The House of Lords has voted in favour of forcing trustee seatholders at the Royal Albert Hall to only be able to sell tickets for events through the venue’s official resale service. 

Peers backed an amendment to the Royal Albert Hall Bill put forward by the Conservative peer Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts following a fractious debate in the House of Lords yesterday. 

The bill, which aims to make changes to the hall’s constitution including amending the rules around the number of events seatholders can be excluded from each year, is necessary because the venue was established as a charity in 1967 by royal charter and therefore any changes to its constitution must be made through parliament. 

The legislation has already been widely criticised by peers because of concerns that the charity’s governance arrangements give rise to significant unmanaged conflicts of interest, which the bill did nothing to address. 

Hodgson said his amendment sought to address the “fundamental conflict of interest that lies at the heart of the governance of the hall”.

The amendment was 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 conflict of interest arises because about a quarter of the hall’s more than 5,000 seats are privately owned and those seatholders receive tickets for most of the events that take place in the historic venue. 

But the charity's 25-strong trustee board, known as its council, includes 19 people who own seats and who are therefore able to influence the commercial decisions over events that it puts on. 

Hodgson’s amendment, which was accepted by a vote of 206 to 45, says that members of the council who are also seatholders and related parties should only be permitted to sell tickets they receive for events through the hall’s official resale service, which markets them at face value. 

He cited longstanding concerns that tickets for events, including an Ed Sheeran concert in 2023, had been marketed for thousands of pounds above their face value on third-party ticketing sites. 

Hodgson said his amendment contained “nothing sinister”.

He said: “It does not attack the hall itself; it does not attack the rights of seat-holders; it does not even prevent seat-holding trustees receiving the face value of their tickets via the ticket resell service. 

“It merely begins a process of bringing the governance of the hall into line with modern charity law.”

There was uproar in the house after the Conservative peer Lord Moynihan, a seatholder and former president of the hall, accused the former Supreme Court president Baroness Hale, who chaired the committee stage of the bill, of being uninterested in hearing the hall’s point of view. 

She said she “did not expect to have to answer that sort of accusation” and said the committee “certainly heard both sides of the story”. 

She said: “I have to say, having spent decades of my life as a serving judge whose job it was to hear both sides of the story, I have been particularly upset by the noble lord’s accusation.”

Moynihan said he regretted any upset he might have caused and went on to say: “I beseech noble Lords to reject this unworkable, impractical, misconceived, unreasonable, wrecking amendment and to pass the bill unamended.

“Unless that is done, the Royal Albert Hall could end up badly damaged—something that this house has in its hands to prevent.”

The non-affiliated peer Lord Harrington, who is a government-appointed trustee of the hall and promoter of the bill in the House of Lords, urged peers to reject the amendment. He said the measures in the bill were necessary to continue the hall’s operation. 

The Conservative peer Lord Carrington also insisted the amendment was unnecessary and said the hall would “unquestionably” withdraw the bill if it was passed. 

Baroness Twycross, the Department for Culture, Media & Sport minister in the House of Lords said that because the bill was a private one the government would not take a position on it unless it contravened public policy, which it did not. 

But she said it was “regrettable that these matters relating to the conflict of interest inherent in the hall’s governance model have not been resolved prior to the introduction of this bill”. 

The number of events that seatholders are excluded from has become the matter of a High Court legal challenge from three seat-holders who are claiming damages because they say they are being denied access to their seats for more performances than the charity’s constitution allows. 

After opposition from peers, the hall last year withdrew a controversial proposal from the bill that would have allowed the addition of seats to some of its most lucrative boxes.

The Royal Albert Hall has been contacted for comment.