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7 Feb 2003 : Column 576—continued
Mr. Savidge: In case the hon. Lady's words are misunderstood, I emphasise that every time I raised the subject, I received sympathetic responses from the Ministers involved, including the Leader of the House and Department of Trade and Industry Ministers. In private, I received total support from the Scotland Office.
Mrs. Lait: I accept that. However, despite sympathetic responses, no action was taken until the consultation document was published, and that happened when the Bill was introduced. Perhaps "unfortunate" is too strong to describe the timing. However, unless the Minister plans to delay the Bill's passage and spend weeks on it in Committee, it is possible that the consultation will finish after the Bill has
left Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne referred to that. Is the Minister planning to pre-empt the consultation?
Mrs. McGuire indicated dissent.
Mrs. Lait: I therefore hope that when the Minister replies to the debate, she will solve the conundrum of how we can take account of the consultation's results if the Bill has left Committee before its completion.
The hon. Member for Western Isles (Mr. MacDonald) said that many of his constituents had responded to the consultation. Perhaps everyone supports the Bill. In that case, there is no problem. The websites of the CBI in Scotland, the Institute of Directors, the Federation of Small Businesses and the Scottish Council for Development and Industry did not refer to the measure. One therefore assumes that they are content with it. However, it would be difficult to amend the Bill in the case of substantive objections unless the Minister expects the House of Lords to make her amendments for her. If the Minister could give us some answers as to why the consultation is so out of kilter with the progress of the Bill, it would be very useful.
I will finish—[Interruption.] If I get any more barracking, I shall continue at great length, so I would suggest that there be no more barracking from a sedentary position by any hon. Members, let alone those on the Government Front Bench. I look forward to hearing from the Minister what she plans to do about the consultation. This is a small but important Bill. No one has so far mentioned whether Members of the Scottish Parliament support it, but I am pleased to place on record that the Conservative MSPs do so.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde on introducing the Bill, which will almost certainly be on the statute book by the end of the year. He announced a competition to find out where the term "intoxicating liquor" had come from. I would like to put it on a postcard that it came from the time of either Cromwell or Victoria, because those were the two periods in history when alcohol was a naughty word in England. The Bill brings Scotland into line with England. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on introducing it, but I have just one caveat. Bearing in mind the horrendous experience of the legislation that set up the Child Support Agency, which was supported by all the parties but from which great difficulties ensued, I hope that no difficulties flow from this Bill.
12.06 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mrs. Anne McGuire): I feel that we have been round the houses this morning. I had not realised how much I had not missed the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) until he spoke for 34 minutes today. I wonder whether, when he was a child in Lossiemouth, anyone ever asked him if he would just haud his wheesht for a while. I will translate that later for those who do not know the expression.
I am also aware that there seems to be some misunderstanding about what happened in Scotland in relation to Sunday trading. I suspect that most of us here
remember the wee shops, as we would call them, being open on a Sunday. I expect that my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth (Rosemary McKenna) would have had an ice cream in Jaconnelli's café on the Maryhill road on a Sunday, and the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) would probably have wandered down University avenue and managed to buy half a dozen rolls on a Sunday morning and have a wee coffee—I am not sure whether they had invented coffee when he was at Glasgow university—in the university café. Certainly, Crolla's would have been open, on Parliamentary road. I remember our shops in Easterhouse—I should say that we did not have any tennis courts in Easterhouse—
Mrs. Lait: Will the Minister give way?
Mrs. McGuire: No. Let me get into my flow, please.
I remember going round on a Sunday to collect some messages from my mother. On one occasion, I had to get some bleach. While we did not have tennis courts, we always managed to buy bleach for the toilets on a Sunday. I remember spilling the bleach on my new Sunday shoes, and I found out that my mother believed not only in Sunday trading but in corporal punishment, as she gave me what we called a clatter across the lug.
We have had a grand tour here today, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (David Cairns) on being so successful in the ballot. The Scots have been very successful in the ballots for private Member's Bills this year, because in the top 10, we also have my hon. Friends the Members for Motherwell and Wishaw (Mr. Roy) and for Hamilton, South (Mr. Tynan). That is an indication that Scottish Labour Members see this as a United Kingdom Parliament and are willing to participate in its affairs.
In view of the comments from the hon. Member for Beckenham (Mrs. Lait) about how much she welcomes the fact that we are a United Kingdom Parliament, perhaps she will encourage the hon. Member for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale (Mr. Duncan) to start voting as a United Kingdom Member, and to vote now and again on Scottish issues, as we are doing today. He, like the hon. Lady, makes such a virtue of the fact that he did not vote on some legislation that it would have been nice to see him today—especially in the light of the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Mr. Brown), who said there had been difficulties in his area, part of which he shares with the hon. Gentleman.
Mrs. Lait: I do not want to embarrass the Minister, but my hon. Friend the Member for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale (Mr. Duncan) is not present because of the arrival of a rather high-profile family in his constituency.
Mrs. McGuire: I accept that, but I would mention that the hon. Lady raised the issue of who votes where and then decided to complicate matters by mentioning that ours was a United Kingdom Parliament. Let us leave that aside, however.
I especially congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde on introducing a Bill that is short but that will bring considerable benefit to
workers in Scotland. I also congratulate those doughty hon. Members, including my hon. Friends the Members for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Savidge), for Aberdeen, Central (Mr. Doran) and for Dumfries, and all those who gave sterling support to the Argos workers last year. In fact, I think that we should thank Argos for highlighting a gap in the law. I understand that "lacuna" is the parliamentary term. I am pleased that the Bill appears to have been given a fair wind by Members on both sides of the House.As hon. Members have said, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has taken a direct interest in the position of shop workers and betting shop workers in Scotland, and the risk of discrimination against them in relation to Sunday working. The background to the legal position has been well rehearsed by my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Inverclyde and by others and I shall not repeat what they said, but I want to reinforce what has been said about the then Government's position in respect of the 1994 Act.
As my hon. Friend said, it is interesting that, although there was a free vote on the deregulation of Sunday trading, it did not apply to the extra legal protection for workers. I am therefore delighted to echo the tribute that my hon. Friend paid to my right hon. Friend the Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) for his prophetic words at the time. He clearly perceived the likely effects of the lacuna in a law that did not extend legal protection to workers in Scotland. Admittedly, the voluntary agreement has worked for a number of years, but the then Conservative Government had an opportunity to extend the legal rights to Scotland and decided not to take it.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's involvement with the issue arose from representations on behalf of a number of former Argos employees in Scotland who had lost their jobs for refusing to work on Sundays. She met the Argos chief executive, Terry Duddy, and senior management to discuss the issues. I wish that I had been a fly on the wall, and I am sure many other hon. Members feel the same.
It was clear that the company had decided to take advantage of the different legal situation in Scotland to require its employees to face the prospect of regular or occasional Sunday working even when individuals had objected. Argos stores in the north-east of Scotland were the focus of particular publicity, and I acknowledge the contribution of hon. Members who represent that part of the world. I will not comment on the right of Argos management to seek to deploy workers in whatever way suited its business needs, because, as I said earlier, its actions highlighted the gap in existing legislation. I certainly do not wish to criticise the company for taking account of commercial considerations, and choosing to depart from a voluntary agreement which—as many Labour and, to be fair, Opposition Members have recognised—paid dividends to workers.
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