Examination of Witness

Part of London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (Amendment) Bill – in a Public Bill Committee at 4:42 pm on 17 May 2011.

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Chris Allison: Our assessment is that the increase from £5,000 to £20,000 is an appropriate increase. If we are talking about an organised crime group, and we arrest five of them, and the courts on conviction choose to impose the maximum fine, that is £100,000 between  the five of them. We think that is a significant deterrent, given that we are going very public, and that we will use every other piece of legislation that is available to us. If we have evidence that enables us to seize money under the Proceeds of Crime Act, then we will make applications to court to do that as well. Therefore, this is one of a number of measures that we are using. We are saying to criminals: “The fine is going up, we are targeting you. We are actively targeting you as touts between now and the games time.” We are targeting them at football events, because we know it is the same people who do it, and it is also an offence at football events. They get to know that the police service are looking at them, and that we are using all the legislation that is available to us. In our view it is an appropriate increase, it acts as an appropriate deterrent, and anecdotally, we are already hearing from the people we are dealing with that it is working for them.

There will be those—because there is massive money to be made here—who want to try to do something about it. The Operation Podium team has been working very closely for some time with LOCOG on how to reduce the opportunities for people to be scammed by the internet. We regularly trawl the internet for false domains, and for people who are offering tickets for sale, and we will continue to do so. Wherever we can, we will work with the service providers to take those internet sites down. A key message to the public—we are supported by Seb Coe and LOCOG and others here—is that you only get a ticket by going to the authorised site, the LOCOG website. If you think you have found a miracle website somewhere where you can get the final Olympic ticket for only £10, you are being ripped off. Do not believe that something is a free lunch, because it is not, it is a rip-off. This is about an education programme, and that is why we are doing lots of media jointly with LOCOG about it.