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Why on earth Nottingham city council has taken it upon itself to determine the law relating to ticket touting in its Bill is beyond me. This ill-considered-in fact, barely considered-provision would drive a coach and horses through the law on ticket touting. As my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch generously mentioned in his speech, I am a member of the Culture, Media and
Sport Committee which had an inquiry into the merits of ticket touting only last year. We took huge swathes of evidence from consumers, people involved in the industry and ticket touts themselves-including those who work on street corners and those with websites-as well as the Office of Fair Trading, which has made it clear that it believes that touting acts in the best interests of consumers and it has no reason to want to try to ban it. In fact, there have been very few cases in which anybody trying to restrict the selling on of tickets has taken a case to court, because such cases are very flimsy and would not be allowed. However, Nottingham city council has decided to put the subject in the middle of clause 4 of its Bill.
The touting provision could lead to a ridiculous situation for someone who bought a ticket for a large event in Nottingham. I am aware that Nottingham Forest and Notts County are not as well supported as they were in their heyday a few years ago, but the latter are back on the way up, and the former are doing better than they were-
Madam Deputy Speaker (Sylvia Heal): Order. The hon. Gentleman is straying too far when he starts to discuss the performance of football clubs, however interested he is in that issue.
Philip Davies: I do not wish to bore you or the House Madam Deputy Speaker with the recent performance of the Nottingham football teams, so I shall move to the point that I was trying to make.
Mr. Chope: Is it right to say that the value of tickets for football matches is likely to depend on the success or otherwise of the team concerned?
Philip Davies: I am sure that my hon. Friend is right. The value is determined by the number of people who wish to attend, and some teams attract more spectators when they are not doing so well than others. Football is not perhaps the best example, because ticket touting is not allowed. However, there are some big stadiums in Nottingham that might host some big events, such as pop concerts, that see great demand for tickets. People who buy a ticket may not be able to attend, perhaps for work reasons. They will have shelled out money for that ticket and so, understandably, they wish to sell it to someone who can go. There is nothing wrong with that; it happens all the time and it is a legitimate activity. However, under Nottingham city council's Bill, anyone in that situation would not be allowed to sell on their ticket to someone who wished to pay above the odds for that ticket, even though the person selling wanted to sell and the person buying wanted to buy at that price. That is why the Select Committee concluded that a secondary market in tickets was legitimate. Why would we wish to pass a Bill in which Nottingham city council decided unilaterally to opt out of certain important national laws?
Mr. Bone: I am slightly confused, because page 18 of the transcripts of the Unopposed Bill Committee says that both the Canterbury and Nottingham Bills deal with tickets, although my hon. Friend says that it is just the Nottingham Bill.
Philip Davies: My hon. Friend is partly right. The Canterbury Bill includes the restriction on selling tickets on the secondary market, but our hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury has agreed, in discussions with his council, and has made it public that even though that restriction is in the Bill, the council will strike it out, so it will not apply in Canterbury. That is a helpful development, because it slightly muddied the waters. However, although Canterbury council has agreed to do that, Nottingham has not. If we pass the Nottingham Bill as it stands, it will deal not only with the issue of pedlars, which may or may not be a problem that Nottingham wishes to deal with, but with ticket touting and the selling of tickets on the secondary market in Nottingham city.
Mr. Chope: My hon. Friend refers to the provisions in clause 11 of the Canterbury Bill. He will be aware that on 29 October 2008-at column 996-the then Minister responsible said that the Government "would be interested in" discussions on a possible amendment to clause 11. Obviously, that is no longer necessary, because we have been told by our hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury that clause 11 is going to be removed. Surely, however, we should expect the Minister to be interested in discussions on whether the provisions of this part of the Nottingham City Council Bill should be amended as well.
Philip Davies: My hon. Friend is, as usual, absolutely right. We have got ourselves into a ridiculous situation. The Government are helpfully putting out a consultation to see whether national legislation on pedlars could be introduced, but we are here making these decisions about particular cities before we have even had the responses to the consultation or had the Government's response. We do not really know the merits of the arguments on either side, but we are being asked to pass legislation that will affect those areas.
The same point applies to the issue of ticket touting in Nottingham. The Government have been carrying out a consultation on selling tickets on the secondary market, but they have yet to bring forward their proposals on the matter, if they wish to make any. It seems absurd to put the cart before the horse in relation to pedlars, without knowing what the Government's response on that issue is, and absurd to do exactly the same thing on ticket touting.
I want to make another point about ticket touting. Everyone understands that selling tickets on the secondary market benefits those who sell the tickets, but I want to make it abundantly clear that the system works just as well for people who purchase tickets. Someone who wishes to go to an over-subscribed event, but who does not know when the tickets will come on sale, whether they will be able to go or whether their work will give them the time off, will have to resist the temptation to buy a ticket. They will not be able to guarantee that they can go. Many organisers do not allow refunds; that is one of the issues involved. If that person later finds that they can go to the event, but it is sold out, the practice of ticket touting gives them the one opportunity they have to purchase a ticket. They might have to pay over the odds for that ticket, but that is their choice. If they do not want to pay that amount of money, nobody forces them to do so. Ticket touting gives them the opportunity to make that decision, rather than it being taken out of their hands.
Mr. Chope: Will my hon. Friend confirm that that activity is often engaged in by Governments, particularly their diplomatic corps? If a guest to the country expresses an interest in going to an event for which tickets were not bought in advance, the corps will find tickets in order to indulge the guest and to promote diplomacy.
Philip Davies: My hon. Friend may or may not be right about that. I am not particularly well up on the procurement activities of the diplomatic service when it comes to tickets for events. He may know more than I do. I am making the case that ticket touting and a secondary market in tickets are in the best interests of consumers on both sides of the fence. Other people may take a different view, but I am passionately against the Bills because they drive a coach and horses through the principle of ticket touting.
A more general point is that whatever people's view about the desirability or otherwise of ticket touting and selling, it would surely be nonsensical to have a different law relating to Nottingham from those that apply in any other part of the country. It would bring laws passed in this House into utter contempt if, after the House had expressed an opinion on whether something was a good thing that acted in the interests of consumers, one particular city decided to do something completely different on a matter of national importance.
Mr. Bone: My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech, but on this particular issue he has perhaps given the impression that touting benefits only rich people who pay over the odds for tickets. Quite often there is an oversupply of tickets and people can buy them at a discount, which enables them to go to events that they would not normally be able to afford to go to.
Philip Davies: My hon. Friend is clearly right, but that probably does not really apply to these Bills, which, to be fair, are intended to stop such activity only when a ticket is being purchased or offered for purchase "for gain or reward". My understanding is that if somebody were trying to sell a ticket at below the price they paid for it, they would not be trying to sell it for gain or reward.
Mr. Bone: I did not make myself clear. What happens is that the tout buys the ticket at a discount from somebody who is not going. He than has to sell it on, because he cannot sit on it, so often he will take a loss because he wants to get rid of it.
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. We have explored the issue of ticket touting for quite some time, and I think the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) has made his point. Perhaps he would like to move on to some other aspects of the Bill.
Philip Davies: Of course, Madam Deputy Speaker. I could go on at length about ticket touting, because it is a subject about which I feel strongly, but I will certainly accept your ruling and move on.
I turn to clause 5 in both Bills, about which I have particular concerns. As my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch indicated, at the moment pedlars obtain a certificate from the police that entitles them to act under its authority anywhere in England, Wales and
Northern Ireland for a period of one year. After that time they need to renew it and we start all over again. The problem with the clause is that all people who wish to take part in the activity in question will have to be licensed by the consent of the council if they wish to carry on street trading, in order to be subject to the controls in schedule 4 to the Local Government (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1982.
The whole tenor of these Bills is, if not to harass pedlars, as my hon. Friend said, certainly to make it abundantly clear that they are not welcome in the cities in question and to move them on. My concern is that even though someone may have a perfectly valid pedlar's certificate that has been granted by the police, because they will now have to be given certificates by the local council and have the council's consent to operate, it will be made abundantly clear to them that they are not wanted. The Bills might go through the charade of laying down rules and regulations to make pedlars know where they stand, but I fear that councils will use clause 5 in particular to make it clear that they do not want pedlars and have no desire to give them a certificate, that they will not be licensed and that they should move on. The tenor of the Bill is rather sinister in that respect, because everything in it is designed to make life as uncomfortable as possible for pedlars, even when they are not behaving in a manner that is of any concern to anyone and when they are just going about their legitimate business. We should not support legislation with such an edge to it.
Mr. Chope: Is not the essence of a pedlar that they are not likely to settle, or trade, in one area? They will wish to pursue their trade in different towns up and down the country at different times of the year and to have that flexibility. They could not reasonably be expected to apply for a street trading licence each time they visit a particular town. Many such street trading licences are available only to those who want to have a stall on a regular basis.
Philip Davies: My hon. Friend is right. I am a fan of localism for many things, but in this case, where people, by definition of their trade, wish to travel around different parts of the country, plying their trade wherever they think they have the best advantage at that time, it is ridiculous to have separate Bills with separate powers and requirements, or to expect a pedlar to know the ins and outs of what applies in different towns. To be honest, that is unrealistic and unfair.
If anybody thinks it reasonable for pedlars to have to abide by different rules in different places, and to know where to go for their local authority licence and which council it applies to, I invite them-with the exception of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, who has become a world-leading authority on the issue-to tell me the difference between each regulation, applying under the different Bills, in different towns. I suspect that those here, debating this legislation, could not give an accurate appraisal of the exact differences between towns. So how on earth do we expect pedlars, who are merely trying to go about their everyday business, to know the ins and outs of every single difference? It is beyond me.
Mr. Bone:
My hon. Friend is being extremely generous in giving way. Is he aware that the mean difference travelled per day by a pedlar is 95 miles, that the median
is 66 miles and that on average a pedlar visits 25 cities a year? How could the average pedlar know which regulations apply in which part of the country?
Philip Davies: My hon. Friend is right. He makes the case perfectly. It is unfair to place such burdens on pedlars, and they cannot be expected to know all the nuances of the regulations in different towns.
Mr. Chope: Can that point be reinforced by the fact that the Durham university research was carried out not with individual pedlars across the country, but using so-called snowball sampling? The only way of contacting pedlars collectively was to contact one and rely on that pedlar to contact others and so on-like a snowball.
Philip Davies: My hon. Friend is right. The other related point is that, when the Bills first came before the House, we did not have things such as the Durham university research to guide us. Things have moved on considerably. Actually, the more that we have learned about this particular industry, as time has passed, the less of a case has been made for the Bills. My hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone) made a point about the distances that people travel. We are always trying to find ways of tackling obesity, so I would have thought that we would be trying to encourage, rather than curtail, that sort of exercise among the public.
I wish to talk about the clauses dealing with the seizure of goods. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch made a good point that articles can be seized when a person is reasonably suspected of committing an offence, as opposed to when they are reasonably believed to have committed an offence. That is a very soft test. He feared, as I do, that local authorities could use that rather soft test to reinforce their hassling of such people and make them aware that they do not want them in their city at all. That was a very good point; however, I am particularly concerned about what happens under the clauses following those provisions after someone's goods have been seized.
The Bills allow perishable items to be seized, yet clause 8 of both Bills says that seized items would have to be returned
"at the end of the period of 56 days beginning with the date of seizure,"
"no proceedings have been instituted".
Fifty-six days is an awfully long time for someone to go without goods that have been taken from them unfairly and without good reason. Two things flow from that. First, perishable goods are of absolutely no use to anybody after 56 days and could not be sold on. However, even where goods are not perishable, a lot can happen in 56 days. Earlier speakers referred to some of the things that people sell. They could include topical things or things that, although not perishable, have a short shelf life, owing to public demand being based on events. Returning such goods to someone after 56 days, when there is no longer any market for them, is of absolutely no use to anyone.
Mr. Bone:
I want to take my hon. Friend back a few paragraphs in his speech. We have established that, under clause 7(4) of the Bills, a pedlar can claim back
perishable goods within 48 hours. However, 48 hours would make some perishable goods, such as flowers, pretty much useless.
Philip Davies: My hon. Friend is right. Indeed, clause 7 says that perishable items that are seized may be disposed of within 48 hours. His interpretation of "disposed of" might be different from mine-we could argue the toss about that and about whether it involves returning the goods, which is a different matter-but I will let people make up their own minds about that. My point is that returning non-perishable goods after 56 days is equally of no use to the people concerned, in many cases because of the nature of the goods being sold.
However, if things are taken unfairly and then returned, or not as the case may be, or if they have been disposed of in some other way, and the pedlar, quite legitimately, wants compensation, clause 10 of the Nottingham City Council Bill-a similar provision applies in the Canterbury City Council Bill-provides for compensation to be paid to anyone who had a legal interest in them at the time of their seizure, where that seizure was unlawful. That is all very well, but there are two sides to that. First, any compensation paid would presumably be based on the cost price of the goods concerned-that is, the cost at which the pedlar bought them, not the price at which they intended to sell them. In real terms, therefore, the pedlar will be at a loss, because he would have realised more money for those goods than the amount by which he will be compensated. However, in order to gain such compensation under the Bills, the pedlar is also expected to go to the county court.
Given that we are talking about somebody who has had their assets taken from them-often assets that they need to make a living-and given that they perhaps could not afford to reinvest in any replacement goods, because the income that they had expected to derive from selling the original goods has not come in, that person might have been without an income for 56 days. Expecting them then to pay the costs of going to court to try to recover any compensation seems wholly unrealistic and, to use a term that has been used many times in this debate, disproportionate.
Mr. Chope: Is it not even worse than that, because, in order to get compensation, someone would have to establish that the person who had seized the goods did not have a reasonable suspicion that an offence was being committed? Case law shows that the test of reasonable suspicion is less than that required to establish a prima facie case.
Philip Davies: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It would be wholly unfair to impose these restrictions and potential costs not only on pedlars but on anyone.
Mr. Bone: Much of my hon. Friend's speech has concentrated on pedlars and on how they will be done down by the Bill, but will not consumers also lose out if they do not have the opportunity to buy from pedlars?
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