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Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab): He has never been accused of subtlety before.
Mr. Jones: People do not accuse me of that either, but the fact is that the Bill enjoys widespread support. I am very grateful for the support expressed by the Conservative Front-Bench spokesman this afternoon.
The Bill will not lead to a substantial increase in costs. The idea that local authorities will have to employ armies of new inspectors to look for people selling products forbidden under the Bill on Christmas day is ludicrous. The officers needed to police the Sunday Trading Act 1994 already exist. There is no need to visit a store, as evidence can be adduced from till rolls and
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other sources to show whether it was open on Christmas day. Therefore, the arguments that have been advanced do not hold water.
The right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst mentioned regulation. We had a long discussion about his view of society, but I believe that a certain amount of regulation is welcome. On Second Reading, the Conservative Front-Bench spokesman made it clear that many of the great regulatory Bills in the early part of the previous century were brought in by a one-nation, caring Conservative Government. I accept that the right hon. Gentleman does not belong to that sector of the Conservative party.
Many of the issues raised this afternoon can be addressed in Committee. I welcome positive suggestions to improve the Bill, but I do not want a repeat of what happened on Second Reading, or even this afternoon. No attempt to stop or wreck the Bill can be considered productive, given the widespread support that the measure enjoys. The use of parliamentary tactics to thwart the progress of a Bill that enjoys the support of the majority of hon. Members reflects no credit on the people involved, or on the House.
4.49 pm
Mr. John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con): When Ministers support a motion such as this, they should be able to tell the House the Government's estimate of the cost involved. What is the point of a debate on a money resolution if the amount cannot be debated? The Minister seemed to think that Opposition Members were asking some sort of trick question when they wanted to know how much money was involved, but it is the central question in the dispute.
Mr. Sutcliffe: The Bill's enforcement and publicity costs could be met from existing trading standards budgets, but amendments to it might make further spending necessary. The money resolution covers that eventuality.
Mr. Redwood: If that is to be done properly, the Government must give the House some guidance on what costs might be involved. The fact that they think that a money resolution may be necessary implies that the Bill will incur costs over and above the moneys already voted by the House under the relevant budget heads.
The fact that the Minister has said that he thinks that the sums involved will be negligible to the Treasury implies that he has in mind the rough magnitude of the costs. The Minister tries to defend his position by saying that the Bill might be amended, but I want to know the price tag of the Bill, as drafted, for the consolidated fund and for local authorities, which are partly financed by the council tax. Those are important issues because, as the Minister knows, we are about to have some local government elections, in which the extremely high levels of council taxes—especially from Labour and Lib Dem councils—will be the leading issue. Now we have a Minister who seems to want to place more burdens on local authorities, without telling us how much, how the costs will be funded and who will pay.
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The Minister said that the amount would be negligible to the Treasury. I would have been more relaxed if he had just said that it would be negligible, because that would mean a few pounds. However, "negligible" to the Treasury could be a very large sum. We have a Treasury that thinks that it needs to take more than £400 billion a year from British taxpayers. Well, 1 per cent. of that is £4 billion, which clearly is not negligible, even to the Treasury, and 0.1 per cent. is £400 million, which is probably not negligible to the Treasury. However, 0.01 per cent. could be said to be negligible to the Treasury, but it is £40 million—a huge sum. Is that the sort of sum that the Minister has in mind?
I come to my main worry about this short but interesting debate. I understand the motivation of those who strongly support the Bill. They do not want shop employees to be put under any pressure to work on Christmas day against their will. Those supporters think that that is a bigger problem than the possibility that some people might wish to work on Christmas day for higher sums, which is what concerns my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth). I understand that shop workers do not want to be put under any pressure to work on Christmas day, but will pressure be put on enforcers—people who police trading standards and shop practices—to work on that day instead? Why do shop workers have to be protected but not the enforcers?
We need to know the Minister's thinking on the sums involved in the money resolution in more detail. The hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones) says that he does not think that enforcers would need to work on Christmas day. He thinks that they would be able to collect evidence after the event in the normal course of their duty. However, I suspect that courts of law might want to have direct evidence from an enforcer who had seen for himself or herself that a shop was trading on Christmas day. That means that large sums would have to be offered to existing trading standards enforcers to induce them to go to work on Christmas day—and an element of compulsion would probably be necessary—or a separate army of enforcers would have to be hired specifically for that day. Perhaps redundant Santa Clauses could be hired for the purpose, if they did not have anything better to do on Christmas day. If they were very lonely, they might like to earn the money that the Minister has in mind under the resolution by enforcing the ban on Christmas day trading.
The Minister owes us an explanation before the debate is over. Why did he say that the sum would be negligible to the Treasury? How big a sum might that be, because it could be quite large? After all, we know how careful Ministers are with the language that they are allowed to use with official advice in such circumstances. We also need to know whose freedoms and liberties not to work on Christmas day might be damaged in return for greater scope for shop workers to avoid doing so.
Mr. Greg Knight:
I am with my right hon. Friend all the way on the points that he has made. Does he agree that the Minister has a duty to give the House some guidance on the level of cost that could be involved? For example, what would it cost if every trading standards department across the UK had only two people on duty
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on Christmas day? We should be given some idea of the figures. So far, the Minister has failed to give the House the information that it should properly be given.
Mr. Redwood: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, as I was about to make exactly that point. There are shopping centres in all our towns and cities and in many of the larger villages, so if the measure is to be enforced properly it will require invigilators to be available at the end of a phone line when evidence comes in, or at shopping centres in person.
As proponents of the Bill have said, if things get out of hand and shops start to open on Christmas day it will be difficult to control the process. One assumes that a tough enforcement operation would be mounted in the first year of implementation of the proposal, to fulfil the aims of the Bill, so two people per trading standards area might be insufficient. In my district, which has a unitary council, we might get away with only two or three invigilators, as we do not have many shopping centres, but in a county, which is the more normal area covered by a trading standards department, two would be an underestimate, given the large number of shopping centres in such an area.
Before the debate closes, the Minister owes it to the House to explain why he said "negligible to the Treasury" and what range of forecast that implies, on the evidence of the Bill as drafted—of course, we do not expect him to be a clairvoyant and to know what amendments might be accepted. He should also let us know how many trading standards officers, or their equivalent, will be needed. Will they all be needed on Christmas day or will the courts accept subsequent evidence? I think that is doubtful. If the Minister can answer those points, we might be able to do a decent job of scrutinising the proposal.
4.56 pm
Mr. Owen Paterson (North Shropshire) (Con): My contribution will be brief.
We held an interesting debate on Second Reading, which the Minister attended, and it seems strange that he has given blanket approval of a money order when the measure is not yet in its final form. The Bill's promoter, the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones), rightly said that it had wide support in the country. However, it could be improved and I wrote to him on 7 April, following our debate, to describe an anomaly in my constituency, where there is a splendid organisation for which the measure might have cost implications.
Mr. Faulks used his demob money to start Stan's Shop in St. Martin's, which was then a very small enterprise. It has been built up into a substantial and successful shop, which, by tradition, opens for two hours on Christmas day. The practice began because children opened their stockings and found toys without batteries, so as a kind gesture to local people Mr Faulks opened his shop for two hours. However, the business has grown—it is now known as Stan's Superstore—and the problem, which is directly related to the motion, is that it is above the 23,000 ft threshold cited in the Bill as the qualification for a large store.
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As I wrote to the hon. Member for North Durham on 7 April, I wondered whether he might take the opportunity afforded by this debate to let me know whether he intends to reply. We might be minded to table amendments either in Committee or on Report so that my constituents could continue to benefit from the service provided by Stan's Shop, which is—as I said—a local tradition and of great benefit to local people.
As someone who would like to see the benighted British taxpayer pay considerably less tax, especially in a county such as Shropshire, where we suffer from a ghastly Liberal-Labour regime that imposes hideous council tax increases, I am nervous about the weasel words used by the Minister. I think they mean that he might put the costs of the Bill on to council tax payers. The measure may not affect the Treasury, but it could hit council tax payers, so I should be loth to table amendments that would place further costs on my constituents, who already struggle to pay the tax that is currently being imposed on them.
Perhaps the hon. Member for North Durham could intervene to let me know whether he intends take up the ideas about which I wrote in my letter of 7 April. I should also very much like the Minister to explain whether "negligible" means a soft touch for the Treasury because the costs of administering the Bill are to be dumped on the poor old council tax payer.
4.59 pm
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