The crackdown on touts crawls slowly forward, with fans to be given exact details of their tickets when they purchase from online resellers.

The UK government has finally agreed to back legislation that will protect fans from fraud on the secondary ticketing market. The proposals, collected in an amendment to the consumer rights bill, will ensure that fans buying tickets from sites like Viagogo, Stubhub and Seatwave will be given the exact details of the ticket they’re buying, including seat numbers, face value and the identity of the original seller.

The government hopes to crack down on touts’ “obscene profiteering” and prevent them from selling counterfeit tickets or speculative tickets, which are offered before events have even gone on sale. The amendment also requires ticket reselling companies to report criminal activity.

Conservative peer Lord Moynihan told the Guardian: “One of the major reasons why you can’t get tickets for high-demand events as a member of the public is because there’s specialised software available to touts which sweeps up the supply within a nanosecond of them going on sale. Then those tickets are made available on the secondary market at sometimes five or 10 times the price. From now on that process is restricted, because you have to have the seat number, row number and so on.”

The legislation, which will be brought in when the consumer rights bill becomes law within the next three months, marks a U-turn for the government. Culture secretary Sajid Javid had opposed the reforms, which were initially voted by the House of Lords, in the run up to the debate, describing touts as “classic entrepreneurs”.

Mike Weatherley MP, co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Secondary Ticketing, welcomed the proposals: “The free market system has broken down due to the introduction of ‘bots’ and other factors, enabling, on occasions, obscene profiteering for intermediaries against the interest of fans and the wishes of those putting on the event.”