House of Commons Hansard Debates for 8 Dec 1993

Sir George Gardiner : It does, but if we can define areas where we need not do so, I do not see why we should.

Sunday is special, as the hon. Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Ms Anderson) said. It is special for different people in different ways. For some, it is special because it starts with an act of collective worship. For others, it is a day of leisure and relaxation, perhaps visiting a garden centre in the morning and planting the produce in the afternoon. For others, it means a walk or a drive in the country, perhaps stopping at a village antique shop or at a farm shop. For others, it is a day when the whole family can go and choose a suite of furniture.

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For many--some 5 million--Sunday offers the chance to do the family shopping in a supermarket without the hassle of trying to concentrate everything into Saturday.

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For some 80,000 people, including students and part-time workers, it offers the chance of earning some money, often at premium rates, using a different day of the week for leisure activity.

I therefore ask myself, if millions of citizens wish to shop on Sunday, and so many shopworkers are eager to serve them, what moral right have we to stop them? That is why I support amendment No. 1, the complete deregulation option, but which I have always called the free-choice option. I do not believe that free choice would destroy the special nature of Sunday. It has not done so in the United States, Canada, southern Ireland or Scotland.

Mr. Hartley Booth (Finchley) : Does my hon. Friend accept that there is a clash of choices and that people whose houses are disturbed on Sunday- -or indeed Saturday--mornings should have a choice to have their house and premises quiet?

Sir George Gardiner : Highways legislation should cover the position of such people.

Free choice has not destroyed the special nature of Sundays in a variety of countries, including Scotland. To hear some bishops talk, one would think that Scotland was some heathen land where family cohesion has been smashed into oblivion. Scotland has had free Sunday choice for years, and Sunday shop opening there has settled to a level that meets the public demand. The same would happen here if we approved the free-choice option. Throughout large parts of England, it already has.

A further advantage of the free-choice option is that it would add almost nothing to the cost of administration that would have to be borne by local councils and ultimately by council tax payers. I shall vote for option one.

If that fails, I will most certainly oppose amendment No. 2, the Keep Sunday Special option. I cannot comprehend how the Bill's sponsors can seriously advocate replacing one set of ridiculous and unenforceable rules with another. The KSS "type of shop" approach would create many more anomalies.

As the Consumers Association has pointed out, and I shall quote a couple of extracts from its report, under the KSS option

"toys or books could be bought from a newsagent, but not from a toy or bookshop ; meat or bread from a small supermarket, but not from a butcher or baker. Auction houses, antique shops, clothes shops, record shops, book shops and any number of other shops will be unable to open, regardless of size, unless they are in a hospital, harbour, seaport, hoverport or airport."

On the "type of shop" approach, it continues :

"A convenience shop, under 280 square metres, with a principal trade of groceries and confectionery, will be unable to open unless it also sells domestic cleaning materials. A chemist shop such as Boots, whose trade may include medical products and surgical appliances but not as its main trade, will be unable to open to sell nappies--yet a small neighbouring DIY store could. And a video shop will be able to sell or hire soft-porn movies, but a bookshop could not open to sell a bible."

Do we really want to return to such a clumsy, bureaucratic and repressive system ?

Dr. Spink : I took advice this morning, and the advice is that all of these matters--the type of shop, type of goods, time of opening and the size of shops--can be dealt with by amendments in Committee upstairs. My hon. Friend should join the Committee and deal with such matters.

Sir George Gardiner : If all the objections of the Consumers Association are to be met, as my hon. Friends

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have said, the Bill will require hundreds of amendments to be tabled in Committee. I cannot see how one can defend that. Those who argue the KSS option wish to restrict working on Sundays. It would involve a vast increase in Sunday working for an army of environmental health and trading standards officers, scurrying to and fro with their measuring lines checking floor sizes and whether the shops that were opened were dealing in the exempt categories of goods listed.

Mr. Hugh Bayley (York) : Will the hon. Gentleman give way ?

Sir George Gardiner : No, I want to be brief and will not take any further interventions.

The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy estimates that the KSS will cost local authorities £12 million. I must warn hon. Members that if they pass that option, they must be prepared for a flood of protest from constituents who are part of the 5 million who are now able to shop on Sundays, or from the 80,000 who will lose their jobs in consequence. Do not be surprised if those people take their revenge. If the free Sunday choice option fails, I shall support the SHRC compromise. Short of free choice, that will most closely meet the needs of my constituents.

Overall, I appeal to hon. Members : please let us treat our constituents as adults. They are quite capable of deciding how to spend their Sundays, so let us not be seen by them as agents for repression.

Mr. Donald Anderson : The hon. Member for Reigate (Sir G. Gardiner) has put his finger on the problem--the essence of the debate is whether we want Sunday to be special, and therefore try to promote, encourage and accept it for all sorts of good social reasons, or whether, either immediately or in a creeping way, we are prepared to erase all the differences that now exist on a Sunday. I believe that there is some value in having a day that is separate and unique and that that is proper for all the people of our country. Parliament and the public should encourage that and not have creeping deregulation. When shopping was first allowed on Good Friday, perhaps 20 per cent. of shops opened ; now, 100 per cent. of the shops are open, and the tide has come completely over the difference. That will be the effect of the right hon. Gentleman's proposal. He should keep his eyes open. If he wants that, so be it, but I believe that the great majority of our people do not want it.

We shall understand the four options that are now before the Committee only by understanding the context within which the debate has developed since 1976 when, based on the Auld committee report--against all the odds, as the Government had an overall majority--the Government proposal for total deregulation was defeated on Second Reading.

After that, the stores embarked on a softening-up process, in which the Government colluded. To start with, they opened only on the four Sundays before Christmas. Having tested the Government that far and realised that not only would there be no opposition but there would be connivance, they went all the way. The subject was then passed to the European Court of Justice as a delaying device, knowing the way that that court--

Mr. Peter Lloyd : The hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well, because I have told him so from the Dispatch Box

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before, that the Government did not take the case to the European Court. In the court, the Government argued that what the law meant was entirely a matter for this country. The hon. Gentleman is wrong, and I hope that he will withdraw that remark.

There has been no collusion. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the law requires that the regulations be enforced by local authorities. The law must be changed before any other agency can enforce them. We are debating a change in the law now. The option that he supports--KSS--is modelled on the campaign that has been fought. It does not include a provision to allow any other agency apart from local authorities to enforce it. The hon. Gentleman is therefore speaking in favour of an option that would rely on local authorities to enforce it and it would not be for the Government directly to do so.

Mr. Anderson : I believe that the Minister is not a lawyer. He should be aware that, at any stage, the Attorney-General could have taken over by taking out injunctions against those major stores that defied the law. He must be aware that the Shops Act 1950 deals with the situation where a local authority takes action against a store. It does not deal with a conspiracy among a large number of stores collectively to break the law. The Government could have stopped that either by the Attorney-General taking out an injunction nationally against those stores or, knowing that local authorities could not risk their limited moneys in major legal actions, by being prepared to indemnify local authorities against cases that would put them at risk.

Earlier, I gave the Minister the example of the Kirklees case, which, as he knows, was considered by the House of Lords. Had Kirklees council lost that case, it would have been liable for £250, 000-worth of costs. That is clearly well beyond the resources of a local authority, which could not afford to risk so much. The Government colluded by doing nothing when they might have done something. They allowed law breaking on a vast scale.

Mr. Peter Lloyd : The hon. Gentleman, who I believe is a lawyer, knows perfectly well that the role of the Attorney-General in such matters is as a Law Officer, not as a member of the Government, and my right hon. and learned Friend explained his position from the Dispatch Box. The law, as passed by Parliament, adequately allowed local authorities to enforce it and there was no proper role that would allow him to intervene.

The Kirklees case resulted in the judgment that local authorities would be responsible for the losses of stores that those authorities closed by injunction if the European Court decided that the law was incompatible with Community law. That decision was overturned on appeal, so there was only a certain period when the point that the hon. Gentleman makes, and claims is a general point, would have applied. As an excellent lawyer, he would know that.

Mr. Anderson : Does the Minister suggest that the Government could not have agreed, had they so willed, to indemnify local authorities against the costs thrown away by seeking to enforce the law?

Mr. Peter Lloyd : I am saying that the hon. Gentleman had heard the Attorney-General's speech from the

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Dispatch Box. He said that it would not be proper for him to intervene, that there was no proper basis on which he should intervene and that the law passed by Parliament, which made local authorities responsible for enforcing it, was adequate. The hon. Gentleman has said, quite rightly, that I am not a lawyer, but my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General is. The hon. Gentleman's argument was with the then Attorney-General and I am sure that his successor in office now would be able to repeat the position that the then Attorney-General took.

The hon. Gentleman pretends that the Government have powers to enforce the law, when the law passed by Parliament quite clearly says that it is for local authorities to enforce it. We wish to change the law and that is why we have introduced the Bill. Any hon. Member, or campaigning group, can suggest different modes of enforcement. The hon. Gentleman's preference does not include any such change. I wonder why not.

7.45 pm

Mr. Anderson : The Minister makes my point. Had he so willed it, the Attorney-General could have intervened, but he chose not to do so. As a result, the big stores have been allowed to get away with it--the same stores that would have been the first to take to court a single mother who shoplifted in one of their supermarkets. They rely on the law when they want to do so and disobey the law when they choose to do so. The claim by the big stores that they are concerned about consumer choice is a little less credible in the light of their action when trying to prevent United States' warehouse companies from coming here to increase choice.

The normal principle of law is that when a will intervene to compensate that third party. Stores such as Marks and Spencer and John Lewis have obeyed the law and lost substantial sums as a result. I say again that the Government have connived at that loss and, by the way in which they have encouraged acceptance of the deregulation option, they are encouraging those who have defied the law so wilfully for so long.

The Government have tried to encourage support by, for example, offering worker protection. At a fairly late stage, they included schedule 4, as if they had a real commitment to worker protection. I practised a little in employment law and I can tell the Minister that that protection is illusory. Not only are there great delays in hearings before industrial tribunals but there is no legal aid, as he will know. Only those who are unionised will be likely to have any support. Damages will be limited. I am convinced that the only real protection for workers would be afforded by an option like the Keep Sunday Special option.

The Financial Times report on the way in which Sainsbury puts pressure on its managers was immediately repudiated, and tactically and wisely reversed, but who knows what Sainsbury and others will do if their option is successful today?

My answer to the hon. Member for Reigate, who is consistent in that he supports the free market ideology, is that he and his friends are prepared to put that free market ideology above their concern for law and order. I would have been more impressed had I heard him urging the major stores, when they selectively obeyed the law, to obey all the laws. They have put that ideology above their

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concern for small shopkeepers, whose decline in numbers would be accelerated massively if there were total deregulation, and above their concern for the family.

I am confident that one certain feature of total deregulation and the working of one member of the family on a Sunday would be to increase pressures on the family. It would create a negative future for family life, along with all the other pressures. Behind the disintegration of the family and the pressures on the family is the concomitant evil of increasing criminality. One of the joys of the Jewish family and the Indian family is that a day is set aside for family members to be together. Part of the Jewish community's respect for the law derives from the high value that is placed in the Jewish community on the family.

With all respect to the right hon. Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emery), I believe that there are only two major options : either deregulation or an attempt to preserve the special nature of Sunday. Deregulation is the aim of the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary. Just as in 1986, I am convinced that people do not want total deregulation.

Alas, the BBC and others fall into the trap of calling the Shopping Hours Reform Council option a compromise. It is a compromise only in the sense that it would mean deregulation by stages. If the majority of the people who support the SHRC were honest with themselves and honest to hon. Members, they would say that they want total deregulation. They realise that there is not a majority in the House of Commons for total deregulation, so they are attempting to persuade others that they are taking deregulation as far as they want. They should be honest. There is no relevant stopping point to deregulation. If it is six hours, why not make it seven or eight hours?

What would be the Government's position if, by some mischance, the SHRC option were to win a majority, and the Standing Committee were composed, as it must be, of a majority of those who voted in favour of the option, who then altered the provision from six hours to seven or eight hours and took the road to total deregulation?

With respect to the right hon. Member for Honiton, his motive is not the same as that of those who have proposed the so-called compromise ; it would amount to a staging post on the way to total deregulation. The right hon. Gentleman's motive is different, although the effect of his amendment would be the same. As there is no natural stopping point, if the opening time were 1 o'clock, why not make it 12 o'clock? It is similar to the Home Office's approach to the opening hours of licensed premises on Sundays. Initially, the Home Office said that it should be 2 o'clock, then it thought, "What is another hour between friends?" Slippage occurred. This issue could go down that same slope.

The deregulation option is proposed by those with a self-interest, in contrast to the KSS option which is supported by those who see the issue as a matter of public interest. I am proud to come from a Christian background and I believe that the Old Testament ordinances in this matter, as in many others such as hygiene, are still relevant to people. We would be acting against the interest of mankind if we sought to disregard them in this context or in others. It is important for the human condition that a day is set aside for recreation. Let it be the same day on which families can choose to stay together. It would be wrong for Sunday working to become a way of life. There would be adverse social consequences for the vulnerable, those without cars, the disabled and so on. There would be major

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pressure on city centre shopping and it would, of course, accelerate the existing trend of pressure on small, convenience shops, to their detriment.

If the SHRC were to win today, it would be a triumph for a sectional, highly financed lobby over the public interest. Marks and Spencer has lost a lot of money by obeying the law, unlike those major stores behind whom some Conservative Members now stand. I stand with those hon. Members who admire shops such as the John Lewis Partnership and Marks and Spencer which, to their financial detriment, have decided to obey the law. I hope that Conservative Members also admire those stores. The KSS option is the only one that is likely to create a balance by preserving Sunday and all its pleasures as a special day. I believe that that is right and that it is what our people want.

Mr. Rowe : I shall be brief and hope that the Committee will forgive me and allow me to escape soon after I sit down as I have an important appointment elsewhere. A small but important group of people have a totally principled view about Sunday, and I have enormous respect and admiration for them. They do not shop or travel or expect services from other people on Sunday. That small group of people can genuinely say that they are standing on a solid ground of principle.

In almost every other case such principles have been so distorted that it is difficult to claim a principled stand. For example, it is strange that many of my Christian friends and acquaintances write to me and speak in passionate terms about how wrong it would be to have many people working on Sunday. About 8 million people work on Sunday, and many of them provide inessential services to my Christian friends who think nothing of taking journeys, entering cafes and restaurants or doing a whole range of other things that they need not do but choose to do. Therefore, that element of principle has disappeared. If those in the Christian community want to persuade Parliament to act in their best interests, they need to mobilise and persuade more people of the truth of their belief--which is my belief. Having done so, they will exercise the kind of power that I would like to see them able to exercise in a democratic society. As a small minority, it cannot ask Parliament to legislate for its purposes as if that were somehow a duty.

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emery) for providing me with a way out of my dilemma. I was inclined to support the partial deregulation option because, although it has no special ground of principle, it gives a slight edge to small shops, which I have a great yearning to preserve. I have become increasingly dissatisfied with my position and feel that many of my constituents yearn for a day that is marked off from other days in a way that they can recognise and be able to use. For example, there is great force in the argument that if every day is exactly the same, any suggestion that premium payments will survive is a myth. Such payments will survive for a little while but they will slide away, like so much else.

I worry about the KSS's desire that the big shops should open for the four Sundays before Christmas. If most of Advent is deliberately used for shopping and Christmas is taken to be nothing special, the shops may find that, when Christmas has lost virtually all its meaning, the public will

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not spend any more in December than in any other month. Why should they if Christmas has become like any other time of the year?

Ms Glenda Jackson : The hon. Gentleman mentions the introduction of Christmas during the weeks of Advent. Surely he must be aware that most supermarkets start introducing Christmas, by way of Christmas cards, wrapping paper and specially wrapped boxes of chocolates, as early as September or, in some instances, almost immediately after Easter.

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Mr. Rowe : The hon. Lady is right to suggest that Christmas becomes more like fashion every day. I understand that in February it is already too late to buy summer fashions as they have all gone. My right hon. Friend the Member for Honiton has provided me with a way out of my dilemma. If he were to clean up his act--if I may put it that way he would have a satisfactory solution. In its present form, his proposition is wrong in that it contains another list of anomalies, as do the other options. There would be no anomalies if he agreed that shops below a certain size, which can be defined in Committee, should be able to open to sell anything that they choose on Sunday morning, as well as in the afternoon if they choose to stay open, and that shops above a certain size should not be allowed to open until Sunday afternoon. That would mean that the large number of people mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mr. Booth)-- those who value having at least part of Sunday free of the heavy traffic and noise that the rest of the week brings and who are just as entitled as anyone else to have some peace--would at least know that Sunday mornings were different from the rest of the week. They would not suffer as much disturbance as usual if they chose to have a long lie-in. It would also allow the elderly and frail and those who cannot drive to have access to their local shops. It is worth bearing in mind that only about 17 per cent. of women over 65 have a driving licence, which is a minute proportion. If local shops were kept open, it would be of tremendous value to such people and give them an edge but the demand to go shopping on Sundays, which does exist, would be met by people being able to shop on Sunday afternoons. The advantage of that solution is that it would be exceedingly easy to administer. When a shop registered for the uniform business rate, it could also register its size. If it were below a certain size, it would be able to open and if it were above that size, it would not.

My hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Sir G. Gardiner) was wrong to suggest that full, unrestricted, 24-hours-a-day opening would involve no cost for local authorities. That is manifestly untrue as cleansing, inspection and a range of duties would need to be carried out at the expense of local authorities. It would be unrealistic and wrong for the Committee entirely to dictate the country's shopping patterns by legislation. Shopping patterns keep changing. Small shops are struggling and will continue to do so, but it is reasonable to protect the privacy and tranquillity of a substantial slice of the population by saying that Sunday trading should be

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restricted, as suggested by my right hon. Friend the Member for Honiton. His is a very good solution to the problem, and I shall support it.

If that solution fails, as is conceivable, I shall support the KSS option, but not because I think that it would be easy to work in its present form. It involves far too many anomalies to make it a comfortable solution but they can, to some extent, be refined. I am disappointed that they have not been refined over the many years that have been available to work them out, but we could perhaps improve the option. I shall support it, if necessary, because I believe that it is sometimes right to suggest by public statement that there is more to life than shopping.

Ms Glenda Jackson : I cannot join the hon. Member for Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) in supporting the amendment tabled by the right hon. Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emery). In an admirably succinct argument, my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson) established the fact that the Committee will be voting either for deregulation or to keep Sunday special- -there is no halfway house that can meet the needs and requirements of the country at large.

The hon. Member for Reigate (Sir G. Gardiner) said that he would vote for the first option because it offered free choice. As one whose first experience of the world of work was as a shop assistant, I can tell him that deregulation gives little or no free choice to people who work in shops. I shall read out part of a letter from a constituent who said that the Bill was

"very personal to me because I work in the retail industry, in Central London. This means that time to spend with my family and friends is already in short supply, so anything that lessens it will seriously affect the quality of my family life. I am worried that companies like mine would not be able to operate voluntary arrangements and that everyone would be expected to work Sundays eventually, so cutting into precious time with my family." Another constituent wrote :

"As I see it the main problem from legal Sunday Opening is the probable coercion on Shop Staff. While in legal theory, retail store staff might be given a choice, in reality, the only choice is either, treat Sundays as a normal working day or lose your job, or at the very best your chances of promotion."

Sir George Gardiner : How does the hon. Lady react to what I have been told by many managers of supermarkets in my constituency? Their workers are queuing up to work on Sundays, and they have no difficulty in finding the necessary staff.

Ms Jackson : With respect, when there are 3 million unemployed people, one could offer any kind of gainful employment and queues would form. The hon. Gentleman must not regard any kind of remuneration as being a wage. Shop assistants--certainly part-time shop assistants--receive what I regard as disgracefully low rates of pay. The Government have a large slate of deregulation planned for the coming Session, and I have no doubt that one of the first things to be deregulated--as proved by the abolition of the wages councils--will be any protection of workers' wages or workers' rights.

I have also received a letter from the managing director of Robert Dyas, ironmongers. It states :

"We are also very doubtful that any Government proposals for protection of staff are workable, should Sunday trading become the norm. This Company is taking on a steady trickle of staff who have become dismayed at the pressure placed upon them to work on Sundays, whilst their previous employers proclaim that such work is voluntary. I myself have no doubt that if this company was forced, through competitive pressures, to trade on Sundays,

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we would be able (if we wished) to persuade' large numbers to work No legislation can cope with this style of insidious pressure." Another choice about which we have heard a great deal is that of individuals being able to shop when they please. A managing director of the John Lewis Partnership disagrees with that option, saying : "Contrary to what some would suggest, choice for the consumer is actually likely to diminish as larger shops take over the business of smaller ones and villages lose their small convenience stores." London used to be a series of villages--in many instances it could still be--but that is being rapidly eroded because of the enormous pressures on small businesses. Small businesses are closing at the rate of approximately eight a week. The corner shop, the local shop and the local small market centre will be absolutely demoralised and destroyed by deregulation. Deregulation is not about choice for the consumer or reducing prices, but about the large retail outlets fighting to increase their market share, and that will continue. The pattern of shopping in this country, as in America, is to move shops to greenfield sites and away from where people live. That is a wonderful way to shop if one has the means of getting to and from those sites. A large proportion of my constituents are pensioners, on some form of social security or exist only because they can make a legal claim on the benefit system. Those people are utterly and totally dependent upon the local shop and being able to walk to it. They cannot afford private transport ; in many instances they can barely afford public transport.

The suggestion that everyone does one large weekly shop is nonsense. I know many people who buy only after counting penny and twopenny pieces--and the older one gets the more difficult it is to differentiate between our coins.

The hon. Member for Finchley (Mr. Booth) referred to the issue of choice raised by the hon. Member for Reigate. Surely there must be a choice for the people who live near retail outlets. They will have no choice at all about a quiet Sunday, or about one day of the week being different from the other six. In my constituency there are two residential areas in which there are large multiple superstores. People live above one of those superstores and the delivery bays of the other store are next door to my residents' front doors. For seven days a week those people will be plagued by enormous delivery vans and by the clanging backwards and forwards of the large steel doors that cover the delivery bays. There will be no Sunday for people who live next door to such superstores.

Mr. Fabricant : The hon. Lady raises a valid point. My constituents know where I stand on this issue. They have asked me whether there will be a problem of disturbance by delivery vans. I have looked into the matter and it is apparent that the Highways Acts cover this point. Local authorities can, if they wish, implement the measures contained in those Acts to restrict the number of lorries visiting certain premises. They can even forbid lorries to arrive at particular times of the day or days of the week. The Acts are there ; it is for the authorities to use them.

Ms Jackson : If existing Acts are so all-powerful, why were they not enforced? That is why we are here debating the whole issue.

Mr. Fabricant : They are different Acts.

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The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Janet Fookes) : Order. However strongly hon. Members may feel about the subject, there must be no sedentary interventions.

Ms Jackson : I will give way to the hon. Member for Castle Point (Dr. Spink).

8.15 pm

Dr. Spink : Does the hon. Lady believe that her constituents and mine should be free to have a day away from the disturbance of other people's noise, fumes, traffic and the hustle and bustle of a normal weekday?

Ms Jackson : I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, because he brings me to my next point.

The hon. Member for Reigate talked about constituents' wishes. The issue of Sunday trading has increased my post by dozens of letters. When I knew that we would be debating this particular amendment I made a less than scientific breakdown of percentages. Of the people who wrote to me of their own volition--they did not forward cards presented to them by the big multiple stores--73.6 per cent. of my constituents wished to keep Sunday special. I was interested to see on the front page of The Independent today that nationally 74 per cent. of people wish to keep Sunday special.

That is not surprising because the pressures of modern-day life are enormous and the break-up of families seems to be continuous. Sunday is the only day on which families can meet and be together. I endorse the opinions of all hon. Members who have said that there should be one day in the week that should be nationally regarded as special. How can special payments for people who work on Sunday logically be achieved? What would be special about people working on Sunday if we were to take away its special nature? There would be no logical reason to pay them double time or overtime.

I believe that we have seen sufficient decay and sufficient reduction of the things that individuals value intensely and totally. It may be religion, it may be being able to communicate within families, it may be to be able to indulge in some kind of sporting activity--a pursuit I am not particularly interested in--it may be a whole range of issues, but if we continually reduce everything to a norm we take away something that is vital and essential to our experience as human beings. There are differences ; there should be differences ; we must keep Sunday special.

Mr. Douglas French (Gloucester) : It is important that the Committee does not lose sight of the fact that tonight we are trying to select a particular option. That will then go forward to Standing Committee for further refinement. I assume that the further refinement will be in the broad spirit of whatever option is chosen, but it means that there will be another opportunity to make some modifications to whatever option is selected. Hon. Members should choose the option that comes nearest to the particular one that they would like to see, with a view to further modification later. Hon. Members must seek to select an option that they think stands a reasonable chance of getting through with the largest majority, bearing in mind the order of voting. That could make a significant difference.

The Committee must consider the fact that the solution needs to be a simple one, which is easily understood by not only the expert lawyers but by the small shopkeepers who

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will have to comply with it. It must be capable of being enforced with a maximum amount of certainty and a minimum amount of cost. We need to guard against replacing the current confused and confusing set of laws with a further set of laws that are unenforceable and equally confusing. Whenever we make laws we should make good sound laws, not laws that invite people to break them at the first opportunity. The conduct of certain retailers in breaking the law as they have during the past year has been despicable. The guiding principle that we must try to stick to is that the formula that we adopt must not be too complex. At first glance, that principle drew me towards the simplicity and ease of enforcement of the total deregulation solution. I was much impressed by the persuasive advocacy of my right hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame A. Rumbold). Total deregulation is the easiest option to enforce, and the easiest for people to understand ; I do not believe, however, that it is really in keeping with the mood of the people.

I am sure that some people want to take advantage of shopping facilities on Sundays, although others do not. Some want to be able to work on Sundays, while others prefer not to. Most important, a significant group want Sunday to be a day on which they can be fairly certain of securing a degree of peace and quiet--a day on which they can relax, indulge in recreation and pause to wind down before the start of the week. In that regard, I agree with the hon. Member for Ogmore (Mr. Powell) and my hon. Friend the Member for Hampshire, North-West (Sir D. Mitchell).

I regard Sunday as a different day : a day on which the pace of life should be slower, which provides the opportunity to do something a little different from what one does for the rest of the week. It is clear from the 700 or more letters that I have received from constituents that a significant number of them want to ensure that Sunday does not become like every other day of the week.

Mr. Fabricant : Like other hon. Members, my hon. Friend wants to keep Sunday special. I think that most of us want to keep it special, but is it not special in Scotland, where deregulation has taken place ? If, as some have said, retailers are already behaving as though there were no law in operation, is not Sunday special now ?

Mr. French : I do not consider the comparison with Scotland particularly valid. It does not promote my hon. Friend's case very well. Scotland is, after all, an entirely different place, and its circumstances are also different.

As I was saying, I subscribe to the sentiments of the Keep Sunday Special campaign to some extent. I feel, however, that in trying to give effect to what are certainly laudable sentiments the campaign has advanced a solution that does its case no good, because it is largely unenforceable. It fails all the criteria of simplicity and easy enforcement that I require.

We need only examine the campaign's proposed formula to realise how difficult its enforcement would be. It proposes, for instance, that whether shops open should depend on whether the goods sold are "wholly or mainly" of a particular type. I searched the proposals for a definition of "wholly or mainly", but was unable to find one. It is not at all easy to identify when a shop would be fulfilling the

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Keep Sunday Special formula and when it would not. I could take hon. Members to certain shops that would present them with considerable difficulty.

Let us examine the second and third categories on the KSS list. First, there is the newsagent's shop where the goods on sale are wholly or mainly newspapers, periodicals and confectionery ; secondly, there is the convenience shop where the goods are wholly or mainly groceries, domestic cleaning materials and confectionery. Confectionery is common to both categories ; but, as has already been pointed out, a sweetshop would not qualify.

Most important, a "wholly or mainly" provision is likely to be extremely unfair to specialist shops, many of which are small and which often bring character to our city centres--character that can all too easily be lost. We should ensure that such shops remain viable.

Mr. John Butterfill (Bournemouth, West) : If the KSS--RSAR proposals were accepted, would such shops open alone in city centres whose streets were deserted?

Mr. French : My point is that specialist shops selling precisely the same items as convenience stores, newsagents and other shops in the same category would not be able to sell their goods, unlike the designated shops.

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