Meeting of the Parliament 15 January 2026
This is a wonderful Thursday afternoon on what is a momentous day, and a very happy day for many of us on this side of the chamber. We get to talk about football—or, at least, we will eventually get to talk about football, once we have talked about some of the aspects of the bill that I hope the minister might yet reconsider.
I am grateful for the engagement that I have had with Richard Lochhead and for the fully communicative way in which he has piloted the bill. I particularly appreciate the letter that he sent to members of the Constitution, Europe, External Affairs and Culture Committee earlier this week, which I will refer to in my comments.
My amendment in group 1, which is on the subject of intergovernmental co-operation on ticket touting, is a modest procedural amendment that is entirely consistent with what I believe the minister says the bill is trying to achieve. It does not reopen the policy debate on ticket touting, weaken the offence and or delay implementation. It simply asks for clarity about work that the minister has told the committee is already under way.
I recognise that, as the minister says in his letter—which, if the chamber allows, I will quote—
“It is not within the Scottish Government’s gift to report on the actions of other governments”.
I completely agree, and that is not what my amendment seeks to do. The letter goes on to say that the Government cannot
“guarantee meaningful progress within the proposed timeframe”,
but it has to be said that the timeframe is actually quite large; it is not a narrow, but a very broad, timeframe.
There is something else in the minister’s letter that I acknowledge to be true. He says:
“Legislative decisions rest with those administrations”—
meaning the United Kingdom Government, primarily—in the first instance. I understand and accept that.
However, at stage 2, the minister made it clear—and I absolutely accepted this—that the Scottish Government is in regular discussion with the UK Government and that it has had communication with the Welsh Government, which does not intend to create its own Wales-only legislation, and the Government of Ireland on ticket touting, including online and cross-border activity. He also acknowledged that the position across the host nations is uneven, as things stand, with different legislative and enforcement approaches either in place, or being talked about being put in place.
That evidence is exactly why I believe that this amendment matters. The touting provisions in this Scottish Parliament bill apply to Scotland, but the behaviour that we are trying to stop is not restricted to Scotland. Online platforms and cross-border sellers do not respect devolved boundaries. If enforcement is to be effective in practice, Parliament is entitled to understand how those risks are being managed.
The amendment does not require ministers, including the Minister for Business and Employment, to secure an agreement with other Governments. It does not mandate harmonised legislation, and it does not stray beyond devolved competence. It simply asks the minister, or ministers, to set out the steps that they have taken to seek co-operation and what has resulted from that engagement.
15:30At stage 2, the minister expressed concern about committing to a report within a fixed timescale if other Governments had not reached settled positions—he says the same in his letter. My amendment directly reflects his concern: the reporting duty is flexible, broad and, I think, realistic. It calls for a report to be published
“within six months of Royal Assent, and”
in any event
“no later than 18 months before the Championship period.”
That aligns with operational planning; it is not a political deadline, and it is intended to be helpful.
The minister also suggested that a post-event review would be sufficient. With respect, that would be too late—it would be like locking the stable door after the horse has bolted. Conducting a review after the event would tell us where we went wrong, but the report that I am proposing is, I think, about gaps that Scottish Government ministers might have identified and which the Parliament would need to do something more about, in conjunction with the UK Government and Parliament.
The Parliament is being asked to approve new criminal offences and enforcement powers on the basis that intergovernmental engagement is under way. In those circumstances, it is entirely reasonable for us, as members of the Scottish Parliament, to ask for a factual account of what engagement would take place before the event. If the engagement is as active as the minister indicated at stage 2—and I have no doubt that it is—producing the report would present absolutely no difficulties for the minister. If there are unresolved issues, it is better that the Parliament knows about them from ministers while there is still time to act.
My amendment 1 is not political—it is practical. It would strengthen transparency, improve preparedness and support the bill’s core purpose. I hope that the minister will look at it again, considering the reasonable interactions that we have had, and that he is minded at this stage to accept my helpful amendment.
I move amendment 1.