Should it be illegal to re-sell tickets at rip-off prices?

Surely you have bought it so its yours do do with as you want - willing buyer and a willing seller etc. Yes its hard occasionally but its obviously worth it to the person paying millions for a ticket. It goes wrong sometimes - but that's the job of the Police.

It cannot be difficult to restrict the numbers that the touts can buy.

And if somebody actually pays £6000 to a tout to watch the Wimbledon final (or whatever other ridiculous sum for any other event), they deserve to be parted from their money and we do not need more nanny state legislation to protect them from themselves.

My problem with all these anti-tout measures is that they penalise the honest buyer who, when the time comes, finds that they cannot attend the event.

How many event organisers offer refunds? If I read the small print I am breaking the law if I try to resell it and these 'proof of ID' schemes are basically saying "prove to us that you're not a criminal!"

Perhaps two solutions to consider:

1. Sell insurance with every ticket to cover non-attendance. A great way for insurance companies to make easy money and keep consumer bodies busy challenging the level of proof the insurers will inevitably require!

2. Don't sell tickets months or years in advance. Make them available, say, no more than a month in advance and that should mean very few people will suffer last minute plan changes and the window of opportunity for organised touts will be much reduced.

In a world where there are so many more important wrongs that should be righted, this particular one must be way down the list of priorities.

Much higher up the list is the excessive salary paid to Sharon Hodgson MP. She isn’t worth £65,738 a year plus expenses. To make matters worse she tried to see if she could get away with claiming £900 for a television. Fortunately the fees office said no.

The government are cutting spending on police so it would be unwise for Sharon Hodgson MP to invent new crimes to be investigated to waste our tax money yet further. I also think that ticket touting is normal business and entrepreneurship should be encouraged. Being paid £65,738 a year to make up more ways to waste cash is ludicrous.

Although not illegal, the All England Club does everything that it can to stop the reselling of Wimbledon tickets, including refusing admission to any but the original buyer and removing the ticket allocation rights from any club or individual found to have sold on tickets allocated to them. It also monitors eBay and other advertisements and has in the past succeeded in establishing the identity of sellers by this means, followed by punitive measures as above.

This does not apply to debenture holders tickets which can and are expected to be resold, at least in part. Inevitably, as the only transferable tickets, these tickets always command a premium price, but this is what enables the All England Club in turn to issue the debentures at a premium and without this premium the Club would not have been able to embark on the major development of the grounds that we have seen in recent years, including the new No.1 and 2 Courts and the roof on Centre Court.

This debate has not covered the ticket scams which ride on the back of touts.

My position is that it should be fine to resell tickets at up to face value but no more. Whilst some posts above reckon that entrepreneurs should be allowed, this activity does nothing to add value to the economy.

So if the resale price were capped it would also limit the damage from scams

And I doubt that touts declare their profits for tax and NI

@Jeremy. So, if I buy a few ordinary Wimbledon match tickets for my family or friends and later discover that I/we cannot use the tickets would the Club buy them back from me (with perhaps a nominal 'admin' fee) or enjoy having my money and not worry about the empty spaces court-side and disgruntled customers?

What an utter nonsense and waste of parliamentary time and money. What's next? Cap the price of a restaurant meal? Designer handbag? Aspirin? Let's start by capping MPs' salaries.