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Mr. Greg Knight: The Minister should never say that he likes Fridays when he is in the presence of a Whip.
Will the Minister do two things? He has handled the Bill very well, and he kindly indicated that the concession that he intends to make in respect of amendment No. 10 will be covered, he hopes, in guidance. Will he send me a copy of that guidance when it is finalised? Secondly, will he write to my right hon.
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Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) and to me to let us know when he has made a decision on the loading problem?
Mr. Sutcliffe: Those are perfectly fair requests, and I undertake to do all that at the appropriate time.
The Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers has been referred to. I have been pushing for a long time for unions to be modern and relevant to their workplaces. USDAW has achieved that in the way in which it has run its campaign on Christmas day trading. The Bill is not all about USDAW, however: it is about the nature of Christmas day and how we preserve it for the family by making it a special day of the year. The Bill goes a long way to doing that.
The Bill applies to England and Wales but not to Scotland, where the Scottish Executive are considering the matter. Enforcement of prohibitions and other matters in the Act will be the same as for the 1994 Act and will be operated by local trading standards authorities.
The Bill is necessary. We are often accused of regulation for regulation's sake, but that is not the case here. The domino effect was a real consideration; the retailers told us that if a competitor opened up, they would have to do the same, and they thought that regulation was appropriate.
Further important Bills will follow this one, so I shall not detain the House much longer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham for his work. I accept that the Bill is not yet the perfect piece of legislation, but it is an attempt to try to put right a mistake that was made when Christmas day was included in the previous legislation only if it fell on a Sunday. I hope it passes through the other House with due speed, and I commend it to this House.
2 pm
Mr. Forth: I have said throughout the day that I would want to speak on Third Reading, and this is my big moment.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I apologise to the right hon. Gentleman if I did not immediately call his name, but as he had not given a previous indication in my hearing, I was slightly surprised. I would never seek to deny the right hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Forth: I am grateful, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I like to spring the occasional surprise, even on you.
On Second Reading I said that I was not happy with the Bill. There was a rather half-hearted attempt by USDAW to get people to write to me. In the end about 30 did, and there were a couple of phone calls, one rather abusive. That made no difference to my views, and it did not say much for USDAW and its organising ability.
I changed my mind for two reasons. First, I had a look at what happened in other countries that I regard as culturally comparable with ourselves—Canada and Australia, mainly. But the thing that incensed me and made me change my mind was an article in The Sunday Telegraph on 9 May that referred to a 99-page document
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published by the Commission for Racial Equality setting out draft guidance on how companies should prevent discrimination against religious and racial minorities. The most controversial proposal was that employers should have to provide prayer rooms and to give time off to non-Christians to mark their own religious holidays.
That is what changed my mind about the Bill. Other speakers have mentioned this matter, but I will put my own very different interpretation on it. I am normally incensed by anything the CRE says, and the sooner we abolish it the better. However, the fact that it had the impertinence to say something like that convinced me that the Bill would be a small but significant symbol of the need to reassert the fact that this country is, and remains, essentially a Christian country. We have an established Church. Her Majesty is the head of that Church, as well as being our head of state. For the race relations industry to have the cheek to come forward with such a statement was an insult, and something that should be dealt with firmly. The Bill has provided us with the occasion to do something about it.
Instead of seeking to oppose the Bill I shall support it with alacrity, for that reason. It is time we in this country put down a marker in defence of our culture and what is still our religion. That is not to say that we should not be perfectly tolerant of people with other views, or no views. Reference has been made to the census, which revealed that a significant proportion of people in this country now feel that they have no religious affiliation, or decline to say what their affiliation might be. We must respect them as well.
None the less, it is important that in our institutions and, where necessary, in our legal framework, we assert, and reassert where necessary, where we believe this country should place itself in terms of its religious affiliations. That was the main reason that brought me, unusually—it is not something that I do often—to change my mind. I am happy to say that the Commission for Racial Equality has had that effect on me, and will be able to claim at least some of the credit for the fact that the Bill will make progress today. Good for the CRE; that is the only time you will ever hear me saying that.
I have here a letter from the Minister for Industry and the Regions and Deputy Minister for Women and Equality—she is in her place now, and I welcome her to the debate. The letter, which she kindly wrote on 4 May, said:
"There is no automatic entitlement for employees not to work on Christian holy days or on holy days of any other religion. This is a contractual matter between employees and their employers. However, the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003, which came into force in December last year, make it unlawful for employers to treat staff from a particular religious group less favourably than those from other religions when considering requests for leave, or requests to refrain from work on particular days."
That is a very fair statement of the Government's position, but it sits slightly at odds with the tenor of this debate and of the Bill. Perhaps the Minister for Industry and the Regions and her colleague should have a quiet chat to see whose view will prevail. We have heard the Minister who has just spoken welcome the Bill, USDAW and all its works, and so on, while the Minister for Industry and the Regions took a slightly more
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neutral position. It seems that the Government are of two minds. [Interruption.] The right hon. Lady is getting excited; she is welcome to intervene if she wants to elucidate—but, obviously, she does not want to emphasise her remarks in any way. I understand that.
As I said, the other reason why I changed my mind on the Bill is what happens in other countries, but before I deal with that point I want to express again my disappointment that the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones) did not seek to include in the Bill any sort of explicit protection for workers to ensure that they were not forced to work on Christmas day. I sought to secure such protection in an amendment that I was advised could not be selected, simply because the long title of the Bill would not allow it. That is not an excuse. The long title of the Sunday Trading Act 1994 allowed schedule 4 to that Act to provide protection for workers who did not want to work on a Sunday. I am appalled that a Bill that is supported by a trade union—USDAW, no less—has such a restrictive long title that it cannot be amended to provide proper protection for workers on Christmas day.
Frankly, that undercuts all the words of praise that have been said today about that union and all its works, and about the wonderful role that it has played in such matters. I think that it has been in gross dereliction of its duty not only to its members, but to workers at large. I was the one who sought to table an amendment to protect workers, but my amendment was denied because of the shoddy way in which the long title of the Bill had been drawn up. My praise for the hon. Gentleman is therefore somewhat tempered by the fact that he and the union have been in dereliction of what the latter normally regards as its duty to its members and workers at large.
I make those remarks because I hope that somebody may want to return to the matter some day. If we are serious about all the words that have been said in the Chamber today about how special Christmas day is, the need to protect the workers and so on, why cannot we include in legislation a provision that seeks to give proper protection, as we did in the Sunday Trading Act 1994? That remains a mystery to me. I hope that it will be corrected one of these days.
I have in my hands some information about the great province of Ontario in Canada. In Ontario, employees of most retail businesses generally have the right to refuse to work on a public holiday, and they do not have to give reasons for declining to work on a public
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holiday. Furthermore, employers in Ontario cannot punish such people for not working on those days. Such provision exists in other civilised parts of the world, and I would have thought that it should exist here. I regret that this opportunity to introduce such provision has passed us by.
Although I support the Bill and wish it well, for the reasons that I have given, I, like my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Mr. Knight), hope that the Minister will be able to tell us in due course that he has been able to incorporate the amendments that the House has generally supported, particularly with regard to loading and unloading. I hope that he will ensure that that issue is dealt with in one way or another.
All in all, I believe that the hon. Member for North Durham has done a service to our society and to its workers in introducing the Bill. Defective though it may be, I believe that it is good enough to have the support of the House today.
2.9 pm
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