PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Royal Albert Hall Bill [Lords]: Revival - 15 June 2026 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

I am pleased to support the revival motion before the House today. It is about 11 months since I moved Second Reading of the Bill last year. At that stage, it had already completed its passage through the House of Lords, and it was given a Second Reading without opposition. It then went into the Committee on unopposed private Bills, and the panel met in March this year under the chairmanship of the Chairman of Ways and Means. The Committee approved the Bill subject to an undertaking given by the Royal Albert Hall, which I will come back to. I do not want to repeat all of the speech I made on Second Reading, but I do want to set out again why the Bill is so necessary and beneficial, and not just to the Royal Albert Hall but to the many people who enjoy performances there.

The Royal Albert Hall is one of our most important cultural institutions. There can be few people in this Chamber, or indeed the country, who have not enjoyed performances at the hall—either live or broadcast—including the last night of the Proms, the Festival of Remembrance, Cirque du Soleil and, tonight, Elvis Costello. I should declare that I served as a trustee of the Royal Albert Hall, appointed by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, from 2018 to 2020. I was one of five independent trustees, and I also sat on the conflicts committee, which is an extremely important part of the management of the hall, and to which I will return. As a result, I gained a good understanding of the way in which the hall operates, and I saw how the council works to fulfil the charitable purposes of the hall.

The hall has operated successfully for 150 years, and to explain why this Bill is necessary, it is important to appreciate its history and the model on which it is based. The hall was the idea of Prince Albert. Sadly, he died before he could see it completed, but the corporation was set up in 1867 in his memory, and the hall was built and opened by Queen Victoria less than four years later. The initial funding for the building of the hall came from the commissioners of the Great Exhibition, but it was insufficient, so the remainder—the gap that needed to be filled—was met by payment in return for seats in the hall. It is perhaps a unique model of public-private partnership. The hall has around 5,500 seats, of which around 1,250—just under a quarter—are privately owned. Those seat holders are members of the corporation, and in some cases those seats have been passed down through families across generations. Others have been bought by charities, companies and individuals when they have come up for sale.

Ownership of a seat brings with it the right to attend certain performances—but not all—and the members elect from their ranks 18 out of the 23 trustees who run the hall. They also make a significant financial contribution each year through what is called the seat rate, which is currently around £2,250. That is an ongoing commitment of the seat holders to the continuation and the costs of the hall. On top of that, it has always been the case that seat holders agree to forgo their tickets for events held in the hall on just over 100 days each year. By giving up that right, the hall therefore has the tickets available either to offer to the promoter or to use for its own purposes. By doing so, it can attract higher artists, so it is of considerable financial benefit to the hall that the seat holders behave in that way.

The practice of agreeing to forgo the right of using a seat is not covered expressly by the constitution of the hall; it is voted on and agreed by the members that they should do that. However, there has been a suggestion of legal challenge from a very small number who do not like the fact that a majority of the seat holders have voted accordingly to give up the right, so there is now legal uncertainty and a risk as to whether the Hall can continue to offer as many tickets as it does to what are called exclusives, where all the tickets are available for use by the hall.

That legal uncertainty has resulted in several options for the hall, none of which is particularly palatable. It could continue to operate on the present basis, but it risks defeat in the courts, should that legal challenge be sustained. Indeed, failure to pass this Bill may encourage those seeking to challenge the current situation. The alternative is that the hall could revert to having exclusive performances only to the number permitted under the existing constitution. That probably means losing around 40 exclusive lettings in a year out of perhaps 150. The Bill is necessary to allow the existing practice to continue, to the benefit of the hall. If the Bill does not pass, the chief executive has calculated that it is likely to cost the Royal Albert Hall around £1.8 million.

I defer to my right hon. Friend’s superior knowledge in this area. I recognise the value of the asset. Can he reassure me on the concerns about conflicts of interests? Those people holding the seats are also trustees, so they are taking decisions for financial gain. Is he reassured that the process he is suggesting we follow will counter that issue?

I will make a couple of points to my hon. Friend. As I have said, I not only served as a trustee, but sat on what is called the conflicts committee. The conflicts committee has a majority of independent members—not of seat holders—and it is there to ensure that any decisions taken are done properly. While it may be the case that conflicts exist, that in itself is not a problem, so long as there are proper mechanisms in place to ensure that the current situation is not abused. Certainly no evidence has ever been suggested, as far as I am aware, of seat holders seeking to take decisions for their own benefit, rather than for the good of the hall. If they did do that, the Charity Commission would come down on them rapidly, so there is an existing control around that issue.

My hon. Friend is right that concerns have been voiced about how the hall operates. When the Bill went through the House of Lords recently, an amendment was passed relating to the resale of tickets, which is the other issue that some Members have raised. It was suggested that seat holders, if they wished to sell their seats, should be required to do so through the hall’s own ticket resale mechanism. Many do choose to do that, but the problem with that is twofold. The first is how the resale mechanism works. It pools the takings and redistributes them among all seat holders. If not all seats are sold, that could end up costing seat holders money. The second problem, which is more fundamental, is that these are property rights. It is the legal right of the seat holder to decide whether to use the seat himself or herself, to pass it to somebody else, or to sell it. It is a fundamental property right.

To meet the concerns that were expressed, and the amendment that was made in the House of Lords, the hall offered an alternative undertaking, which is that each year those trustees who are seat holders and had sold tickets during the course of the year would have the amount of money that they obtained as a result made public. Through that, there would be greater transparency, with anyone able to see that those seat holders who become trustees are not exploiting their position in that way. That undertaking was accepted by the panel of the Committee on unopposed Bills, and hence that undertaking is now being given by the hall in place of the amendment.

This Bill is about one question alone: the ability of the hall to go on with the present practice, whereby seat holders go above and beyond the number of events or days where they agree to give up their rights and put more into the pot to the benefit of the hall and the public. If the Bill does not pass, there is a real risk that the entire model on which the hall operates will be undermined.

I was interested in what the right hon. Gentleman said about the pooling of money following resale through the hall’s box office. Would it not be palatable for the members of the hall to have an agreed price by which those tickets are resold? Instead of the money being pooled, they could receive their portion of the contribution that they make.

We are talking about very few events where tickets are sold at a much greater price than their face value. There will be some. The problem with what the hon. Gentleman suggests is that, at the end of the day, we are talking about somebody’s right as a legal owner of a property to decide what to do with it.

The seat holders have been extremely generous in the level to which they agree to support the hall. [Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) and I agree with each other on many other occasions—we sit next to each other on the Foreign Affairs Committee—but on this we are on opposing sides. She has suggested, for instance, that the hall has benefited unfairly from the Government and the taxpayer because it received a loan of around £20 million during the covid pandemic.

I was a Minister in the Department of Culture, Media and Sport during covid. The cultural recovery fund amounted to £1.5 billion. If that had not been put in place, the entire cultural landscape of this country would have collapsed. In the vast majority of cases, the funding was grants. Cultural institutions—theatres, museums, galleries and music venues—were given grants by the Government, ranging from the Royal Opera House through to the Hot Box in Chelmsford, which I occasionally attend to see up-and-coming bands. All of them were beneficiaries, but the difference was that in the case of the Royal Albert Hall, it was not a grant, but a loan, and it is repaying that loan.

The great thing about the Royal Albert Hall is that for 150 years it has provided one of our greatest cultural assets, and at almost no cost to the public purse. Apart from that covid loan, there has been no cost to the public purse at all, and it remains the case that, unlike so many others, it does not receive a grant. If this Bill does not pass, a model that has been so successful for 150 years is at risk of being undermined. If the consequence is that the hall has to withdraw from a lot of its charitable activities—reaching out to put on events for young people and for communities—and becomes solely focused on having to raise money, the communities will lose out. There must be a real risk that ultimately, if that model is no longer sustainable, it will be the taxpayer who is asked to step in in place of it.

Let me say this to Members on both sides of the House. When we come to consider the Bill, it will have undergone scrutiny, and can continue to undergo scrutiny. I am aware of the concerns that the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) is about to express. Let us have a continuing dialogue with the hall about those concerns, but the Bill is only about sustaining the present mechanism, which is clearly of benefit to the hall, to everyone who goes there, and to the country. I hope very much that it will be allowed to be revived and to pass into law.

Order. Before I call the next speaker, it may be helpful if I point out that all we are really arguing about this evening is the revival of the Bill, not whether it is a good Bill. Obviously, however, Members will want to set some context.

If anyone had asked me three years ago, “How does the Albert Hall work?” I would have said that it was publicly owned, and that it put on events and collected the ticket money, and the money was spent on enabling people to continue to use the Albert Hall. However, it is not a bit like that. The Albert Hall is a charity, but it is also a business. It is both things at once. It is a charity to the extent that it was bailed out by the Government during covid, but it is a business in that a fifth of the seats were bought by people who, I am sure, were assisting in getting the Albert Hall built at a time when there was not sufficient funding for the construction to be completed. So some people bought seats, and they bought them at £100 each. A box of ten would cost £1,000, and a box of five would be £500. In 2017, someone who went to Harrods Estates would be able to buy a box for £2.5 million. In 2023, Kay & Co were selling a box for £3 million. A row of four stalls seats was advertised recently at £600,000. I laugh when the right hon. Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) says that we should be grateful for the assistance of the people who now own these boxes and these seats for giving us a couple of thousand pounds a year to help with the ongoing costs of the Royal Albert Hall, because I think he is getting things out of proportion.

I am sure that the right hon. Lady paid as close attention to the remarks of my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon as I did, but she has just repeated that during covid the Government, to quote her phrase, bailed out the Royal Albert Hall. My right hon. Friend has explained to the House that the Government made a loan that is being repaid by the Royal Albert Hall. I do not recall anyone in the House saying that providing the cultural support that the Government gave cultural institutions during covid was the wrong thing to do. In fact, we were all probably clamouring for more to ensure that our theatres and other institutions were kept afloat in a post-covid scenario. If the right hon. Lady has got that basic fact wrong, why should we believe anything else that she is about to say?

I have heard the hon. Gentleman make some good points in the past, but he has not made one tonight. If you lend some money to a business that is about to go under, you are bailing it out. Yes, it may pay you back later, but, really, we are talking about what colour angel is dancing on top of a pin.

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

I will give way once more, but then I must make some progress.

I should add that while the Government gave the hall £20 million as a loan, as it gave loans to so many institutions across the country, the seat holders—the members of the Royal Albert Hall —put in £2 million above and beyond what they had to provide under the arrangements normally, as support. The seat holders have been extraordinarily generous, and it is not the case that they have somehow exploited the Government. They put in their own money to the tune of £2 million to get the hall past covid.

The right hon. Gentleman has told us how many seats are owned privately. Let us suppose that £2 million were to be divvied up among them, bearing in mind that it is possible to buy a box for £2.5 million or £3 million, or to buy six seats for £600,000. As I have said, we need to get this into proportion. Not only do these people own the seats; the reason they own them and they are worth so much money is that they can sell them, and they can sell them on the black market, and they can sell them for whatever price they want. I hear the right hon. Gentleman saying that sometimes those seats do not go for a lot of money, but tell that to Ed Sheeran. The seats for his performances were being sold at £6,000 a night, and he complained, as did a large number of other artists who have appeared at the Royal Albert Hall.

It is bad enough for there to be a black market for ticket touts, but tickets being sold by the people who own the seats in the Royal Albert Hall takes that to a new level—and it goes further. Not only do those people own the seats and trade them among themselves, and sell them for large amounts of money; according to the constitution of the Royal Albert Hall, they are the people who need to run the Royal Albert Hall. So there we are: it is a charity when it comes to getting public money as a bail-out, but when it comes to anything else, it is somehow a business. I do not understand how it cannot be an obvious and manifest conflict of interest for people who benefit from the Royal Albert Hall to be running the Royal Albert Hall, and for it still to remain a charity, and I am not alone. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman knows the views of Victoria Prentis, who was Attorney General in 2024. She is now in the other place, and is a very sound woman. She has said:

“It is widely acknowledged that the constitution of the Corporation of the Hall of Arts and Sciences”—

that is, the Royal Albert Hall—

“gives rise to a potential conflict between the private interests of seat-holding trustees and the Corporation’s charitable objects. This potential conflict is of significant concern to the Charity Commission and many well-informed observers.”

So that is what the problem is.

When I was shadow Attorney General, representatives of the Royal Albert Hall came to see me. I hope that I am not disclosing any confidences, but I made it perfectly clear to them that if they were going to bring any legislation before this place and ask us to spend our time looking at legislation relating to the Royal Albert Hall, we needed to sort this out. We could put this into legislation. The Royal Albert Hall cannot change unless we put it into legislation, because that is the way in which the Royal Albert Hall was originally put together. We must sort out the governance, and we must sort out the fact that these people are selling their seats on the black market. They are selling them to ticket touts. Those seats should only be sold through the ticket office, as they are at the Royal Opera House and at theatres. Why should these people have the benefit of being able to sell their these seats on the black market? It is undermining everything. If members of the public thought that such a beloved institution as the Royal Albert Hall had such a racket going on, they would be outraged, as I was when I first heard about it. I told the representatives of the Royal Albert Hall, when they came to see me three years ago, that unless they brought in those changes in legislation, I would object, and I am just keeping to my word.

Let us look back at the history. Originally, the legislation was going to be about the fact that extra seats were put into the boxes, contrary to the rules. The owners thought, “We are going to get into trouble here”. They wanted to bring in legislation to allow boxes of 12 instead of boxes of 10, because boxes of 10 were within the rules and they were putting 12 seats in them, and making that much more profit as a result. They then thought, “Oh, we cannot do that”, so they wanted to introduce legislation. They then pulled that bit of the legislation, but not before it was advertised online that there were going to be 12-seat boxes. Someone was going to make a lot of money out of this. They then ditched that bit but have kept this other bit, which makes a technical point: seat owners are restricted from selling seats for every and any event. For example, people will be glad to hear that no one is making a profit from the Remembrance Sunday commemoration at the Royal Albert Hall. Those seats are sold properly through the box office, and none of this nonsense is allowed on that night. There was a limited number, which the owners then agreed that they would increase, and a small number of people challenged that in court. I appreciate that that may be uncomfortable for some people, but I do not see why Members of this House should spend their time promoting legislation that simply looks after the interests of a small number of people who already make a great deal of money out of owning seats in the Royal Albert Hall. It seems to me that we should be demanding that the Royal Albert Hall change its governance processes, stop the way in which it sells tickets, and get on and deal with itself in a way that is 21st century and not anything else.

Why it is appropriate that whereas the rest of the tickets for a charity event are sold for the sake of the charity, such as the Teenage Cancer Trust, trustees on the board of the Royal Albert Hall—a so-called charity—can sell the tickets to line their own pockets? We have a charity event run by a charity, yet those running that so-called charity are allowed to make a profit out of it. It is scandalous, and it should be stopped. I know that Conservative Members will say that it is the trustees’ right and that they should be allowed to do what they like with private property. Well, they can go ahead and sell their seats to make a bunch of profit for themselves, if that is what they want to do, but I do not see why Parliament’s time should be used to help facilitate that. If the trustees of a charity are supposed to be running it, why are they thinking about how they can generate the most money and the most profit for themselves? It is quite obvious that there is a conflict of interest at the centre of all this, and it is not an appropriate use of this House.

At this stage, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson) for all the work that she has done in this area over the years. She has exposed some really shocking examples of ticket abuse, including by one of the hall’s vice-presidents, who offered tickets for the publicly funded BBC Proms for up to 10 times what the hall thought they were worth. It is the most outrageous profiteering that has led to this Bill being amended in the House of Lords. Peers did not ask for that much in the House of Lords—it was pretty tame, frankly—but the amendment said that trustees should use the ticket return scheme that the hall runs, not sell their tickets in backroom deals while the hall gets a pittance and has to beg the public for bailouts. To have that amendment struck out and replaced by a commitment that the trustees will be transparent about their profiteering, rather than cease it, is disappointing and inappropriate, to say the least. I also note that although family members are included in that commitment, other individuals are not, making it still perfectly above board for a trustee to give their tickets to friends and associates, who can in turn go ahead and sell them instead.

I know the corporation is desperate to get this Bill through so that it can protect itself against legal challenge, but I want us to stop and think about who it really benefits. Who benefits from striking out the amendments? Not the public—that is for sure. Publishing some information on some of the profits of some of the sales on a website once a year just does not cut it. The truth is, what the trustees have here is a magic money tree, and they do not want to give it up. The corporation said that the amendment passed in the Lords was

“unnecessarily restrictive and financially punitive”,

but one might say that charging £6,000 to see Ed Sheeran is also pretty restrictive and is not something that he appreciates, as he has made clear. I urge my colleagues to reject this Bill as it currently stands and to instead secure some much-needed reform to the board of trustees, which seems to have forgotten who it is meant to serve.

The Royal Albert Hall is undoubtedly one of our premier cultural institutions, and it does a great deal of public good. It hosts a great many events that simply could not be hosted elsewhere, particularly large-scale choral and classical music. It is worth noting that the hall was an early adopter of the ticket levy scheme and has put over £300,000 back into grassroots music venues around the country, which have historically been underfunded.

Undoubtedly, the hall’s governance arrangements and business model are peculiar. If this was normal across the arts, I think we would rightly take issue with it, but it is not normal. I note that among OECD countries, the UK is 22nd out of 25 on how it funds the arts; in fact, we have seen a one-third cut in the amount that we spend on the arts since 2010. However, the central question before us tonight is: do we block this legislation, or do we seek to improve it through parliamentary process? I choose the latter. There may be ways in which we can improve the Bill, and we can certainly improve its transparency and ensure that those with a decision-making or governance role in the running of the hall do not use it as an opportunity to make huge and excess profits.

Is my hon. Friend aware that the House of Lords has struggled with this? Part of the problem is that the long title of the Bill is so restrictive that very little can be added to ensure that the governance of the Royal Albert Hall is sorted out.

We undoubtedly have more work to do on this Bill, but we must continue to do it through the parliamentary process that we have.

My hon. Friend may or may not be aware that the proposers of the Bill can withdraw it at a time of their choosing. If amendments were to be made to the Bill, I fear that the proposers would simply choose to withdraw it from consideration.

That is a risk that they take on behalf of a venue whose future they seek to secure. I encourage the proposers of the Bill to work with this House and the other place to make sure that we get it over the line, because I want to see the Albert Hall thrive.

I think the hall’s representatives would be only too happy to talk to the hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry); indeed, they have asked to speak to her several times, without success. As has been pointed out, this is a very narrow Bill—it has a very restrictive title—and it is essential if the hall is to continue. We should continue to talk to the hall, but we should not stand in the way of this Bill, which is absolutely vital if the hall is to continue.

I am not standing in the way of this Bill. I want to see it proceed tonight.

I do not know whether the right hon. Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) is aware that I have given the Albert Hall’s representatives several dates to meet me, but they have not been in touch.

I am not my right hon. Friend’s diary secretary, but perhaps the hall can get something moving soon.

We should probably bring this debate to a close, but it opens a great many questions about how we fund the arts in this country. This model would not be acceptable for the Barbican, the Bridgewater Hall or other venues. We make an exception for the Royal Albert Hall, but we should not let it be the norm. We should look more carefully at the kinds of audiences that we create for the future through the National Centre for Arts and Music Education, so that places such as the Royal Albert Hall have an audience and do not become dependent on people having to pay huge amounts of money to see huge names. People come to events like the Proms because they want to hear classical music, for which we do not currently have an adequate audience at the moment, but we need the venue to be there for them to come.

I call the shadow Minister.

If we do divide today, I shall be supporting this Bill, primarily for the reason that mentioned in its introduction: today we are debating whether to reintroduce the Bill. If we choose to do so, there will be plenty of opportunity to debate it at a later stage, and it appears that several Members want to do just that.

Given that the debate has swayed into the substance of the Bill, I should say that I am one of the former Ministers who oversaw the implementation and execution of the culture recovery fund, alongside my right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale), when we were in government—something that I am very proud of.

I have a number of constituents who go to events at the Royal Albert Hall two or three times a year. Members on both sides of the House have referred to the process of legislating, and we must consider our constituents and those who buy tickets in order to travel from Northern Ireland two or three times a year. Some of my constituents do that, and many others from Northern Ireland do the same.

Absolutely.

The Royal Albert Hall is a vital part of our tourism ecosystem, our cultural history and our cultural offering. Therefore, my final comment is an offer to the Minister. I am one of the biggest supporters of the arts, culture and heritage, and am very proud to be so, but I sometimes wonder when we have such debates whether it is truly appropriate in this day and age for us to discuss in this Chamber, when there are other demands on our time, the minutiae of the internal dynamics, operations and rule changes in certain institutions. When they were set up and established in other centuries, Parliament was the right vehicle to have such discussions, but I wonder whether it is the right vehicle now.

If the Minister—or indeed the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) or others—wishes to discuss, once this has been resolved, whether there is a broader debate to be had about some of the ecclesiastical, heritage and academic institutions where Parliament still needs to arbitrate on what, at the end of the day, are internal operational decisions, I would be happy to discuss with the Minister whether that is an appropriate debate to have in this place.

Madam Deputy Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity to respond to this debate, which clearly is about whether we revive this Bill, not the internals of the Bill itself. I thank the right hon. Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) for sponsoring the Bill and for his speech. I also acknowledge the work of the Bill Committee in scrutinising the Bill in the last Session, and ensuring it is proportionate and meets the aims of the hall, which has included making sure that the hall’s new ticket income declaration policy is sufficiently robust.

The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Droitwich and Evesham (Nigel Huddleston), raised a whole host of interesting questions about whether we should still take primary legislation through this House for institutions set up over 160 years ago. I would be more than happy to discuss that with him. I would have thought he was more interested in reviving the Conservative party than in reviving this Bill, but we could discuss his point about such institutions.

I acknowledge the contribution of my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry). She is not alone; the Charity Commission itself and several commentators, many of whom she mentioned, have long expressed the view that there is a strong conflict of interest in the majority of the hall’s trustees being seat holders, because they are sometimes acting in their own financial interests instead of the charity’s best interests, which is against the rules and regulations of the Charity Commission.[Official Report, 18 June 2026; Vol. 787, c. 6WC.] (Correction)

The Bill drew strong opposition in the other place for not tackling this conflict of interest, and it is disappointing that it has not tackled it—for all the reasons that have been raised this evening. The Charity Commission maintains its concerns that the Bill does not fully address the hall’s long-standing conflict of interest, especially the make-up of the board of trustees, despite the new declaration policy. The hall’s position is that it is willing to discuss concerns about other matters with interested parties, but that these should not obstruct the passage of the Bill. Perhaps what the shadow Minister has said about primary legislation should be part of this discussion.

I understand that the Bill will come back to this place on Report and Third Reading, and I encourage Members, if they have concerns, to table amendments on Report. I am not alone in raising this criticism. Baroness Twycross, who spoke on behalf of the Government in the other place, has expressed the same disappointment, as did my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda and Ogmore (Chris Bryant).

There are few institutions that hold as distinctive a place in British public life as the Royal Albert Hall, and it is fitting to be discussing the Bill in Parliament now, given that the Proms start next month; I am sure many hon. Members, myself included, are looking forward to this time-honoured event in the British cultural calendar. However, this motion is only about reviving the Bill, and the provisions of the Royal Albert Hall Bill are not considered contrary to public policy. I would point my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury to our draft ticket tout ban Bill, which was announced in the King’s Speech, which will deal with some practices of selling tickets at an extortionate price.

That is indeed the case. The promoters can bring back a Bill and, in the same way, the promoters can withdraw this Bill at any point.

This is a private Bill, and the Government always take a neutral position on such Bills, notwithstanding amendments from Members in this House or from those in the other place. We will therefore not be supporting or opposing the Bill’s revival; that is a matter for the House.

Question put.