A cross-party group of peers is attempting to amend legislation to prevent trustees of the Royal Albert Hall from profiting from their own decisions.

The Conservative peer Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts is spearheading a move to amend the Royal Albert Hall Bill when it is debated at its third reading in the House of Lords today.

Hodgson says the amendment seeks to address a “longstanding and fundamental conflict of interest lying at the heart of the governance of the hall”.

The amendment is backed by peers including the former Charity Commission chair Baroness Stowell, the Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Barker, the retired judge and crossbench peer Lord Etherton and Baroness Fraser, a Conservative peer and chief executive of Cerebral Palsy Scotland.

The amendment is also supported by the Charity Commission, which has been trying for years to persuade the venue to change its governance arrangements because of a perceived conflict of interest.

The hall said it was resisting the amendment and said it was misconceived, unworkable, impractical and would “damage the hall irreparably”.

The hall’s construction was partly financed by selling 1,276 of its 5,272 seats to private investors in 1866.

Ownership of seats, inherited or traded over the years, gives owners tickets for those seats to most events at the venue.

Seat-holders can do as they like with tickets for their seats, which are their private property, including giving them to friends or charities, returning them to the box office to be sold at face value, or selling them on the open market for the best price available.

Offering them for sale through third-party ticketing websites such as Viagogo can be highly lucrative; tickets for an Ed Sheeran concert at the hall in 2023 were being advertised on the site for £5,899, almost 30 times their face value. 

The hall’s trustee board, known as its council, makes decisions relating to the events that take place at the venue. 

But a perceived conflict of interest arises because 19 of the hall’s 25 council members own seats at the venue and are able to make large sums from the sale of tickets they receive.

The Royal Albert Hall Bill seeks to make several changes to the charity’s constitution, which must be made through parliament because the hall was established by Royal Charter, including the introduction of greater flexibility for its trustees to decide which events at the venue are reserved for seat-holders. 

Hodgson’s amendment says that any tickets sold by seat-holder trustees, or related parties, can only be sold through the hall’s ticket return scheme, which sells them at face value.

It also says a new subcommittee consisting of a majority of non-seatholding trustees must endorse decisions made under the new power.  

He said his amendment represented “a first step in bringing the governance of the hall into line with modern charitable practices”. 

He said: “This bill gives the council – three-quarters of whose members are seat-holders – greater freedom in deciding for which concerts seat-holders are to be allowed to take up their seats. 

“This presents a clear conflict of interest which threatens to undermine both the reputation and the charitable status of the hall. 

“The seat-holding trustees would be free to get the face value of their tickets back by using the hall’s ticket return scheme, but they could not make profits over and above.”

A five-page critique of Hodgson’s amendment prepared by the hall says the amendment is unnecessary, unworkable, misconceived and impractical and would have “damaging consequences for the hall”. 

It says the amendment is “an undisguised attempt to curtail the legal entitlement of trustee seat-holders to deal as they choose with their private property” by requiring them to only resell them through the hall’s ticket return scheme.

“The hall submits that the amendment is ill-conceived and would damage the hall irreparably,” the document says. 

A spokesperson for the Royal Albert Hall said the bill was intended to “remove a six yearly cap on the annual contribution payable by the seat-holders; and validate and regularise the way members forgo their entitlement to attend events, which in general would make more seats available for public sale than the hall’s constitution allows.”

The spokesperson said: “Both clauses are beneficial for the charity and are related to changes that can only be made by a bill through parliament.

“The bill does not grant new powers to give more tickets to members, it only grants new powers to exclude them from performances.”