Sunday Trading (London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games) Bill [HL]

Lord Myners Excerpts

Thursday 26th April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington]

That is exactly what I wanted to hear.

[Lord Myners]

My Lords, it is good to see the Minister back on the Front Bench. We missed him yesterday when we discussed the progress of convergence under Maastricht. He would no doubt have been as surprised as we were on this side of the House that in an important economic debate there was not a single speaker from the coalition government Benches in support of the Government’s economic policy.

I declare an interest as a former retailer, not as distinguished in my achievements as the noble Lord, Lord Alliance, who I see in his place, but as a previous chairman of Marks & Spencer.

I join my noble friend Lord Davies in making it clear that we on this side of the House support the fundamental intention of the Bill. We will take issue in Committee not with its intent but rather with its phrasing. That said, it is lamentable and shambolic that the Bill should be before the House now, so that the three-month notice period which the law allows for those who work in retailing in other circumstances will not apply. It is a shambles, although I do not think that that is the Minister’s fault.

The economic case that has been made for this proposal is equally shambolic and flimsy. I am sorry that I was not here for the Minister’s speech on Second Reading but I have read it in Hansard. It was a very good speech and he explained the situation very carefully. I was disappointed not to be here for what may well have been the Minister’s parliamentary high point in terms of his contributions to the House. He made an extraordinarily good speech on the issue of Sunday trading. However, the economic case—which is presumably one of the reasons why the Treasury is taking responsibility for the Bill—is extremely flimsy. On every key quantifiable metric we are told, “Not applicable”. Net present value: “Not applicable”. Impact on economy: “Not applicable”. To every question we receive the reply that it is not applicable. Indeed, no acknowledgement is given at all in the narrative to substantial data and evidence suggesting that the total number of visitors to the United Kingdom might be lower as a result of the Olympics. Those who come specifically to participate in, celebrate and observe this wonderful event—which we are clearly going to do a great job in hosting—will be offset by those who say, “It is not probably a good time to go to the United Kingdom”.

It does not seem that the Government have done a great deal of research among retailers. It has been difficult to find leading retailers that are enthusiastic about the intention of the Bill. Indeed, Mr Justin King, the chief executive of Sainsbury’s, who is Mr Boris Johnson’s representative on LOCOG, has said that he does not support this proposal. I find it extraordinarily difficult to imagine a family, having observed Usain Bolt in the 100 metres, deciding that now is a good time to go and do the weekly shop at Tesco. I do not think that the economic case that has been made is particularly good.

[Baroness Browning]

I have been following what the noble Lord has said very carefully and wonder if he can help me on this. I understand from papers available in the Printed Paper Office that the Centre for Retail Research estimates that the impact of relaxing these laws will benefit retailers by £189.8 million and that food stores will enjoy a boost of £61 million. That is clearly documented in papers available to the House today.

[Lord Myners]

Those data were not included—I shall give way to the Minister if he wishes to correct me—in the Bill’s economic impact assessment, at attachment C, when I obtained the documents from the Printed Paper Office yesterday morning.

[Lord Sassoon]

I do not like to intervene often but as the noble Lord, Lord Myners—who I know likes occasionally to intervene on me, quite properly, while I am at the Dispatch Box—has invited me to do so, it might help if I say that a formal impact assessment under the accepted procedures is not required in this case because this is a temporary measure. Such an assessment is not required precisely because, among other things, it is often difficult with a temporary measure to make an assessment that is up to the very high standards imposed on full impact assessments.

I thought that it would help the House if there were an assessment that, although not a formal impact assessment, would give a great deal of relevant and, I hope, helpful information—and my noble friend has just quoted from it. I make no apologies that boxes which would have been filled in for a formal impact assessment were not filled in in this case, as that would give a spurious impression of accuracy. We did not have to give the House anything in this form but we thought that it would help the debate to provide such information as is available. My noble friend has given some of that information but it also includes statistics from USDAW and others and I believe that it presents a balanced picture. The noble Lord, Lord Myners, should understand that this was never intended to give, nor should it give, a spurious, false picture. It is not up to the standards that would be required for Bills that have permanent effect.

[Lord Myners]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, for her intervention, and to the Minister for correcting the noble Baroness by saying that there was no impact assessment and that the data from which the noble Baroness quotes do not constitute an impact statement. The numbers quoted by the noble Baroness, incidentally, are probably less than a week-end’s takings at Westfield and take no account of displacement—that is to say, the spending which would have taken place in any case but is now being brought into these Sunday trading permitted-hours figures or displaced from smaller stores to larger ones.

I should like to talk about treating people fairly, because that seems to be the issue on which the House wishes to focus in Committee.

[Baroness Browning]

Will the noble Lord allow me to intervene?

[Lord Myners]

I will give way in a moment, but I want to talk about treating people fairly.

This is an issue of ensuring that employees have adequate notice. Sunday is a special day: many choose not to work on Sundays or to limit the number of hours they work. We know from research by USDAW that a very high percentage of shop workers already feel under great pressure to work on a Sunday when they would rather not do so and would rather be with their families, and to give people inadequate time to make a decision is a most regrettable outcome.

We have two amendments, but I believe that the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Davies of Oldham is superior in its precision of expression. The key issue is to ensure that we treat employees fairly and that they do not feel pressurised—that they have time to reflect, to consult their families and to take into account other options that might be available to them. They should not be strong-armed and muscled into doing something that they do not want to do but perhaps feel they cannot avoid given the extraordinarily bad employment situation facing the economy.

I am willing to give way to the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, but I do not think that we disagree on the data. The data to which she refers are of course helpful and the Minister has explained, in a correct and proportionate way, that a full impact assessment would not have been justified for the proposal as made. However, it is clear that a very poor economic justification has been given. I shall support the amendment of my noble friend Davies of Oldham if I have the opportunity.

[Baroness Gibson of Market Rasen]

My Lords, I wish to speak very briefly in the debate because it is important and I want to make certain that the voice of shop workers is heard. I do not have the credentials of my noble friend Lord Davies of Coity to speak on behalf of USDAW, but I have been sent a brief by it and some of the points it raises are very important.

I begin by declaring an interest. My stepdaughter works in the retail trade for a large company, often on a Sunday against her will. She has to do that, as we have already heard from other speakers. Unfortunately, it is not always the choice of the workers themselves to work on a Sunday.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Sassoon]

My Lords, I will not disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham. The Government do not see favour in the amendment. As he explained, its effect would be to restrict the Sunday opening hours of large shops deregulated by the Bill so that they can open during the suspension period only between the hours of 10 am and, now, 11 pm, the intention being to prevent large shops from being able to open any earlier on Sundays than they can now or until too late in the evening. I wish that, along with all the other things that we discussed with the Opposition, we had been able to discuss this before, because we might then have been able to point out one or two of the difficulties with the proposal.

The starting point is that the Government have been clear from the beginning that the Bill is about flexibility. It is not about the Government imposing opening and closing times on large stores during the suspension period; it is about allowing shops to make their own decisions based on what is best for themselves, their staff and their customers. I do not think that it is right for your Lordships’ House to second-guess any of that. It is not that all large stores will suddenly open for 24 hours a day during the Olympic period; that would be absurd. We have discussed opening times with the large retailers and it is clear that there will be a variety of opening and closing times within individual groups. Some will deal with it on a regional, geographic basis. Within the whole group, some will stay open late, some will open earlier, and some will not change their opening times at all. The important thing is that the Government want that to be a decision for them.

The amendment is unnecessary. I do not want to overlabour the point, but as we have seen from the scrabbling around by the party opposite, they realise that putting a 10 pm stop would be before the closing ceremony had finished. Well, putting an 11 o’clock closing time after an event where 80,000 people have to get out of a stadium, adding an extra half-hour, is absurd if the change to the amendment is intended to reflect what is really going on at the events.

Even to reflect the situation at the event that the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Oldham, identified, half an hour for 80,000 people to get to a large shop near the stadium is plainly not doable. There are events that will finish as late as midnight on a Sunday. The beach volleyball finishes at 10 to midnight on 29 July. What about all those events that start before 10 am? Why should not we allow shops, if they want to, to service all those people who will be going into events? Again, I could give a very long list, but if we just take 29 July, there is an 8.30 start for the badminton, 8.30 for the hockey, 9 am for the basketball, shooting and archery, and so on.

The amendment does not work in relation to the narrow Olympic events themselves. It does not reflect the fact that retailers are already taking individual decisions to open early, late or make no change at all. As with the other opposition amendment, I note that it does not impose any sanction or penalty for breach of the 10 am to 11 pm restriction, so large shops may well ignore it. It would be a duty with no sanction, which I suggest is simply bad law. That contrasts with large shops which breach the current restrictions, which can be fined up to £50,000, which is clearly a significant punishment in relation to the gain. It does not work, it is unnecessary and I ask the noble Lord to consider withdrawing his amendment.

[Lord Myners]

I intervene briefly. Both my points relate to the earlier intervention by the noble Lord, Lord Elton. First, the noble Lord sought an assurance that this was not a stalking horse.

[Lord Sassoon]

He is not in his place.

[Lord Myners]

As the Minister correctly notes, the noble Lord is not in his place. This is not a stalking horse or a Trojan horse; this is strictly an emergency piece of legislation. However, one has to note that the central thrust of the Minister's response about customers and shops having freedom of choice would be exactly the same argument that would be brought forward were the Government to be proposing a much broader exemption to restrictions on Sunday trading. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, was right to seek the assurances that he did.

I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Elton, on his prescience. I observed that the Minister’s contribution to the Second Reading of the Sunday Trading (London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games) Bill was the high point of his parliamentary career. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, said that that would not be the case but I have to confess that, even in talking to this amendment, the Minister has in Olympic terms established another personal best.