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Mr. Forth: It is always disappointing, when one tables amendments in good faith in order to seek to improve a Bill, to find that they do not gain support from any quarter of the House. In that case, far from seeking to test the will of the House—I do not propose to do so on this occasion—I will say merely that an opportunity has been missed here.

It is all very well for everyone—the promoter, my hon. Friends, the Minister—to oppose the amendment, but what we have before us is very unsatisfactory. The
 
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provisions are full of anomalies and difficult to justify, yet we are supposed to give up the opportunity to put the Bill right. That is the gist of what has been said. I fully understand the rationale—I, of all people, could hardly disagree—that in order to keep the Bill tight and acceptable to the widest number of people, we should not put it at risk through amendments. In normal circumstances, I find that argument attractive and not a little tempting. On this occasion, having listened to the debate and gained an understanding of the House's intent—very much in the spirit of what my right hon. and hon. Friends have said—I shall withdraw the amendment in the hope that we may be able to return to some of the issues on a different occasion. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Mr. Forth: I beg to move amendment No. 5, in page 1, line 15, at end insert—

'(5)   In its application for the purposes of subsection (2), Schedule 3 to the 1994 Act (loading and unloading at large shops on Sunday morning) has effect as if the reference to Sunday were a reference to Christmas Day.'.

This is another occasion on which I find it puzzling that a provision in the Sunday Trading Act 1994 has not been carried forward into the Bill. Given the intimate connection between the 1994 Act and the Bill, I would have hoped that the promoter would examine the positive and good features of the earlier Act to ensure that they were carried forward to the Bill in the spirit of bringing Christmas day into line with Sundays. I was very disappointed—I shall return to the point on Third Reading—that the opportunity was not taken to carry forward an element of proper protection for employees who do not wish to work on Christmas day, and to reflect it in both the short and the long title of the Bill. I mention that only in passing now, but I will raise the matter again on Third Reading.

My amendment deals with a very precise measure in the 1994 Act, which could and should be carried forward into the Bill. It refers simply to loading and unloading at large shops on a Sunday morning, and I now wish to apply the same provision to Christmas day. Surely, to the extent that the acts of loading and unloading are viewed as undesirable on Sundays, they must be viewed as equally or even more undesirable on Christmas day. For the life of me, I cannot see why that provision is not incorporated in the Bill.

12.45 pm

Mr. Greg Knight: Is it not the case that greater nuisance, annoyance, menace and disturbance are often caused to residents from loading, particularly from container lorries that service big shops, than from the act of trading from those shops?

Mr. Forth: My right hon. Friend makes the point better than I had hitherto been able to, for which I am grateful. He is right, and that must be why the loading provision with reference to Sundays was included in the 1994 Act. From the varying experiences of our different constituencies, we all know that loading and unloading can be a source of great unhappiness and distress. It is an essential part of our modern life, and our retail trade is probably one of the most efficient in the world in its
 
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arrangements for supplying stores. How rare it is to see—if, indeed, one ever sees them these days—empty shelves in our stores large or small, and that is a great tribute to our systems of distribution. I pay tribute to all involved in the distribution business, but—it is a big but—there are considerable social considerations governing the hours and days of the year when that may be done.

My challenge to the House is simple: it seemed sensible and desirable to include the loading provision in schedule 3 to the Sunday Trading Act 1994, and my amendment seeks simply to carry that provision forward into the Bill. If it is deemed undesirable that loading or unloading should take place on a Sunday, that must equally, or even more so, be the case on Christmas day.

Mr. Chope: Will my right hon. Friend address the point that if vehicles need to be loaded or unloaded outside large shops, employees in those shops must attend to deal with that event?

Mr. Forth: Yes; my hon. Friend beats me to the point, for which I am grateful. That is self-evidently the case. We must not forget—I do not wish to be misunderstood here—that loading and unloading involves not only the driver of the vehicle and his or her assistants, but the employees of the receiving store, whatever size it may be, who must open the premises, who may have to assist with loading and unloading, and who must certainly receive the goods being delivered. If the point is not covered in the Bill, as my amendment seeks to ensure, there will be, at the very least, a risk—I put it no higher—that the employees of the distributing company, or of the distribution element of the retailing company, will be involved, and others, perforce, must also be.

I do not want to belabour the point; it almost makes itself. I hope, therefore, that the Bill's promoter will see fit to recommend to the House that a measure included in the 1994 Act can and should be carried forward, through my amendment, to the Bill.

Mr. Brazier: I should have made it clear earlier that I speak today in a personal capacity on a matter that has long been entirely a question of conscience in my party.

I hope that the Bill's promoter, the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones), will be able to agree to the amendment. My right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) spoke with considerable eloquence, and I am glad to support him. The amendment should come as no surprise to those on the Government Front Bench following Second Reading, when the argument was raised by several people, including me. Sympathetic noises were made at that time, and it seems an extraordinary anomaly that a little piece of the original legislation has been left out of the Bill.

My right hon. Friend referred to the large numbers of employees involved in loading. I confess that although I am concerned about them, as the representative of a major regional shopping centre I am more concerned about people living immediately round those premises. I suspect that any large store would be able to find without any difficulty a small number of employees who would be happy to work on a Sunday.
 
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In my constituency—we sometimes have 15,000 people on the high street, which shows the scale of our shopping centre—there are substantial numbers of people, many elderly, who live close to our largest stores. I will mention one of them: my parish priest, who has completed 40 years in the priesthood and lives next to the largest store in Canterbury. He has not raised the issue with me but, in 1994 his curate pointed out the problems caused by unloading.

As has been pointed out, loading can be a bigger problem for people living next to a store than shopping, with the sound of those wretched heavy lorries with their bleepers going off when they reverse, the sound of enormous doors being slid to and fro, and the banging and so on, sometimes very early in the morning. I do not see why on two days of the year—the other, of course, being Easter—people should not be exempted from that. Let me be clear: none of the department stores in Canterbury is a problem in that regard, but they all make the point that if one or two stores broke the line, it would put the others at a competitive disadvantage. There was sympathy for that view on Second Reading.

The promoter of the Bill has steered it through the House extremely skilfully, and his interchanges with my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst have become more and more touching at every stage, revealing sides that one hardly knew were there. This is an excellent amendment. Everyone understands why it is needed and I hope that both the hon. Gentleman and the Government will support it.

Mr. Knight: My right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst and I have had some differences this morning, but we have now reached agreement. I accept the force of his arguments. The original restriction in the Sunday trading legislation applies to any large shop, and prohibits loading or unloading before 9 am on a Sunday unless consent has been sought from the local authority. I would have gone further than my right hon. Friend. I think there should be no loading, full stop—not just early loading—on Christmas day.

Luckily, I do not live near a large store, but a few years back I was taking part in a classic car rally and made the mistake of booking into a hotel adjoining the car park and loading bay of a large store. I was rudely woken up at 7 am by two delivery employees who bore more than a passing resemblance—certainly in how they behaved—to the screen comics Laurel and Hardy, in that they seemed to take great delight in throwing around metal pallets and anything that would make a noise to create disturbance. [Interruption.] I hear someone saying, sotto voce, that they must have known I was there.

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