Lord Carrington of Fulham (Con)

If noble Lords will forgive me, I am probably a fairly isolated member of your Lordships’ House in opposing this amendment. If the Front Benches will forgive me, I think somebody at least ought to speak on the other side of the debate that has happened so far. I do not have a registered interest in the Albert Hall. I do not own a seat. I am not a member of any body involved in the Albert Hall. My own interest in it is purely that I live very close to the Albert Hall—as do many other local residents in that part of Westminster. My real interest is to ensure that the Albert Hall is run properly: that the building is maintained properly, that the security around the building is properly assessed and implemented and that crowd control is put in place in such a way so as not to harm the residents round about. All of those things happen at the moment. The Albert Hall is very well maintained. As we have heard, it has a wide range of very successful events: pop concerts, classical concerts, sporting events, charitable events and private events such as the degree-giving ceremonies for universities. It is a very well-run body. It is unquestionably true that, as a Parliament, we would not have set up the Acts which govern the Royal Albert Hall in the way that they were set up in 1867. It is a very odd and possibly unique institution in the way it is set up by an Act of Parliament, subsequently amended by further Acts of Parliament down the ages to reflect progress, time and changes in custom. We have to remember that it was set up at a time when those who are of a literary bent will know that Anthony Trollope was writing a very good book on corruption in the City of London called The Way We Live Now. Well, you can draw parallels to the Act that set up the Royal Albert Hall in the way it was done. The way it was done was very straightforward. They decided to build the Albert Hall on the back of the Great Exhibition. Their ambition went way beyond their financial resources and the hall was in the process of going bust, so they decided that the only way to cope with this, because Mr Gladstone was certainly not prepared to put money in to bail it out, was to sell seats in perpetuity for 999 years from around 1867 to 1870. And that is where we are. The seats do not belong to the Royal Albert Hall, they belong to the seat-holders. We would change that; we would consider that to be the wrong way of doing it, but that is the way the Acts of Parliament are worded, and if that is going to be changed, we need a proper piece of legislation to change it. That brings me on to my noble friend’s amendment, which I think is trying to address an issue that is more theoretical than it is practical. I say that because the Albert Hall, while it is a charity—and it gets financial benefits from being a charity, as we have heard, on rates and VAT and so on—is a commercial operation of an entertainment venue and it has to make a profit. The way it makes a profit is by getting people to come and use the hall to put on events, which it does extremely successfully. It makes a profit; it washes its face; it does not get any money from the taxpayer; it runs a commercial entity. We can all object, perhaps, to the way that some parts of it are run, but it is run well and there are internal procedures in place to ensure that the perceived interests of the seat-holders on the council cannot influence who is going to book the hall. But it is not just internal procedures that stop it; it is the commercial reality. I have the figures. Some 1,268 seats out of 5,272 in the hall are owned by seat-holders. If you are trying to fill 5,000 seats in the hall, you have to get commercial sponsors of entertainment who are going to put on very large events to attract very large audiences. It is much bigger than most other venues in London. The way to do it, if you are running an event like that, is to maximise seat sales and sell every seat in the venue. What happens at the Albert Hall is that to attract major concerts—the rock concerts that the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, attended in the past—it has to make sure that seat-holders, who, as I say, represent 24% of the seats but 46% of the high-priced seats, have no right to attend that concert. It happens at the moment because it could not attract the promoters of the major pop concerts unless it did. I think my noble friend’s amendment is unnecessary at this stage. I think it also runs into the problem that unquestionably the Royal Albert Hall would withdraw this Bill if that amendment was passed. As we have heard, this Bill is to try to increase the number of events that it can put on without seat-holders having the right to attend. It is also designed to stop some seat-holders taking the Royal Albert Hall to court because it is currently acting outside its existing legislation. I hope that we do not accept this amendment. I hope that we pass the Bill because I am very keen to ensure that the Albert Hall carries on running as it does now, regardless of whether in the future we come back to review the whole structure and ownership of seats of the Albert Hall, but that would take primary legislation in this House to do, and it should not be done by a, frankly, cobbled-together amendment to the Bill. My interest is purely to ensure that the Albert Hall is run properly and profitably, is not a burden on the taxpayer and, above everything else, is a pleasant neighbour to people such as me who live close to it.