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Mr. Swayne: I entirely agree with the hon. Lady. She is absolutely correct and faultless in her analysis.

As my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) pointed out, the provisions of the Sunday Trading Act 1994 and the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994 are now subsumed into the Employment Rights Act 1996. However, the provisions for shop workers and betting shop workers in the 1996 Act do not extend to Scotland. Therefore, the Scots can call on the general provisions against unfair dismissal as their only statutory right, with all the impediments involved thereto. For example, one has to be in work for at least a year before one can call on the provisions against unfair dismissal. The burden of proof with regard to Sunday working is on the employee to show that he has been treated unreasonably.

As the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Harris) pointed out, protection in Scotland has relied exclusively on the existence of a voluntary agreement. I am in favour of voluntary agreements. After all, the voluntary principle protected Scottish workers for many years when there was no need whatever for the law to step in. It is sad when the law has to step in to shore up what society has failed to achieve by voluntary means.

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The Scotland Office's consultation document of December 2002 on how the voluntary agreement was working said:

"Generally speaking, the voluntary arrangement in respect of shop and betting workers in Scotland has operated well but could be open to manipulation. The Government has had increasing concerns about the capacity of the non-statutory approach to guarantee equality of treatment as between relevant shop workers in Scotland compared to the rest of the country . . . companies in Scotland are basically in the position of being able to require Sunday working and by the same token, workers have no automatic rights to opt out of Sunday working for religious, family or any other reasons, bringing the risk of discrimination against shop workers."

The document concludes:

"There is a clear risk therefore the Scottish workers could be discriminated against in a way that would not be legally possible in the rest of the country."

That is absolutely right, because those workers were discriminated against.

As the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde said, the Bill is not the anti-Argos measure. However, there is general agreement that what happened at Argos focused the debate and crystallised this issue. It is an important issue, so I return to what I said earlier about our

"reaping what we have sown".

When the Argos issue blew up, the bishop and leader of the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Most Reverend Bruce Cameron, wrote to Argos. He said:

"Neither I nor the church I represent would want to preserve Sunday for religious purposes alone."

Oh no, certainly not for religious reasons. He is saying, "I might be a bishop, but I certainly would not want to preserve Sunday for religious reasons." How is that for falling at the first fence or selling a pass? It gets worse. The letter adds:

"Many of use welcome the wider opportunities offered to people to spend their weekends in leisure and shopping."

The hon. Member for Gordon blamed it all on the multiples—the big boys. Did it occur to the bishop why Argos had taken this action? As the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde made clear, those multiples that trade in England and Scotland began to trade in Scotland as a consequence of the huge increase in activity in England. However, they did not open in Scotland just to spite Scottish workers. They did it in response to the demands of ordinary Scottish people to trade, buy and sell on Sunday.

Mr. Tom Harris: My memory may be failing me, but it is my experience that shop trading in Scotland was a normal part of life for many years, and long before legislation was introduced in England to allow the multiples to trade in England and Wales. Sunday trading was going on in Scotland long before it was introduced in England.

Mr. Swayne: With respect to the hon. Gentleman, he pointed out that the issue was crystallised by Argos and by the big multiple chains opening in shopping centres on Sunday. There was no problem when small shops opened in small towns so that people could get their

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messages done on Sunday. The problem for workers rather than for the proprietors of small shops results from changes in the way we live. We do our shopping and leisure activities on a Sunday. I am entirely at ease with people's desire to do that, but I resent the fact that the bishop has suggested, "I'm in favour of protecting workers and aren't these multiples awful and wicked?" when in the same breath he says that he supports, wants and enjoys the greater freedoms that result from the liberalisation of the Sunday trading laws. The one leads as a direct consequence to the other.

Mr. Forth: Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a theological and doctrinal element to the argument that we ignore at our peril? There is a contradiction between the classic, rather narrow, Scottish Calvinist attitude towards the Sabbath, especially in the far west and far north of Scotland where a rigid approach is taken, and the more modern approach that allows people to combine a proper amount of worship, observance and church attendance with other social and family activities. Does he agree that in some people's minds that is an unresolved dilemma?

Mr. Swayne: That is right, and as my right hon. Friend introduces doctrinal matters to the debate, I say to him:

"Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you an holy day, a sabbath of rest . . . whosoever doeth work therein shall be put to death."

They did not take prisoners in Exodus, and of course I eschew that attitude. There is a balance to be had between enjoying a leisurely Sunday and enjoying the benefits of Sunday as a special and different day. There are, of course, liberalisations implicit in such an approach, and hon. Members cannot escape the reality that has caused the Bill to be introduced.

If we expect large multiple stores to open on Sunday, someone has to staff them. Someone has to sell the goods and work. It is right that the Bill should bring legal protection to those people. I am 100 per cent. in favour of it. However, I share the concern expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire that, once we introduce a measure of protection, the motivation behind the Bill in Scotland will turn out to be the tip of an iceberg and huge employment pressures will be brought to bear on people to work on Sunday in spite of their statutory rights.

I end with the Commandment itself:

"Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates".

That is the important point. We cannot expect not to work and to have the day off if we are not prepared to allow that right to thy maidservant and thy manservant. Everything that we expect to be available to us and open to us on Sunday has a consequence for the maidservants and the manservants who have to staff the shops when they, quite properly, would rather be doing something else.

10.53 am

Mr. Calum MacDonald (Western Isles): I welcome the Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (David Cairns). His

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presentation of it and the tone that he set will, I hope, result in unanimous support for the proposed change in the law. I also congratulate those organisations that have brought the issue to prominence in the past few months, and in particular the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers on representing its members, and the Lord's Day Observance Society on the way in which it has made its case. I remember a meeting convened in one of the Committee Rooms on behalf of a joint delegation from USDAW and the Lord's Day Observance Society following a campaign that culminated in a ten-minute Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Savidge) that highlighted the issue, and I congratulate him on that.

We organised the meeting and a number of colleagues attended. It was highly successful and showed that there was wide support for a change in the law, not just on religious grounds, although they were hugely important for people who held such strong beliefs, but on the grounds of equal rights north and south of the border and of the quality of life for employees and workers, and in particular the protection of family life, which is a theme that has run through the debate. It is possible that we think that the position of shop workers is special because a disproportionate number of women work in shops and they play an important role in family life. That is why securing protection for shop workers is so profoundly important.

I commend the Scotland Office on the way in which it has taken up the issue. Following the lobbying meeting attended by the LDOS and USDAW, it seized on the issue and met Argos management. I congratulate it on the energy and weight that it has put behind the argument for securing the rights of shop workers. My hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Mr. Brown) said that, sadly, there has been some backsliding, not perhaps by Argos as a whole, but in certain stores, which reinforces the argument that the conventions can no longer be relied on and we need to change the law.

I also commend the Scotland Office for its support of the process by undertaking its own consultation. Many of my constituents have responded and have copied their representations to me. I encourage members of the public from every constituency in Scotland to take advantage of the consultation to make their views known.

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