Speeches by Western.

“What about airline companies and so on? We have heard a lot about groceries, and you seem to be quite strong on and feel comfortable talking about groceries, but what about airlines?”

“How would you know that?”

“Minister, are you concerned that consumers’ data may be used by companies to exploit consumers?”

“In terms of policy work, what are you doing to try to establish more transparent pricing?”

“To be clear, there is no user information, such as prior purchasing patterns or demographic, used in setting dynamic pricing?”

“But are they linked in any way through any algorithm?”

“Whether the companies are owned by Live Nation Entertainment or not, does the pricing in resale markets have any influence on the price of the dynamically priced primary sale tickets?”

“You are correcting yourself. The point is, when it comes to driving the price, the consumer sees the price moving. Is there any use of consumer data—cookies and so on—in establishing the price for that particular consumer?”

“Do they tell you what the top level price is—the platinum price?”

“You make decisions with the event organisers. That is what you are now saying. Ticketmaster makes decisions with the venue. That is what you just said.”

“Minister, in the first panel you heard consumer groups saying how important transparency and predictability in market pricing are for consumers. How do the Government plan to get the right balance between consumer protection and a fair and reasonable objective of profitability on the part of a provider?”

“Order. Can interventions be brief, please?”

“I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called in the debate. Given that so many are standing, we will start with a time limit of three minutes. I ask that any interventions be kept to a minimum.”

“Sir Christopher, thank you for your point of order. I am sure that that is something the Minister will attend to in his winding-up speech.”

“I will call Dr Marie Tidball to move the motion, and I will then call the Minister to respond. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates.”

“I call on the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, and I would appreciate it if her speech could be reduced to around nine minutes.”

“Due to the constraints of time and the number of interventions, after the next speaker we will reduce the time to two minutes each.”

“I call the Father of the House.”

“They are very keen on it. It would be one of their priorities.”

“It seems that the Europeans are very keen on a youth mobility scheme; it seems to come up in lots of conversations. There is Erasmus+. They seem to view a scheme as almost a precondition to some sort of deal. What is the risk to us of having, say, a short-term visa scheme?”