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11.14 am
David Cairns: Given that it has been an interesting and illuminating debate, and given the general consensus that the Bill achieved on Second Reading and in Committee, I do not propose to dwell too long on Third Reading.
It has been the most enormous privilege to promote the Bill and to have steered it thus far. When I visited the United States last year with colleagues, we met the newly elected members of Congress. One of the ways in which they refer to themselves is as lawmakers, which is also what the press and the body politic call them. Perhaps we do not think of ourselves in that way. We certainly do not use that term when we describe ourselves. As a
proud Back-Bench Member of a party that has formed an outstanding Government, the opportunity to initiate legislation is curtailed. [Interruption.] I do not know whether the hon. Member for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale (Mr. Duncan) is one of my friends in high places, but I welcome his support.To play the role of a lawmaker in this small but important regard is the most enormous privilege any Member of Parliament can have. I am extremely grateful for the support of colleagues in every department of the House, including Members and the Clerks office. It has been invaluable. I shall refrain from making further reference to Celtic and Rangers. I believe that I have thrown the valiant souls in the Official Report into utter confusion because they do not appear to know what I am talking about.
Essentially, the Bill is simple. It extends the scope of legislation that was first enacted in 1994, consolidated in 1996 and applied to England and Wales. A separate legislative route was taken to apply similar measures in Northern Ireland. It was a quirk of history that the measures were not extended to Scotland in 1994, although as I have said throughout my right hon. Friend the Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) predicted that we would have to do that at some stage. Unfortunately, his wise words were not heeded at the time, which is why we are debating the Bill today.
Should someone who works in the retail sector not wish to work on a Sunday, they should not be discriminated against for making that choice. They should certainly not lose their job for making that choice, which happened in one case last year. I have not laboured that point, and the company's name has not been mentioned today, because I am clear in my mind that the Bill's purpose is not to punish a particular company, however unwisely it may have acted. Instead, the Bill is about extending legal protection to all employees throughout the UK so that everyone enjoys similar levels of protection. Whether those levels of protection are brilliant or whether the law is being enforced as the lawmakers intended back in 1994 when they framed the legislation are relevant considerations, but they are for another day. The purpose of today's debate is to ensure that everyone starts from the same basis and the same level playing field.
I am pleased to inform the House that should it grant the Bill a Third Reading, Lord Hogg of Cumbernauld has undertaken to steer it through another place. His experience, coupled with that of business and trade unions in that place, will ensure that its measures are probed, as the Opposition rightly did today to flesh out some of the issues that will arise.
Andrew Selous: Before the hon. Gentleman sits down, will he clarify one matter that I am not clear about? There have been many references to the fact that there is no obligation on an employer to offer hours other than those on a Sunday. Am I correct in thinking that if an employee starts a full-time, five-day-a-week job with a commitment to work Monday to Friday, and his employer later wanted to change that to include working on Sundays, the employee could effectively be
forced to take a 20 per cent. pay cut if he refused the change, even though he had started out believing that he would have to work only Monday to Friday?
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. That was far too long an intervention. If the hon. Gentleman wants to catch my eye later and develop an argument, that will be the appropriate time to do so.
David Cairns: As a non-lawyer, I will take refuge in the traditional lawyer's answer, which is that it would depend on the contract. The initial contract signed by the employee would say whether the employer had the flexibility to extend that person's hours. Ordinary employment legislation and the tribunals that implement it—as opposed to those that consider unfair dismissals—continue to apply, irrespective of whether we are talking about Sunday working.
The Minister made the case very well. If people choose not to work on a Sunday when that might be a reasonable option for them, they may have to pay a price. We cannot say that everybody will get consistent legal protection at absolutely no cost to them. There will be a cost, and people will have to make a judgment as to whether they want to pay it. Of course, the best way for employers to get people to work on a Sunday is to make it worth their while—to use pay to induce them to do so.
During the passage of the Sunday Working Bill amendments were tabled that would have imposed a statutory obligation on employers to offer time and a half for Sunday working. The amendments were not accepted because it was thought that such decisions were best left to individual businesses. We are not attempting to revisit that argument now. The case posited by the hon. Gentleman would really depend on the employee's contract, but I am not denying that some people may have to accept a reduction in their wages if they opt not to work on Sundays.
I repeat that it is fundamentally wrong that employees in Greenwich enjoy rights that those in Greenock do not. The Bill seeks to redress that wrong.
Mr. Roy: I congratulate my hon. Friend on introducing the Bill, which is important to many Scottish workers. Does he share my disappointment that the Scottish National party, which says that it speaks for Scotland, has not turned up for Scotland today, to help to protect those workers? This is a time when many SNP Members' ex-colleagues in the Scottish Parliament will be signing on and looking for a job, perhaps in a shop—or as a part-time worker, like their Westminster friends.
David Cairns: If I see Lloyd Quinan stacking shelves in Tesco, I will pass on my hon. Friend's best wishes to him. I once said that if there were a working MPs tax credit, SNP Members, with their rates of attending and speaking in the House, would not reach the qualifying threshold.
It is fundamentally wrong that employees in Wigan enjoy rights that employees in Wishaw do not. The Bill will redress that wrong, and I commend it to the House.
11.24 am
Mrs. Lait: I congratulate the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde (David Cairns) on his masterly handling of the Bill, and I wish it all success in the other place. It is unusual to find someone for whom we have changed the law to allow him to become a Member of this place rapidly thereafter managing to create his own law, and we congratulate him on that.
We welcome the Bill's intentions, but now that we are extending the protection of the law to employees in Scotland who may work on Sundays, I am waiting for English workers to ask whether they can work 24 hours, like those in Scotland, because we will have to have another private Member's Bill to accommodate that. In my part of the world there is significant demand for shopping on Sunday outside of the six hours that is currently allowed, and thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for South-West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), I am sure that people will have that choice.
I congratulate everyone who has taken part in the proceedings on the Bill. I was about to make exactly the same point as the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Mr. Roy). On Second Reading, the only contribution from the SNP was a suggestion that the Bill become a European matter, which was really relevant to the proceedings—about as relevant as the party is becoming, as we can see since the Scottish Parliament elections of a couple of weeks ago.
I congratulate and thank my hon. Friends the Members for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale (Mr. Duncan) and for South-West Bedfordshire, who took part in the Committee proceedings. My hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Mr. Liddell-Grainger), who unfortunately is not here today because he is on constituency business, also did a sterling job in Committee. I thank all hon. Members from other parties who contributed to those brief proceedings and those who have spoken today to make sure that the Bill is properly scrutinised.
Both in Committee and on Report we have raised points that are worthy of further consideration. I echo my hon. Friend the Member for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale in thanking the Minister for accepting our argument about transition. It is important that there is sufficient time for everybody to adjust; that was argued by hon. Members on both sides of the House, and the Bill's promoter accepted the force of that argument. We are grateful to everyone who has, in the course of the debates, improved the Bill, even if there have been no amendments.
The interesting point that has emerged, particularly during today's discussions, is that there is a fundamental need for the Government to consider regulatory impact assessments. I entirely accept the argument of the promoter and the Minister that our amendment would have put greater burdens on employers. As Members are well aware, the amendment was purely a device to debate the subject. Although all legislation has an accompanying regulatory impact assessment, there is no reference—this may be an oversight—to the cumulative effect of such regulation as each assessment is made.
The Minister referred to the wide-ranging costs identified by this particular assessment. We can all cite the cost of other measures. During the proceedings on the Pensions Bill, we found that the cost of offering a stakeholder pension was £5 per employee. That is in addition to the cost to which my hon. Friend the Member for Galloway and Upper Nithsdale alluded. There is no assessment of the incremental effect of regulation that we pass in the House on so many occasions.
If nothing else results from the proceedings, I hope that the Minister, whose Government say that they are committed to better regulation, will pass on to the Better Regulation Task Force the message that there is a need to keep a running total of the costs posed to business by extra regulation. At the margin, those costs can make a huge difference. The Bill probably operates at the margin, in regulatory terms, and I was grateful to the hon. Member for Greenock and Inverclyde for indicating how he thought the issues that we had raised would be dealt with. We hope that that will be so when the impact of national insurance changes on pensions and tax credits is considered more widely. We must make it clear that the Bill will have a marginal impact on regulation and will not have a huge impact on business, except at the margins.
I welcome the fact that employees in Scotland will have the same rights as those in England and Wales not to work on a Sunday. I believe absolutely that anyone who wishes to opt out should do so. I entirely accept the point made by the hon. Member for Moray—
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