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7 Feb 2003 : Column 573—continued
11.49 am
Mrs. Jacqui Lait (Beckenham): It is good that legislation that affects Scotland is being debated in the House. We are, after all, in a unitary state. We look forward to further legislation—for example, legislation on the numbers of Members of the Scottish Parliament and, perhaps, on the implementation of the Norton report. That would ensure that the House was clearly seen to be representing a unitary state.
Mr. Jim Murphy (Eastwood): Get on with it.
Mrs. Lait: The more barracking I get from Whips, the longer my speech will take.
I join others in congratulating the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (David Cairns). I apologise on behalf of those from English backgrounds who pronounce Greenwich and Greenock similarly. We changed the law so that the hon. Member could get here and, with this Bill, he is stamping his name on legislation. Along with many others, I congratulate him on that. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Savidge), who called himself the grandfather of this Bill and did not wish any other name to be applied to him. "Donor" may be another appropriate term, but we should not go any further into that. The hon. Members for Aberdeen, Central (Mr. Doran), for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce) and for Dumfries
(Mr. Brown) have in their constituencies workers who have been affected by the Argos saga. I congratulate the hon. Members on the work that they have done. I do not think that any of us would not support the stand that the Argos workers took; and I think that that reflects the nature of the support for this Bill on both sides of the House.
Mr. Doran: In a long list of congratulations, the hon. Lady conspicuously omitted the shop workers union. She may wish to congratulate the union as well.
Mrs. Lait: USDAW took up the workers' point but it was the strength of the workers that drove their case forward.
Many people have talked about the history of this issue and about why we have a particular problem in Scotland. Sitting here and listening to hon. Members' contributions, I have been reflecting on the age of some of us Scots in the Chamber. Probably only those of us who, like me, were born in the 1940s and brought up in the 1940s and 1950s—[Hon. Members: "Never!"] That is very kind of hon. Members, but I am afraid that it is true. We are the only ones who will have realised why the point that my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, West (Mr. Swayne) made about reaping the whirlwind goes back further than the opening of shops on a Sunday.
Those of us who were born in the 1940s and 1950s in Scotland will remember what I once read described as the "cosmic boredom" of a Sunday afternoon. I was brought up in a small village in west Renfrewshire. It was so small that the only entertainment was a tennis club, and, on a Sunday, the tennis club was closed. There were no cafes, there was no church, there were no cinemas, no trains and no buses. One could do nothing. When one is a teenager, one does not want to spend one's afternoon washing the car or doing the gardening—despite what the hon. Member for Dumfries said about garden centres. Garden centres did not exist in those days.
Perhaps because of such experiences, and perhaps because, as the hon. Member for Gordon pointed out, the dominant culture in Scotland at the time was that the Sabbath was kept holy, there was no legislation. This point may encourage my hon. Friends, but only in the 1970s, through market forces, did the public demand shopping on a Sunday, as an antidote to being able to do absolutely nothing else.
At the time, some of us—dare I say it?—looked towards England. In England during the 1950s and 1960s, museums were open, it was possible to play some sports including tennis, one could go to the cinema and one could actually eat out. Reference has been made to bona fide travellers, and to the drinking houses with one or two bedrooms attached, as ways in which people could get a drink in Scotland on a Sunday. Many of us forget what Sunday was like in Scotland in those days.
Jim Sheridan: As the Member for West Renfrewshire, may I invite the hon. Lady back to enjoy the scenic beauty of West Renfrewshire and the pubs, clubs and shops that are now open on a Sunday?
Mrs. Lait: The hon. Gentleman will soon be receiving a letter from me to say that I will be visiting his
constituency in the very near future. I look forward to going back to the village where I was brought up, Brookfield. I suspect that there will still not be much more than the tennis club. It was a lovely village and I enjoyed a very good upbringing, but there was the cosmic boredom of a Sunday afternoon.It was because of the dearth of things to do on a Sunday that ordinary people said that they wanted something to do. Shopping was the easiest answer and that is how the problem emerged that the Bill seeks to deal with. There had been no legislation because of the dominant cultural and religious belief that nobody would want to do anything on a Sunday. I have since checked this, but my recollection was that Edinburgh was the first place to allow the opening of a significant number of shops on a Sunday. I can see one or two hon. Members on the Labour Benches nodding, agreeing that my recollection was right. I checked with a former Member of this House, Sir Malcolm Rifkind. He was on the council in Edinburgh between 1970 and 1974, when those shops started to open. His memories were similar to mine. He felt that there was no need to change the law and that shops could just open. The council did not have to change licensing or anything of that nature to allow that to happen.
Looking back, it amazes me that it took England so long to catch up. Often, Scotland gets there first. That has happened in a number of areas, but I am sure that Mr. Deputy Speaker would pull me up if I went into them. However, I would not say that I would want the current state of the health service in Scotland to be emulated down here.
It was eight or nine years ago that England deregulated. Other hon. Members have referred to the difficulties in achieving that deregulation. In the 1980s, we had private Members' Bills and a Government Bill. I am sure that hon. Members here, and yourself, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will remember that that Government Bill was defeated in this Chamber. Our then Prime Minister, Mrs. Thatcher, was not a happy lady.
Shops were flouting the law because of the demand to shop. I remember that local authorities gave up the unequal battle of trying to police the shops, because people wished to shop. My hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) has referred to the arguments made by the Keep Sunday Special organisation. The organisation was very effective in arguing against a very free opening. In due course, it was agreed that there was a need to ensure that people could act according to their beliefs and refuse to work on a Sunday if they did not want to.
I was interested in what the hon. Member for Midlothian (David Hamilton) said about enlightened employers. He praised IKEA and Tesco for their flexible employment policies. I was slightly sad that he did not mention B&Q, which was one of the leaders in the campaign to open shops in England.
David Hamilton : B&Q does not have a store in Midlothian.
Mrs. Lait: It may not be in Midlothian but it is in many other parts of the country. It is in the lead in retailing in terms of employing people who are over the age of retirement. We do not call such people "retired"—and very valuable they are too.
We had to ensure that, if they so wished, people had the right not to work on Sundays. Eventually, we brought in the Sunday Trading Bill, which became the Sunday Trading Act 1994. The Act gave protection to workers. We have already gone through the arguments as to why Scotland was missed out, and I commend the hon. Members who made those points. I supported the widest possible access to shopping but I also voted for the restriction to protect workers.
I am sure that all hon. Members receive much constituency mail; we certainly all hold surgeries, and Sunday trading does not appear on the radar. Despite the anxieties of my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire, people are broadly happy. He made the valid point that only one case went to an industrial tribunal. The Argos case was settled out of court.
It would be interesting to know the number of cases that have been settled out of court. That would be another indicator of the issue's importance to constituents. Perhaps Labour Members can present evidence from USDAW about the number of workers' cases that it has taken up. That would be a litmus test of anxiety about the subject.
Most people are happy to shop on a Sunday. I do so because, like most hon. Members, I work on Saturdays. We probably all work on Sundays, too, but our contracts of employment do not cover that. Our constituents would be horrified if they believed that they could not contact us on a Sunday.
Our task is to get the Bill through all its stages. A point was made about the consultation paper. The hon. Member for Aberdeen, North first raised the matter in July, but the Scotland Office did nothing. He presented a 10-minute Bill in November. Again, nothing happened until the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde won a place in the ballot. The consultation document from the Scotland Office swiftly followed, and responses must be in by 14 March. I am no longer in the Whips Office, but I used to be a Whip. Given the cross-party support for the Bill, I shall be interested to know the results of the consultation. My hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) mentioned that.
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