortcomings in the way this matter will be implemented My children are less concerned with David Tennant at the Barbican than they are with the Arctic Monkeys. Of course, their recent re-emergence to the public saw a prime example of this kind of difficulty. Indeed, it might well be described for all of us as our "Favourite Worst Nightmare", since that was the name of one of their albums. One commentator at that time said that it is easier to buy a gun in the United States than an Arctic Monkeys ticket in the United Kingdom. Or, as another one said, it is, "easier to get a reservation at Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino", than one of their tickets. That is another one of their albums, course It is well enough to play around with words; it is the ordinary public who suffer from these dangerous and profiteering pirateering activities. It is time that we not only recognise this as something that has to be addressed, which we do and have done. Indeed, looking at some briefing from Ticketmaster, I see for just how long it has been active in the field trying to control these sorts of activities. It is time that we find ourselves not only expressing concern and making provision, but giving power to the people best able to do something about this so that, when we get our promised report back in due course, we will be able to see first, to answer the Minister’s worries, people brought to justice and, secondly, treated righteously before the law All of us can express our very real concerns about this aspect of our national life. All of us want to see something done about it. We just hope that this statutory instrument will not only add something that looks right on paper, but achieve some of the objectives we mentioned today.