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Chris Bryant: The right hon. Gentleman would be a present in his own right.

Mr. Jones: Obviously, some people would agree with that. The right hon. Gentleman would certainly make an entertaining Christmas day for the family of the hon. Member for Gainsborough and, no doubt, others. There is opportunity, in smaller convenience stores and other outlets, to purchase emergency supplies or presents on the way to Gainsborough.

I understand that, under amendment No. 8, the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst seeks to recognise the fact that there are certain needs and
 
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conditions in some areas, especially rural ones, that do not exist in large cities. However, there would be problems in implementing the amendment. How would the right hon. Gentleman define "prescribed local need", and who would make the decision on what that need was?

Mr. Forth: The Secretary of State.

Mr. Jones: I am sorry, but I should not like to give the Secretary of State such wide-ranging powers. I foresee great legal challenges if he allowed a store to be exempt in one area but not in another. The amendment would be expensive and bureaucratic to implement, and it might go against what the Bill is trying to achieve—to keep the special nature of Christmas day—and turn that day into just another shopping day if we had the extensive use of "prescribed local need." No doubt, many large shop owners and companies would describe the service that they offer the local community as meeting a clear need. Furthermore, in most communities, there are extensive local convenience stores, which are mainly family-run, that are not covered by the Bill and will be allowed to open on Christmas day. As for the person on their way to Gainsborough who finds that they have forgotten a packet of stuffing or cranberry sauce, they will find that in most communities there are well-run convenience stores providing that type of service. I reiterate that the Bill will not restrict that.

The issue of pharmacies is interesting, because there are many small local pharmacies. My village, Sacriston, in Country Durham, has a local pharmacy, and local pharmacies come to an arrangement on Christmas day opening that is published in the local newspaper. They cater for a specific local need on Christmas day, as people wish to get prescriptions or other medical supplies. I accept the point made by the right hon. Member for East Yorkshire (Mr. Knight) about larger stores such as Boots, but they tend to be located mainly in out-of-town retail outlets or large shopping centres. I accept that under amendment No. 10 the trade or business carried out would be

"wholly or mainly of the retail sale of medicinal products",

but there would also be a call for pharmacies located in large supermarkets to be able to trade. They would ask, "Why are we treated differently just because someone who uses the pharmacy picks up a packet of crisps on the way?" In my local community, however, local pharmacies open and provide that essential service.

Mr. Forth: I am puzzled about why the hon. Gentleman seems to be so resistant to any changes to his Bill. It is normal for the House to seek at one stage or another to amend Bills, for this or that reason, and it is perfectly normal for promoters to accept this or that amendment. He seems rigidly unwilling to accept amendments, however. He is not being leant on by the Government by any chance, is he? He is his own man, is he not?

Mr. Jones: The right hon. Gentleman does not know me very well if he makes that assertion. The point is that this is a simple Bill to close the loophole in the 1994 Act. I am trying to ensure that we do not make that difficult by opening up the Act, and creating problems. Some of
 
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the issues that have been raised require discussion, and we might need to revisit the 1994 Act on certain issues. That would require a wider Bill, however, than this small but well-crafted and concentrated one. We are in danger of straying on to a wider agenda.

As for whether points that have been made today need to be addressed more broadly, I think that the answer is yes. Society has changed since the 1994 Act. Clearly, people's shopping habits and lifestyles are changing. I am not sure whether any Government or private Member's Bill would address that. Last time, a lot of controversy and heated debate was created. Clearly, there are many issues in relation to Sunday trading. I supported the Sunday Trading Bill when I was chairman of licensing on Newcastle city council, and, overall, it has worked. It took away the anomalies and expense with which local councils were left by the Shops Act 1950. I hope that this Bill, if it receives the House's support today, will close one small loophole that most Members who spoke on Second Reading, and who were Members of the House in 1994, thought that it covered anyway.

I sympathise with the views of the right hon. Members for Bromley and Chislehurst and for East Yorkshire, and my attitude to the amendments is not one of resistance. We have had a good discussion on a range of issues, which may lead to their being discussed again at a later stage. That does credit to Members and the House. If something further comes out of today's debate, we shall have done a service not just to the House but to the quality of Sunday trading legislation generally.

As I have said, I have some sympathy with the amendments, but because of practical difficulties that would arise from them I hope they will not be pressed.

Mr. Leigh: I thought that one of the most interesting speeches was that of the hon. Member for Gordon (Malcolm Bruce), who drew attention to the logical inconsistencies in both the 1994 Act and the Bill. He is right: there are only two entirely logical, neat solutions. Either we adopt a wholly restrictive point of view and prevent any shops from trading, or we adopt a wholly liberal point of view and say that in a free society people should be allowed to do what they want.

Unfortunately, when we deal with legislation we must deal with the art of the possible and with compromise—shoddy compromise. As the hon. Gentleman knows, it is impossible to construct a Bill that is perfect in terms of its logical application. As a supporter of devolution and the devolution Acts, he knows that that legislation is not entirely logical. He is well acquainted with the West Lothian question—the fact that the Scots are allowed to vote on our legislation but we cannot vote on theirs. He supports that, because he believes in the general principle that Scottish people should be able to govern their own affairs.

The 1994 Act is a similar shoddy compromise. It proclaims the principle that we should keep Sunday special. This Bill says that we should keep Christmas day special, but we are realistic. We cannot take an absolutist view, and therefore we must allow some exceptions. We must allow people to call into their local
 
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filling stations to fill their cars with petrol; in the days when trains ran—in most cases, they no longer do so—we had to allow people to go to railway shops.

We were very weak in 1994 in the case of the exemption for off-licences, but that too was a shoddy compromise. For some people an off-licence is as essential a local commodity as the local filling station. I remind my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr. Knight) that we allowed pharmacies to remain open because we recognised that people have medical needs, but we did not want to accept the principle that pharmacies could sell non-medical commodities.

All this is just a compromise. I oppose the amendments because I think the aim is to move away from essential relaxations of the law allowing people to get around the country and buy essential medical supplies—to move the goal posts. Why toys, why books?

To be fair to my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire, I should say that he made one good point. Everyone laughed at him when he asked what would happen if the presents were stolen on Christmas eve, but friends of mine were burgled on Christmas eve and the burglar took all the presents that were under the tree. However, it is possible to devise any number of scenarios in favour of being able to shop on Christmas day. If we accept these amendments—starting with books, then exempting toys and who knows what else—we shall have no legislation left at all. We might as well scrap the 1994 Act and the Bill, and have a free-for-all.

Mr. Forth: That may well have been the hidden wish of some of us, but if my hon. Friend shares my view that the intoxicating liquor exemption was somewhat odd and anomalous in 1994 and remains so, was he never even slightly tempted to try to amend the Bill to eliminate that exemption for the purposes of Christmas day?

12.30 pm

Mr. Leigh: No, because I hope that I am a politician who recognises political realities. It simply would not be politically realistic to try to get an amendment through the House that would remove that exemption. In any event, the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones) has made the point perfectly well that if he is to have any chance of getting his Bill through, he has to make it as simple as possible. It has to be introduced on the back of the 1994 legislation, and if he were to try to create a separate structure that was in any way different from that legislation, he would never get it through the House. One thing that my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) has achieved is to ensure that hon. Members who introduce legislation nowadays come to the House with very modest and restricted Bills because they realise that, if they try to make them wider and to create new principles—

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