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The new schedule is a very good try on the Opposition's part, but it is not a realistic proposition to be added to this small Bill. 5.45 pmMr. John Hutton (Barrow and Furness): Like my hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Howarth), I supported the Bill on Second Reading because it makes perfect sense for Sunday licensing hours to be liberalised. I support the new clause and the new schedule to the Licensing Act 1964, for several simple reasons. First, it creates a better balance in the Bill between the rights of consumers and the legitimate rights of people who work in the bar trade on Sundays.
The proposal also creates greater consistency between people who work in on and off-licence premises. As the Minister accepted in Committee, there is at the moment an anomaly between people working in on and off-licence premises on a Sunday. A person working in an off-licence premises on a Sunday currently has the protection afforded to workers under the Sunday Trading Act 1994 not to be compelled to work on a Sunday against his or her wishes.
At the moment, that protection does not extend to people working in on- licence premises. The hon. Member for Gillingham (Mr. Couchman) said that it was important to have consistency and not to create too many anomalies. Without rehearsing our arguments in Committee, my point is that, unless the Bill is amended in the way that we propose, it will simply add further anomalies and inconsistencies to the law. That is a bad thing.
It is right in principle, for the reasons given by the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), that, when we, through our law-making powers, change the employment conditions of workers who currently cannot be required to work between 3 pm and 7 pm on Sundays, and make it likely that those people will be required to work those hours, we must produce a framework of protection which will allow workers, for whatever reasons--and hopefully for reasonable grounds--to decline to work those hours and to say to their employers that it is not feasible or practical for them to work those hours. People may have other commitments, perhaps of a religious, social or family nature, which would make it difficult for them to work such hours. Those are the points which the new clause and the new schedule seek to address.
For those reasons, I support the new clause and the new schedule, and I hope that the Minister will have something positive and constructive to say about those issues.
Mr. Enright: I support the new clause, and I want to give a practical example. I also recognise that, no matter how we do this, there are bound to be anomalies with deregulation. However, I want to describe an anomaly which should not arise.
As a concrete example, I refer to Hemsworth Conservative club. That club has more members than voters by quite a considerable margin. The club steward was once nearly sacked for putting my poster in his bedroom window, but fortunately good sense prevailed, because the committee was controlled by good Labour men at the time.
However, people like that club steward are going to be controlled by small committees, be it the Hemsworth Conservative club or the Pontefract RAFA club. Small
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committees will say, "Thou shalt work on a Sunday afternoon," when clearly the terms of the contracts of the people involved were for very limited hours of working, particularly in some of the smaller clubs. That will no longer be true, because the clubs will get greedy when they see what the next-door club is doing. Similarly, when clubs see what the adjacent club is doing, they will do the same. So I certainly give my full support to the new clause and the new schedule.Mr. Michael Forsyth: As the hon. Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Howarth) expected, I am not sure whether I can assist him by accepting his new clause. I must confess that I was slightly alarmed when my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Mr. Hill) began to speak, because I thought that he was attacking the Bill rather than expecting me to accept the Opposition amendment. I hasten to reassure my hon. Friend, because I had no idea that my reputation with him was such that he thought that I would give in so easily, even before the hon. Member for Knowsley, North had been offered the support of his hon. Friends.
I am interested to hear from the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Mr. Enright) that not only is the Leader of the Opposition embracing Conservative policies, but the men of Hemsworth are embracing the Conservative club--a reverse takeover of truly alarming proportions.
Mr. Enright: May I reassure the Minister by telling him that, when I applied for membership, I was instantly refused?
Mr. Forsyth: Perhaps if the hon. Gentleman were to read out the speeches that the Leader of the Opposition has been making in support of the policies that we Conservatives have espoused for some time, and to say that he adhered to those principles, he might yet be able to join the Hemsworth Conservative club. He could even go a stage further, and vote for the Conservative candidate there when the time comes.
The hon. Member for Knowsley, North made the case for the new clause persuasively, as he did in Committee, and the right hon. Member for Berwick -upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) cited the protection already given to people who work on Sundays as a result of the Sunday Trading Act 1994 and the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994, the former of which provided protection for shop workers, and the latter for betting shop workers.
However, I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will recall that, during the passage of the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act, we debated whether the right should be extended to stable lads as well as betting shop workers. We decided then that it should not, because stable lads could be expected to work on Sundays anyway. That is the distinction here too.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham (Mr. Couchman) said, people who work in the licensed trade already expect to work on Sundays, so they are in a different position from shop workers in England, if not in Scotland, who could not have expected to do so. For those reasons, I do not think that there is a parallel, so it would not be right to extend employment protection as has been suggested.
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The hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (Mr. Hutton) put forward an ingenious argument by pointing to the anomaly between the treatment of employees in off-licences and those in other licensed premises. I now come to the part of my brief marked, "Use only if pressed". There is an anomaly, and the hon. Gentleman is right to mention it, but the people who work in off-licences are shop workers, and as such already have the right to decline Sunday work. It would be irrational for the law to pretend that employees in pubs, restaurants, hotels, sports clubs and so on are shop workers and should therefore have the same rights, simply because the premises in which they work happen to have liquor licences.The hon. Gentleman is right to draw attention to the difference, but it stems from the fact that we dealt with the previous set of anomalies that arose in relation to shop workers, when it was felt that it would not be right to distinguish between people because of the differences between the products sold in the various shops. As the hon. Gentleman knows, in the end the distinctions in the Act, such as they are, were made according to the size of premises.
Mr. Hutton: While the Minister is dealing with my argument, will he also deal with the fact that workers in off-licences, who now have the protection of the Sunday Trading Act, could legitimately have been asked to work on a Sunday before enactment, as well as after? I am afraid that his argument does not hold much water.
Mr. Forsyth: The hon. Gentleman's argument was that we must avoid anomalies, yet he seeks to create another. In so far as an anomaly exists between workers in off-licences and others, it does so because the House took the view that it would be wrong to distinguish between the rights of workers on Sundays according to the nature of the product being sold--in this case, alcohol in off-licences. The hon. Gentleman proposes that, because the distinction exists as a result of the previous legislation, we should create another anomaly in the Bill, covering a particular period.
Incidentally, my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham was not quite accurate in his description of the amendment. The proposal is not that all workers in pubs on Sundays should be protected throughout their day at work; the amendments relate only to the period between 3 o'clock and 7 o'clock in the afternoon. If they were accepted, we should have put on to the statute employment protection for workers in pubs between3 o'clock and 7 o'clock.
Some years on, when everyone had got used to the change in the law, some people may look upon that as rather an oddity, just as, in the context of this debate, people who make a careful study of the legislation, such as the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness, may find an oddity in the treatment of people in off-licences, which under the Sunday Trading Act are shops.
Therefore, ingenious though the hon. Gentleman's argument is, it is not sufficiently persuasive to enable me to commend the new clause and the new schedule to the House. I ask the hon. Member for Knowsley, North to withdraw the new clause rather than pressing it to a Division, so that we can make progress. No doubt he will already have considered my arguments and the reasons behind them.
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Mr. George Howarth: There is a difference of approach between the Minister and ourselves, which is to some extent exemplified by what his hon. Friends have said. The kernel of the argument advanced by the hon. Member for Southampton, Test seems to be that there is an equal relationship between bar staff and the breweries, managed houses or whatever that employ them.However, whatever the nationality of the bar staff, all too often the relationship is not as balanced and equal as the hon. Gentleman implied. Especially nowadays, when one cannot walk out of one job into another, rights need to be protected in those circumstances. It is not a simple matter of a discussion between employees and employers, because such discussions never take place on an equal footing.
The hon. Member for Gillingham did not quite understand my amendment. I can understand why, because it is extremely complicated to deal with deregulation of the licensed trade on an incremental basis. But if the hon. Gentleman reads the new clause and new schedule again, he will discover that, as the Minister conceded, the new schedule would apply only to the additional hours covered by the Bill.
The hon. Gentleman has a wider objection, which has been well rehearsed, but the specific point that he made on this occasion does not apply to the amendments.
Mr. Barry Porter (Wirral, South): I was taken with the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham, to which no one has yet responded. What about the thousands of people employed in restaurants within pubs between 3 o'clock and 7 o'clock on Sundays? There appear to be no problems or difficulties with those people, so why should there be problems with people employed to dispense drinks? I cannot see the difference.
Mr. Howarth: The hon. Member for Gillingham and, seemingly, the hon. Member for Wirral, South, assume that, if the protection were to become law, all the workers covered would inevitably try to make use of it. Most workers will probably simply accept the extra hours, but for the minority of people with a valid objection, our suggestions set out a procedure that they can go through, and even provide opportunities for employers to state the terms on which objections are not acceptable.
All that is covered, but amending deregulation legislation as it goes along is a complicated business, and we understand how confusion can arise when people hear what we are saying. My hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth (Mr. Enfield) made some useful points, particularly in relation to the Hemsworth Conservative club. It is perhaps representative of the feeling all over the country that the Hemsworth Conservative club is a bastion of Labour party support. 6 pm
Mr. Michael Alison (Selby): For the purpose of clarification, as the Yorkshire neighbour of the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Mr. Enfield), I should point out that the hon. Gentleman was refused membership of the Hemsworth Conservative club not because he is a member of the Labour party, but because control of that club has fallen into the hands of the Militant Tendency.
Mr. Howarth: One of my party pieces is to discuss in some detail Trotsky's theory of transitional demand--which, by the way, I do not support. In the present
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circumstances, I think that it would be straying too far from the terms of the legislation to enter into a discussion about the Militant Tendency. While my hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth continues to represent that constituency, the Militant Tendency will never be allowed in the Labour party. The right hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Alison) will have to make his own arrangements about dealing with that group in the Hemsworth Conservative club.I do not think that we should take too much to heart the fears that Government Members have expressed. The Minister's remarks have not changed my views, and I do not think that they have changed those of my hon. Friends. However, with leave, I will withdraw the new clause, safe in the knowledge that our colleagues in another place will take the opportunity to raise the issue again when it comes before them. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 1
Permitted hours in licensed premises
Mr. Michael Forsyth: I beg to move amendment No. 16, in page 1, leave out lines 5 to 12 and insert--
` .--(1) Section 60 of the Licensing Act 1964 (permitted hours in licensed premises) shall be amended as follows.
(2) For subsection (1)(b) (Sundays, Christmas Day and Good Friday) there shall be substituted--
"(b) on Sundays, other than Christmas Day, and on Good Friday, the hours from twelve noon to half past ten in the evening; and (c) on Christmas Day, the hours from twelve noon to half past ten in the evening, with a break of four hours beginning at three in the afternoon.".
(3) At the end of subsection (6) (off-licences) there shall be added the words ", and the permitted hours on Sundays, other than Christmas Day, and on Good Friday shall begin at ten in the morning".'.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this, it will be convenient to discuss also the following amendments: No. 2, in page 1, line 6, after `Friday', insert
`for the words, "Christmas Day" there shall be substituted the words "(other than a Sunday which is Christmas Day)".'.
No. 3, in page 1, line 8, at end insert--
`(1A) After section 60(1)(b) of that Act there shall be inserted the words"; and
(c) on Christmas Day, the hours from twelve noon to half past ten in the evening with a break of five hours beginning at two in the afternoon.".'.
Government amendment No. 17.
No. 5, in clause 2, page 1, line 14, leave out from `clubs)' to end of line 15 and insert--
`(a) for paragraph (a) there shall be substituted--
"(a) on days other than Christmas Day, the general licensing hours, and"; and
(b) in paragraph (b), for the words "on Sundays, Christmas Day and Good Friday" there shall be substituted the words "on Christmas Day" and in sub- paragraph (ii) of that paragraph for the word "two" there shall be substituted the word "three", and for the word "three" there shall be substituted the word "two".'.
Government amendments Nos. 18 to 25.
Mr. Forsyth: Very strong views were expressed during the Committee stage of the Bill about the inclusion of Christmas day in the terms of the legislation. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson)
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is not present in the Chamber, because in Committee he said that there was no point in hon. Members attending if Ministers were not prepared to listen to their arguments.I listened to the arguments on this occasion. The right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) and the Opposition spokesman pressed me on the matter. Since then, a number of other hon. Members, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Selby (Mr. Alison), have approached me about leaving Christmas day licensing hours as they stand at present.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham (Mr. Couchman) said in Committee--and I agree with him--there is nothing in the Bill which would require public houses to open for the additional hours on Christmas day. Most public houses do not open for the full hours that are presently permitted on Christmas day.
However, in deference to the views that hon. Members have expressed, I have tabled the amendments--I admit that I did not appreciate that it would take quite so many words to remove "Christmas day" from the legislation. I know that the amendments address the concerns of a number of hon. Members, and I hope that they will speed the Bill's passage through the Parliament.
The effect of the amendments is to ensure that people who are employed in licensed premises do not have to work on Christmas afternoon. They will be able to spend that time with their families and listen to Her Majesty's broadcast to the nation or whatever. I hope that that accords with the wishes of the House.
Mr. Beith: I warmly welcome the Minister's decision to move the amendments. He listened to the arguments that hon. Members put during the Committee. I discussed those points with him following the Committee proceedings, and I know that several other hon. Members also approached him about the subject.
When I moved an amendment along those lines in Committee, I called it the "Bet Lynch Christmas dinner amendment". There is no doubt that it is very important to many landlords and public house managers to be able to shut their doors on Christmas day, get the turkeys out of the oven and spend some time with their families in what are their homes.
Although the Minister is correct when he says that public houses are not obliged to open on Christmas day, it is at least possible--I think it is quite likely--that competitive pressure in some areas would lead the breweries to force managers in their employ to open on Christmas day. In some cases, licensees would feel obliged to open rather than allow their competitors to test the Christmas afternoon market.
That would mean the loss of a very special time for almost every family in the country. There are very few families to whom Christmas day is not important, and we try as much as we can to allow workers in all but the most essential industries to spend that time with their families.
There is no real evidence of a strong demand for Christmas day opening in the same way that there is a genuine call for the relaxation of hours on Sunday afternoons throughout the year. The issue was not addressed by the Prime Minister in his trailer for the legislation. In stressing the importance that he attached to
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Sunday deregulation, he made no mention of Christmas day. Therefore, I think it right that we should have second thoughts about it. Following the Committee stage, I received letters of support from licensees and public house managers, who agreed that it was not necessary to include Christmas day in the terms of the Bill. People should be given a clear assurance that they will not be required to work on Christmas afternoon.I am grateful to hon. Members from other parties, including the right hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Alison) and the hon. Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson)--and other Government Members, whom I shall not name lest I should embarrass them, who also made their views known--who joined me in seeking to persuade the Minister about the matter. I am very glad that the Minister has listened to our views and has moved amendments in order to achieve the intended effect. There are some technical differences between my amendments and the Government's amendments, but they are of no consequence, and I shall not press my amendments.
Mr. Couchman: I was going to ask the right hon. Member whether he intended to press his amendments. They are somewhat different from the Government's, and I think that they may tighten the current position further.
Mr. Beith: The hon. Member is correct in one respect: my amendments would effect a 2 o'clock closure on Christmas day. That was the position until a few years ago, and it is generally thought that the hours on Sunday changed to 3 o'clock because of a mistake on the part of the Home Office. There is a case for at least returning to that original intention, but we can set that aside. There is consensus in favour of accepting the Minister's amendments. I certainly accept them, and I am glad that the Minister has taken that decision.
Mr. Alison: I congratulate the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon- Tweed (Mr. Beith) on the persistence and perspicacity with which he pursued this narrow but important and valuable point, and on the way in which he argued his case in Committee. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Minister most warmly on his typical receptiveness and sensitivity in accepting a proposal which I believe will cause general rejoicing in every part of the House and the country.
It is not merely a symbolic gesture, although the Christmas festival remains a special time in Britain; the measure is also a practical one. The Archbishop of Canterbury recently stated that a quarter of the British population attended Christmas day church services in 1994. That is an almost unimaginable number.
The amendment will allow more time for family life on Christmas day, and it is symbolic of our national tendency at present--we are militant in the Christian sense of the word, if not in the socialist sense. I congratulate the Minister most warmly on introducing those important amendments.
Mr. George Howarth: On behalf of the Opposition, I place on record the fact that we also warmly welcome the conversion on the part of the Minister. We accept that Christmas day has a number of meanings for different people. The right hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Alison), the Church Commissioner, has given one side of the argument. The other side is that, even if Christmas day
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does not have the same Christian significance for everyone, it has a broader family significance for many. We welcome the Government amendments to the extent that they recognise that fact, and we certainly do not intend to impede them in any way.Amendments agreed to.
Clause 2
Permitted hours in registered clubs
Amendments made: No. 17, in page 1, line 14, leave out from `clubs)' to end of line 15 and insert `--
(a) for paragraph (a) there shall be substituted--
"(a) on days other than Christmas Day, the general licensing hours;"; and
(b) in paragraph (b), for the words "Sundays, Christmas Day and Good Friday," there shall be substituted the words "Christmas Day, ".'.
No. 18, in page 1, line 15, at end insert--
`( ) In section 62(3) of that Act (notice of permitted hours) for the words "on Sundays, Christmas Day and Good Friday" there shall be substituted the words "on Christmas Day".'.-- [Mr. Michael Forsyth.]
Clause 3
Restriction orders
Amendments made: No. 19, in page 1, line 20, leave out `Christmas Day or'.
No. 20, in page 1, line 22, leave out `, Christmas Day'.-- [Mr. Michael Forsyth.]
Schedule 1
Consequential amendments
Amendment made: No. 21, in page 3, leave out lines 5 to 38 and insert--
`. In section 51(2) (register of clubs), for the words "on Sundays, Christmas Day and Good Friday," there shall be substituted the words "on Christmas Day,".
. In section 60(5) (permitted hours in licensed premises), for the words "(a) and (b)" there shall be substituted the words "(a) to (c)".
. In section 68(1)(a) (extension of permitted hours in restaurants), for the words "Sundays, Christmas Day and Good Friday," there shall be substituted the words "Christmas Day,".
. In section 87A (power to vary permitted hours in on-licensed vineyard premises)--
(a) in subsection (4)--
(i) for the words ", Christmas Day or" there shall be substituted the words ", other than Christmas Day, or on"; and
(ii) in paragraph (b) for the word "five" there shall be substituted the word "nine"; and
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(b) after subsection (4) there shall be inserted--"(4A) In making an order under this section with respect to the permitted hours on Christmas Day, licensing justices may not so vary the hours as to make them--
(a) begin before twelve noon; or
(b) exceed in total more than five and a half hours.".'.-- [Mr. Michael Forsyth.]
Schedule 2
Repeals
Amendments made: No. 22, in page 4, leave out lines 4 to 24. No. 23, in page 4, line 27, column 3, leave out `4 and 5' and insert `and 4'.
No. 24, in page 4, leave out lines 28 and 29.-- [Mr. Michael Forsyth.]
Title
Amendment made: No. 25, in title, line 3, leave out `Christmas Day'.-- [Mr. Michael Forsyth.]
Bill reported, with amendments.
Motion made, and Question put, That the Bill be read the Third Time, put forthwith and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.
EUROPEAN COMMUNITY DOCUMENTS
Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 102(9) (European Standing Committees),
External Frontiers
That this House takes note of European Community Document No. 11287/93, relating to controls on persons at the external frontiers of the European Union; welcomes the objective of achieving effective controls on persons at the external frontiers of the Member States; endorses the Government's determination to take whatever steps are necessary to maintain immigration controls on non-European Economic Area nationals at United Kingdom internal frontiers; endorses the need to preserve the intergovernmental character of agreements concluded under Title VI of the Treaty on European Union; endorses the Government's commitment, in the event of agreement between all parties, that the final text of the draft External Frontiers Convention should be brought back to Parliament before signature and that the draft Convention should not be ratified before the necessary legislation has been enacted by Parliament; and endorses the Government's aim of ensuring that full account is taken of the United Kingdom's present practice in drawing up the common visa list.-- [Mr. Andrew Mitchell.]
Question agreed to.
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