Speeches by Hinds.

“As you say, the earlier you get it, the better for inviting other people, for organising events and so on. Clearly we would like to grow this market. You need growth areas to be able to do that. If there is a growth area, probably someone has already nabbed it. Are there sectors that are under-served currently with lar…”

“Classically, a cap on these things is the number of bed nights available. I used to work for Holiday Inn, and the Holiday Inn franchisee convention can only go to four cities, even in America, so you are very limited here. Historically, Blackpool used to have a lot of bed nights, but things have changed. London obvious…”

“What do you think is the potential for moving or creating more of this business outside of London? It would be interesting to know, of the total sector—you think of some massive events like World Travel Market, London Fashion Week, London Tech Week, International Maritime. They are all in London. You have the Boat Show…”

“Major events has two meanings, doesn’t it? For each major event you have a team. The Open coming to Scotland is a major event that would have an operational team attached to it. There is also the concept of how as a country we make the most out of major events in general. Then you do want someone from the Treasury and …”

“Wow, okay. You do not think there is a need for that at a UK Government level, but rather at a regional-city level?”

“Was it someone from the police? Was it like COBR, but for events?”

“What do they do? Who is on this team?”

“Obviously there are further discussions, analysis and understanding to come, but what impact do you expect this legislation to have on actual volumes of secondary ticket sales?”

“Nick, you mentioned the devolved Administrations. I do not know about Northern Ireland, but the Welsh and Scottish Governments have major events teams. What does that change in practice and is that something that should be replicated on a UK level or is it more appropriate at, say, the London level, the Manchester Comb…”

“Good luck, Jon. We have been there.”

“Okay, thank you. On secondary ticketing, you mentioned, en passant, the point about extraterritoriality. Isn’t that quite fundamental? If you ban something in Britain but you cannot ban it elsewhere—there are parallel debates about online gambling and so on—to what extent do you cut out secondary ticketing as opposed t…”

“That is helpful to know. Do you think in this sector that the Employment Rights Bill will have some impact on the structure of employment itself? In other words, one thing you might expect is to have fewer individual events employing people or venues employing people and more contract staff, more staff agency. Is that …”

“Are you awaiting a response?”

“Have you asked the question?”

“Have you had a conversation with the Government about what happens if you have a piece of employment that isn’t actually long enough to be the reference period and, therefore, what that individual’s rights are? If they work for, say, three weeks on a zero-hours contract, maybe 40-plus hours in those weeks, it is a busy…”

“In which case, Chair, I shall defer to that moment.”

“That I am not so sure about. Just to—”

“I think I can give you some reassurance, Jon.”

“Are you able to quantify in any way the cost effect?”

“How much more change are you expecting?”