Ms Clare McNamara:

That is a very good point. We are aware that bots are used to buy tickets. We had originally included a bot provision in the legislation, however in November 2019, the European Union adopted a directive in the consumer rights area about better enforcement and modernisation of consumer rights legislation. The directive says member states must adopt a bot provision. As there are additional requirements applying to the provisions of EU consumer protection law in areas such as consumer protection co-operation and on penalties which do not apply in the provisions of purely domestic legislation, we felt it was preferable to include the provision on bots in our transposition of that directive. We will come to the Government with a scheme of the consolidated consumer rights Bill early in the new year. That will cover the bots provision and the organised purchase of tickets via bots.