Welcome to this session of the Business and Trade Committee, where we will look at some dangers and opportunities connected with dynamic pricing and the issue of whether consumers in our country are being ripped off. Anne, would you mind if I start with you? You have warned of the risks of dynamic pricing in the past. Can you give us a sense of how widespread dynamic pricing has now become?

We first researched this in 2018 when we were looking at the emergence of dynamic pricing in online sectors and how that might spread into essential markets. Increasingly, shopping has moved away from the high street to online, which is slightly more risky for consumers in respect of pricing practices and firms nudging people in the direction of taking out products and services that would be most profitable for them. It is definitely much more widespread now. We see it across a wide range of sectors such as concert ticket prices. We see a slightly different version in terms of personalised pricing in other sectors, where the price you get for a holiday varies depending on your characteristics. It is really widespread now.

When did it start accelerating through the economy?

It is hard to tell to be honest. As it is such a fast-paced innovation that it is difficult to track across sectors. In terms of online shopping it has been a trend for more than a decade, but we definitely saw a big rise in online shopping during the pandemic. We saw a lot of innovation around that time as well.

If you were forced to characterise how widespread it has become, would you say it is now prevalent in most sectors of the economy or a minority? Can you give us a sense of the scale?

It varies depending on the type of product. You still do not have a lot of dynamic pricing in essential services sectors, because it is more difficult to do—for example, you have the price cap in energy, which is more singular, although we expect to see that increase—but in sectors where you see a surge in demand, such as the concert sector and holidays, you see a lot more of it.

Allen, would you say this practice has become more widespread in the hospitality sector, or has it always been there?

It is widespread. If you take a broad definition of it to include it being cheaper to go out for dinner at the beginning of the week than at the end, lunch being cheaper than dinner, or January being cheaper to go away than August, it is very widespread. I am sure we will break down into the specific ways this works but it has always been there—in the two-for-one burger and chips on a Monday deal, for example. I was talking to a hotelier in the midlands. He has been doing it for a long time and he described how, when he started in his career, every year he used to write down on each day how many inquiries they had for that day per room. The next year he would get out that book and see how much those days would be charged more, or less, than other days. Although algorithms mean we can match supply and demand more accurately than we have in the past, I am not sure it is that new. It is just a bit cleverer.

Ms Pardoe, are some groups more vulnerable than others to being ripped off by dynamic pricing? Who are the most vulnerable in society?

In terms of dynamic pricing specifically, so far there is not a huge amount of evidence on whether particular groups of consumers are experiencing worse outcomes. We have undertaken research with a behavioural insights team to look across what types of consumers are likely to be more vulnerable to this kind of pricing, and we intend to expand that and test some hypotheses. For example, people who have poor mental health can sometimes be more susceptible to pricing tactics like, “Hurry—buy now! Two hundred people are looking at this page.” Similarly, people who are in financial difficulty and need to make quick decisions or maybe have less options might also be more impacted. In terms of who is most impacted by this at the moment, as I said, the evidence is quite slim, but it is important that we have started research in this area. Regulators and the firms that are doing these practices themselves need to look at their own data, think about what they are doing and see what the outcomes are in terms of their own customer bases. They should not use that data just to understand who they can drive most profit from but to also see if there are any unintended outcomes in terms of discriminatory pricing.

Sue, you are shaking your head?

Sorry, I have something wrong with my neck; it is not a disagreeing shake of my head. I would like to come in, but I was not intending to shake my head. On consumer attitudes, one of the problems with dynamic and variable pricing is that consumers do not necessarily know where it is happening—it is not always transparent. We have been doing a lot of work on pricing practices and know that there is a general concern that people feel they are being misled with pricing practices. We recently conducted some focus groups to understand more about how people view dynamic pricing. We looked at it across the board, but specifically at ticketing and flights. It is quite a nuanced perspective but sometimes people feel they benefit. People are used to the Uber-type model where in some cases people will get cheaper prices at certain times and other people will pay higher prices. It may mean there is an increased supply that was not there before, but people expect there to be transparency. They also expect there to be predictability so that they are in control and have a sense of the outcome if they are exposed to dynamic pricing. In response to the question of vulnerability, dynamic pricing is most likely to benefit those who can be flexible in how they shop or have the ability to adapt how much they pay for particular items. If you are on a low income or you are vulnerable it is less likely you are able to benefit from that. We feel that a lot of dynamic pricing is covered by existing consumer law but the framework needs to be strengthened to deal with it.

How many people are contacting you who feel they are experiencing an unfair price?

People do not always know they are experiencing it so they are not necessarily proactively coming to us. A big difference was the Ticketmaster Oasis issue where we had a lot of supporters come to us providing screenshots of the journey they had been through, which showed that people were not anticipating dynamic pricing. They were not told it was happening and suddenly had to pay a much higher price than they were expecting. In that particular case we felt there was a breach of consumer law because there are clear obligations around misleading omissions or actions that we do not think Ticketmaster followed. Generally, there are issues where people are experiencing dynamic pricing once they are already in a transactional process and that can be very difficult for people to control. Even if you are told you have dynamic pricing, if you do not know what you are ultimately going to pay then it puts you in a vulnerable situation. That is where the law may need to be tightened.

Ms Pardoe, you spoke about data; how many people have contacted you?

In terms of dynamic pricing it is a similar situation to Sue. We get calls to our frontline advice services about pricing issues, but they tend to be more visible things like drip pricing—when you have a low headline price and as you click through you get charges added on—or around subscriptions. The Oasis case was interesting because it shone a spotlight on it for people. Generally, if you are looking for a product at home and you get your quote, you do not necessarily think about or have visibility over whether you are paying a different price or if it is higher or lower. We do not get a huge number of calls about this but we can aggregate information from the client data we have and look across how much people are paying to see if we can spot some trends. We did this with car insurance pricing: we used data from tens of thousands of our debt clients, where we have their income and expenditure, and were able to look at the amount that different groups of people were paying for their car insurance. Through it we found that people of colour were paying on average £300 a year more than white people, even after you have controlled for things like crime in the area, age and so on. It is so hard for people to get an accurate picture and make a complaint because they do not have the data to do so. That is why we do these exercises. We are also looking for regulators and firms to interrogate how these practices are impacting on customers in perhaps unintended ways that could lead to unfair outcomes for people.

Allen, how do you think we can look at these insights and best practices, as shared by the industry, to tackle barriers so that consumers get the best price?

There is a foundational point here which is that variable pricing takes prices down and up. Let us say we are in London: one day you may have a pint for £6.50—less in other places—then, because there is a football match on or because it is after 11 pm and the costs of serving are higher, it is suddenly £9. Which of those two prices is the correct price for the pint of beer? Hoteliers will say that it is more regularly true that dynamic pricing drives a price down from a given point than it does push it up, although both happen. So when responding to the opportunities and challenges of dynamic or flexible pricing in general it is very important not to accidentally prevent those things from happening. You do not want a situation where you cannot offer a deal; that would be a strange position to be in. There are three things: competition, transparency and choice. Choice and competition are different. Competition is about whether a consumer can buy a similar item from more than one place. Are there two pubs on the high street where one is showing the football, which has significant costs attached to it, and therefore charging more than the other pub? That is point-in-time competition. Similarly, is there more than one hotel in a popular spot? The second thing is transparency: do consumers know what they are paying at the point of payment? Can they predict it? I have no problem with a hotel offering a room-only rate and then charging more if guests want to go to the spa and have a treatment or have breakfast on top of the room-only rate. We all recognise the fact that you can go on to the aggregators now and have a choice of prices where you could cancel or not cancel, have breakfast or not have breakfast; that helps people to manage their costs. The third thing is choice. We started this session with the assumption that variable pricing pushes prices up for vulnerable people. However, we all recognise that the pensioners’ fish and chips deal on a weekday is cheaper than fish and chips on an evening, which is the same thing. Choice means people can, as much as possible, choose to go at peak times, which costs more, or off-peak, which costs less. If you have those three, consumers can make the choices they want.

Sue, many consumers believe that their browsing data is taken into account when determining the price they will ultimately pay for goods. Some people have taken to buying holidays in private browsing mode or going to a family member to eventually buy the holiday they have been searching for for weeks. What evidence have you seen to support those concerns?

We know that personal data is increasingly being used to tailor prices for people in particular circumstances. As I mentioned before one of the problems is that, as a consumer, it can often be difficult to know whether that is happening or not. Transparency is really key for people to understand if their personal data is being used. As Anne mentioned, we know that people’s data has been used in multiple ways for some time in sectors like insurance to set the price for consumers. What is changing is that it is moving into other sectors and it is more difficult for people to be in control and navigate it. With both the personalised and dynamic pricing that we have been talking about, there are clear requirements within consumer law about transparency and the importance of not having misleading omissions or taking misleading actions that would lead people to make a decision they would not otherwise make. With a lot of these matters there is a general issue around the enforcement of existing consumer law. The CMA is obviously now investigating the Oasis Ticketmaster issue and, from the information we have seen in that specific case, it does seem there was a breach of consumer law. One of the challenges is that a lot of these issues will fall to trading standards departments within local authorities that are really depleted at the moment. There is not necessarily an effective deterrent or the ability, as pricing practices become more complicated, to make sure that the enforcers are keeping on top of them and ensuring compliance.

What would Which? suggest the Government could do to ensure that the way prices are determined are more transparent for consumers?

The existing consumer law takes us quite a long way; it is about making sure that it is applied and effectively enforced. In the case of Ticketmaster and Oasis specifically, which has triggered dynamic pricing in people’s minds, we feel that it was an issue where there should have been transparency. That is a very clear enforcement issue. The CMA is investigating but at the moment it has to do so through the court-based system. From April, it will have direct enforcement powers under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act so will be able to take direct action to make sure businesses are complying. It is really important that it uses those powers effectively to make sure that businesses comply. One area where we feel there is a potential gap is where consumers are exposed to dynamic pricing once they have actually entered the transactional process. Even if you have transparency that dynamic pricing is being used, you are then put in a quite pressured situation—as we saw with the Oasis sale—where you are suddenly potentially seeing the price double if you are buying tickets for family members. We have seen cases where people are suddenly paying an extra £1,400 more than expected as a result. It is interesting that in Australia the Government have proposed a ban on dynamic pricing during the transactional process. We feel existing law needs to be properly enforced and we have called on Ticketmaster to refund people’s money, because we think people should have their money back. But dynamic pricing in general can be good for people. We need to make sure that how it is operating in specific circumstances is understood, and potentially strengthen the law.

What do you think is important for the business community in the wider conversation of dynamic pricing? Mr Simpson, I will come to you first. You touched on it earlier, but the Government are consulting on a plan to cap the price of resale tickets. What specifically are the positive and negative implications of price caps for consumer goods and services?

The hospitality sector is a separate one from the gig and other fun sectors, so I cannot talk with any expertise about how the economics of those work. Within hotels, bars and restaurants, I am not sure price caps are necessary or appropriate. I am not clear that the Government should be saying this is how much a pint of beer should cost. I come back to the point that dynamic pricing is more regularly used for prices to come down than up, but economically it is the same thing. If you say the rack rate of a hotel room is £200 in the summer, over the winter the algorithms will pull that price down and, on rarer occasions, might push it up because there is a spike of activity in the town. I am not sure that it is for the Government to define how much a hotel room should cost; that strikes me as being unwise from first principles. For me it is about transparency, competition and choice. If you can achieve those things, you are fine. Equally, the price of a ticket to go and see a top-ranked band versus should Kula Shaker reform, which would be me and two other people going to watch them, those two prices are going to cost different amounts. Are we going to say there is a price for a ticket which is how much you charge? I do not think so. It is more about the protection of the consumer through transparency, competition, and choice.

Sue, did you want to come in on this?

Yes, on the secondary ticketing market. Over several years we have carried out investigations and repeatedly found problems. The CMA and others have also investigated. We have seen that people are often paying hugely inflated prices—it may be that the tickets they are buying are not even genuine—and it seems very out of control. So we are pleased that the Government are consulting on controlling that market. As you say, one of the options they have proposed is a price cap. We are considering the benefits of that at the moment and have been looking at where price caps are applied in other countries. In Ireland, for example, there is a price cap where you cannot sell tickets above face value for designated events. Anecdotally, from talking to the consumer and competition authorities there, they feel it is significantly reducing consumer complaints, so we think it is worth exploring. Australia has 110% of face value. Quite a few countries have it. It is making sure that there are no unintended consequences. But generally that market seems to be out of control, so it is about looking at whether protections need to be strengthened. As with all of this, it is about making sure there is a robust enforcement regime, because quite few things in this space are regulated but businesses do not necessarily comply, and it is quite hard to hold them to account.

Do you have concerns that that type of regulation would push re-sellers on to black markets?

That is one of the arguments put forward against it. The secondary ticketing sites need to provide evidence that, where a price cap has been introduced in other countries, it is actually the case. That is what we are trying to understand at the moment. It is clear you need to have an effective enforcement regime but, where countries have had price caps in place for a while, we need to learn from their experience and make sure that we design it in the right way if we go down that route.

Allen, you have given some good examples of dynamic or variable pricing. As there is a debate currently going on in the hospitality industry about the virtues of it, or not, particularly around challenges for businesses to stay afloat, could you talk about what you have learned from both sides of the debate? I know you have given some examples.

It is not a universal practice as there are some businesses that charge the same. A café will only be open during the day, the menu does not change and largely it has the same demand across a week, so it might have an incredibly stable pricing model. But almost everybody else will have some version of variable price across a given period. The challenges are much more around where we are economically right now, whereby the margins available to businesses in my sector are very tight. They got considerably tighter after the budget—£3.9 billion of extra costs. We have probably capped out the consumers’ ability to pay more. Normally, the response to that would be to try to drive demand at lower demand times by doing deals, but the ability to offer those deals has been reduced by the fact that those prices are fixed. That is a foundational point. The other thing worth bearing in mind is that business owners will often say that one of the virtues of variable pricing is that it means you can offer employment across a week. If you want to employ people in the low season in a holiday area, or on a Monday night, you need to drive the demand and you drive the demand through variable pricing, by reducing the prices against your peak periods of August or Friday night. There is a concern about unintended consequences that would stop people from being able to do that demand driving. Again, the core point here is that variable demand is more regularly used to reduce prices in hospitality than it is to drive them up. You will see more occasions where there is a happy hour, a two-for-one deal or a burger and a pint as one package, than times when the price of a drink has gone up because the football is on.

Following up on that point, do you think there is a negativity around it that has come from other practices? Obviously, if they are already used to the idea of dynamic pricing but did not call it that before, do you think a change in consumer attitude might need to take place?

No. I am not an expert in how pricing for concerts works, for instance, but you are already going to charge more for tickets to a top-flight band than you are to go and watch a folk act in your local pub. So what a natural price for a concert is is a complicated one. Genuinely, I do not think consumers in general are concerned about the fact that a pub might have a happy hour on a Monday and a hotel will charge you more in August than in January—despite the fact that, as a father of an eight-year-old who is sat behind me because her school is shut, I have to pay the higher price.

Mr Greatrex, football is obviously a little different because of fans’ loyalty to their club and to their country. You have warned that FIFA may introduce dynamic pricing for next year’s World Cup. What do you think the impact of that would be on fans?

In the English Premier League we are starting to see some clubs introduce what I refer to as an analogue version of dynamic pricing, meaning that, unlike in the past when you would say, “This is the price for your ticket for every game in the season,” they are now not publishing the prices until they go on sale and they vary. For example, Fulham, which happens to be my team, charged £160 to watch them play Manchester United last Sunday. It was a terrible game, but people paid £160 for matchday tickets. For the same seat against smaller teams it will be £100 or, behind the goal, £70 and £50. So they change them depending on what they see as the demand. That is the dynamic we are starting to see. With FIFA and the World Cup, there is a lot of demand for World Cup tickets. Obviously, the next World Cup is in the USA, Canada and Mexico. In the US, sport has had dynamic pricing for quite a while now—particularly in the NFL but also in soccer—so the expectation is that it will drive prices up. Others have been talking about things getting cheaper, which is not the experience in football; it is all about increasing prices at particular times rather than reducing prices for less attractive fixtures.

Do you think good practice can be drawn from what football does? Or are you worried about developments in this area?

We are worried because we have seen what feels like the exploitation of the loyalty of many supporters over the past couple of years. I am not going to start supporting Brentford rather than Fulham because their ticket prices are cheaper, and attending football matches is not like going to one concert to see somebody as you often go every week or every other week, so it is different in that sense. That is why it feels like exploitation. They are finding lots of different ways of reducing or removing concession prices that are all driving towards increased prices. How far can they get away with pushing that? It feels as though dynamic pricing is going to be another tool used by those seeking to maximise the revenue from supporters.

How many clubs now have this analogue version of dynamic pricing?

In the Premier League, three or four have it in the way that I described.

Three or four?

Yes. For a while they have had different categories of games, but not publishing the prices until they go on sale is relatively new. It has happened over the last couple of years. The people at Fulham are very proud of it—they think it is a great thing and almost revel in being criticised for having very high ticket prices, which feels slightly perverse to me. Of the Premier League clubs, 10 of them are now owned by Americans, many of whom own American sport franchises. You can see lots of ways in which the American experience and marketing in sport is being driven into Premier League football, because it is a very successful product and they see it as a way of increasing value.

Is American ownership of UK football clubs fostering the spread of this practice?

It is, because it seems to be the clubs that have American owners that are at the forefront of increasing prices, removing concessions and moving towards a dynamic pricing model. It is what happens in the different sports franchises they run in the US, and they see the Premier League as being undervalued.

Based on what you have seen in the United States, what is your fear for where this could end up to the detriment of fans?

My fear, and what we are seeing happen, is that loyal and long-standing supporters will end up being priced out. What you get in the Premier League, and increasingly in the big clubs—particularly in London—is one-off visitors: tourists who want to see a Premier League game and are not particularly attached to either team, or they might be fleetingly attached to either team. That affects all sorts of aspects such as the atmosphere, but it is increasingly the case that supporters feel they are being priced out as a result. That is not just dynamic pricing—it is a whole range of different things—but from what we have seen from the early signs of dynamic pricing, it seems to be a tool to do that rather than about trying to manage and meet your costs base through different periods of attractiveness, as with other sectors. It seems to be quite different.

How quickly is this threat unfolding?

We will all remember the period when football matches were played without any fans because of covid, and every football club said football without fans is nothing. The season after the fans came back, they started to ratchet up: prices increased beyond inflation in the Premier League and concessions were removed. Nottingham Forest is an example where, a couple of seasons ago, a child’s ticket went up from about £100 to £850 once they turned 17. All these types of things have been happening across most, but not quite all, clubs in the Premier League over the last couple of years and it seems to be accelerating.

Is it your view that this is basically ripping off fans?

What it is doing is exploiting the loyalty of supporters. Dynamic pricing may well be a tool that is being used to do that alongside a range of other things. My fear is that you are effectively cutting off the health of a fan base, which is a big issue. It is a big thing for many people, in many communities, but it is also pretty dangerous for the club. But the people who are running the clubs now may not be there in three or four years’ time. They might get relegated and the consequences of that come home to roost.

What is your advice to Ministers on price caps?

In the context of football, it is important that there is clarity about pricing. The most important thing is that people know the amount they are paying and what they are paying for. In relation to sporting tickets, the obvious and blatant exploitation of loyalty should not be happening. You do not remove concession prices; there should be concession pricing. You do not change the prices match by match in a way that is designed to increase the number of tourist type one-off visitors, just to ride the good times to the detriment of the long-standing loyal fan base who keep clubs going in the tough times.

Thinking back to the roots of the game, clubs were important to communities and to those they were built around; essentially this is going to price those people out, is it not? A lot of fans will understand that you may have a premium price for a Manchester United game—although I would be very surprised at that—but really it is about having transparency over what the price of a ticket will be at the point you think about wanting to go along to it, and what the premium might be as opposed to a game against whichever club in the rest of the league. That is the danger, is it not?

It is, and there is an allied danger, which is that, traditionally, season tickets have been a way in which loyal supporters have bought a ticket that entitles them to attend every league game, so 90 in the Premier League and 23 in the Football League divisions. The average price of that ticket would be lower than if you bought a one-off match day ticket. What is increasingly happening in the Premier League—a number of clubs have done this—is that they are reducing the number of season tickets because they see an opportunity in being able to sell match-by-match individual tickets at a higher yield, and doing that by targeting people who are not part of what you have just described: the community and long-standing supporter base. That is at the heart of our concern over what we see as the pattern of behaviour that is happening. It is happening in the Premier League because it is the most successful and has 99% occupancy for its league games, so is able to do it more effectively. But what happens in the Premier League tends to then go down into other divisions later.

Is that pattern of behaviour just called greed?

It is called exploitation.

That is what FIFA is looking to do: it is obviously not very wealthy and needs the money. I’m joking. Can I throw a question to you all about your engagement with both DBT and the CMA? How are you helping to shape policy and regulation over these different forms of variable pricing? May I start with you, Sue?

We have regular contact with both the CMA and DBT. The CMA is looking at dynamic pricing in general at the moment. We have conducted the consumer research that I mentioned which, following on from the point over how things are working in football, really reinforced that people are open to dynamic pricing but have concerns if they do not feel it is transparent, predictable, or fair and they can benefit. They feel that businesses are doing it in order to make more profits and they are not seeing the advantages of it. We want to feed into that review and to make sure that the CMA understands how this is operating across different sectors and whether there is the need to take action. One area seems to be dealing with dynamic pricing in the transactional process, not necessarily banning dynamic pricing in general, because we feel that it can be beneficial and is often covered by existing consumer law. DBT has a review of secondary ticketing and a call for evidence around the primary ticket market and how that is working. We will be engaging and feeding into those. We have also been very involved with the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, which was adopted last year. The Competition and Markets Authority has just consulted on guidance for how it will apply to different types of practices. We have been feeding into that as well to make sure that it clarifies the situation on how existing law applies to a range of different pricing practices.

I agree with everything Sue has said. We have been engaging with DBT and the CMA across a number of issues around pricing. We welcome the focus that we have seen on this over the last couple of years, culminating in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act—a bit of a mouthful. The measures in it are really positive around the CMA’s additional powers in clamping down on some of the most egregious practices. What I would say is that, with fast-changing markets online and with things like dynamic pricing and subscriptions, it is almost like a regulatory whack-a-mole. You undertake the process of identifying that there is a problem, consult on a solution and implement it. But it is a long process, as demonstrated in the case of subscriptions. We first raised concerns in 2016. We are pleased by the new measures around this in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act, and the Act is now in, but it does not come into force until 2026, so that is a decade. It is really difficult to keep up with these fast-paced markets with that kind of approach to regulation. What we would like to see is more focus on the outcomes that different markets and practices are delivering for consumers. For example, the FCA has introduced more of an outcomes-based focus where there is a general duty for firms to treat customers fairly. They have to demonstrate that they are doing so and, when harms occur, explain how it happened and what they had in place to prevent it. The FCA says it would expect firm monitoring to identify where groups of consumers get worse outcomes than other consumers, rather than having a detailed rule book that takes a long time to put in place and keep up to date, and that can miss the mark. Also, frankly, it can tie firms up and have them tripping over themselves to ensure they have complied with specific regulations. For those firms less focused on good outcomes for their consumers—to put it diplomatically—they can always find a way around rule books anyway. Yes, we support these rules, but we need to see more of a focus on the outcomes delivered for consumers rather than detailed rules.

We have not had any real engagement with anything other than the DCMS because, at the moment, there is legislation coming towards you from the Lords on a football regulator, which includes requirements for engagement with supporters on issues including ticketing strategies specifically. It is more about the way in which that regulatory function will work that we have been engaging with DCMS on.

Are you content with that level of engagement?

Yes.

Allen, what about your engagement with both DBT and CMA?

Yes—they are very good on both counts. My team are meeting with the CMA as we speak. That is what they are doing with their late morning and early afternoon. They were in regular contact with the team over the drip pricing changes. On this and a number of other issues, it is very strong, and equally so with DBT. The official team there are very strong as well, so we are content with the level of engagement. The core regular conversation tends to be that this issue does not appear to be one that is particularly relevant to the hospitality part of the economy.

We have not looked specifically at the link but it is a really important point. We have long argued for stronger regulation of buy now, pay later. We find that consumers often see it as a pricing option and they do not realise that basically they are getting into debt. There is a lack of regulation in terms of affordability checks and the ability for consumers to seek redress. We have been pleased that the Treasury is intending to tackle this issue and to introduce regulation that would address those issues. It is really important that it comes in as soon as possible to protect people.

I agree. There is an issue around the transparency of some of those finance options. For example, our research found that 28% of people who had used buy now, pay later on websites had not realised that they were using it: they thought it was just a payment option that allowed them to pay by instalments and did not necessarily link that with credit. I have also seen another piece of research that showed that 72% of businesses that allowed purchasing through buy now, pay later saw an increase in sales conversions, and half saw an increase in the value of those purchases as well. So people may spend more—more than they can maybe afford—and not necessarily understand that there is a link with credit. As Sue said, buy now, pay later is not currently regulated so we also support moves to introduce regulation in that space. There is definitely some work to do there.

Not for match-by-match tickets. For season tickets there have been instalment plans in place for a long time, which different clubs do in different ways. The way ticket prices for individual matches are going, they might need to do it but not yet.

There is a long-standing tradition of people paying off their holiday over the course of a year. That is quite important from an inclusion perspective because some people are able to sink the cost of a holiday in the month that they go, while others need support in spreading those costs over 12 months. The point you made about making sure that, if it is done on a credit or credit-like basis, it has proper consumer protections and visibility about what it might do to credit scores is very important. It is probably less likely that people are buying their dinner in that way, although we would all recognise that there are broader social difficulties in supporting people who have challenges around things like alcohol, in making sure that they are not incurring debt as well, which is deeply important. From a policy perspective, I would say that in responding it is very important that you do not make it impossible for people to book a holiday in a way that allows them to spread the cost, but rather support them as consumers in not excessively extending themselves in doing that.

Not a huge amount on this specific issue so far. That committee is still pretty new and we are waiting to make some progress. However, I would definitely look to make it part of that process.

Sue, the DMCC Act comes in in April and there are lots of good tools in that toolbox. The chair of the CMA left rather quickly two weeks ago and has been replaced by the ex-head of Amazon UK. What confidence do you have that the CMA, which is ultimately the enforcer of that new Act, is going to be acting and using its teeth?

We were surprised at the departure of the chair of the CMA; we had a constructive relationship with him and were pleased with the way the CMA had been focusing on consumer protection as well as using its competition powers. We want to work closely with the new chair to make sure that the CMA maintains that dual focus. As you mentioned, the DMCC Act is a really significant change in terms of consumer protection, because from April the CMA will have the ability to take direct enforcement action. We want to ensure that it is making effective use of that new regime and able to hold businesses to account, which is beneficial for responsible businesses as well as for consumers, so consumers can have confidence and businesses can have certainty. The Act also enables the Secretary of State to update the list of unfair commercial practices—practices that are always considered to be unfair. There are a broad range of provisions, including misleading omissions or actions that I mentioned before, and we feel that the Ticketmaster Oasis situation fell under that category. Where there is a need to update the legislation, the Secretary of State should be using these powers to update that list of banned practices. Generally, as I mentioned before, the DMCC achieved a lot, but one thing it has not tackled is the vast amount of consumer enforcement that is carried out by trading standards departments within local authorities. We have just completed a massive freedom of information request because there is no centrally held data on how trading standards departments are functioning and which aspects of consumer law they enforce. They enforce over 200 pieces of law, and the data showed it is incredibly patchy. Some London boroughs just have one trading standards officer. We can have the best legislation in the world but if it is not being effectively enforced it is not going to serve consumers or businesses.

What would you like to see changed at trading standards, given that fragmentation geographically? What is your recommendation there?

We have the CMA with its new powers; it needs to use those powers but it can only intervene when things are generally precedent-setting or market-wide. Trading standards deals with a vast amount of enforcement, including for national and multinational businesses. We need to review the situation and make sure we have the right balance between what happens centrally and locally, and make sure we have the right specialisms across the landscape to deal with the types of risks that we are seeing now.

I am afraid that brings us to the end of this panel. We are out of time; the clock is against us. Thank you so much to all our witnesses for giving us a flying start in today’s inquiry. We are really grateful to you for the clarity and force of your evidence. That concludes this panel.