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

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Umunna]

I am happy to be able to give the assurance that we certainly would not support any permanent change to the current regime.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

Did my hon. Friend notice that when the Secretary of State was explaining why he considered the Olympic and Paralympic games to be a special case, he referred to the football World cup in Germany, which is a completely different event? Does my hon. Friend share my concern that this Bill will set a precedent for future sporting and cultural events in this country, and open the door to far wider changes to the Sunday trading laws?

[Mr Umunna]

That is a very valid concern.

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[Andrew Gwynne]

I understand the hon. Lady’s argument, but is not the danger for, and the concern of, small convenience shops that the larger stores will open for longer and, because there will be no increase in overall trade, all that will happen is that they will suck the custom away from small traders?

[Lorely Burt]

I have agreed with everyone who has intervened, which is probably not very politically correct. I completely acknowledge the point that the hon. Gentleman makes, but I think that sensible economic decisions will be made by the larger retailers in non-tourist areas. Indeed, the British Retail Consortium is divided on the issue, and not just along the line dividing large and smaller shops. However, small shops in the tourism areas will reap additional revenue benefits by virtue of where they are located. I do not think that it is all doom and gloom, but I do think that the potential bonanza is likely to be realised only in the main tourist areas.

I do not think that this is the time or the place for reopening the Sunday trading debate. Many small retailers fear that the Bill will pave the way for Sunday trading by the back door without protection or consultation with the groups opposed to widening Sunday trading, such as the Keep Sunday Special campaign. Organisations such as the Association of Convenience Stores and unions representing shop workers, such as the Union of Shop Distributive and Allied Workers, found that the majority of their members were also opposed to the Bill, as has already been mentioned. Of course, there is also the fact that a large proportion of shop workers are women with caring responsibilities, so it would be wrong to make anything other than temporary changes without all those affected having a proper say.

Of course, some people will welcome the opportunity for more hours of work on a Sunday, although we have heard about the USDAW workers and there has been great discussion about how employees can be pressured against their wishes into working on a Sunday. I have sympathy for anyone who is pressured into Sunday working. However, I gently remind the House that for other industries there is no legal opt-out for Sunday working because the needs of their business dictate that some staff must be there on a Sunday. I think that we need to keep a sense of proportion when considering this temporary period.

On the two-months’ notice for shop workers, I have concerns that 22 May, the limit on when notice has to be given, is too short a period for shop workers not only to plan for, but to learn about the changes that are coming forward. It represents fewer than three weeks, so can the Minister assure me that workers will be informed in time and that any blank refusal to accede to a legitimate request from an employee will be covered by industrial relations legislation?

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[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

Unusually, but not uniquely, I did not support London’s bid for the Olympic games. I said so in the House during preparations for the bid, and I advised against it. I did so for two reasons, one of which is relevant to the debate. The first reason, which is not really relevant, is that no other UK city was allowed to compete with London for the right to represent the UK in the International Olympic Committee’s competition.

The second reason is that I simply did not believe the prospectus that London put out on the impact and cost of the games. Financially, that view has turned out to be right, as the cost of the games has increased by a factor of threefold or fourfold, the sustainability criteria have been thrown out of the plans for the Olympic games and the participation that was promised has not occurred. It has been repeated, as it was repeated during the bid, however, that the economic benefits of the Olympic games will be spread throughout the country.

I do not doubt—I am certain—that there will be economic benefits from the Olympic games. They will be felt in east London, in particular, and throughout the rest of London, but no Minister—from any party when in government—whom I have ever asked about the Blake report, which the previous Government commissioned, has answered my questions on it. The report showed that, although there would be benefits, there would also be a £4.5 billion disbenefit to the rest of the United Kingdom, meaning that the benefit to London would be even greater.

One can of course go to individual businesses and find that there will be a particular benefit. Steel will be provided for the Olympic games from Bolton, for instance, and one can go around the country and find such things, but the Blake report, which was produced at a time of economic growth, stated that overall there would be a disbenefit.

No Minister has contradicted the report, because it has been kept a great secret from them by officials or by more senior Ministers who know about it, but if one takes that analysis and places against it the Sunday trading proposals in the Bill, which will increase the Sunday trading of large stores, one sees that the impact is likely to be negative on many small stores and street traders throughout the rest of England.

I received a letter 10 days ago. It is not, as it happens, from a shop that will be affected by the legislation, but it shows the difficulties that small traders are currently experiencing—similar to many convenience stores on the street corners and high streets in our towns, cities and rural areas. The man in question runs an angling shop, which, when my 12-year-old son was into fishing, I used to visit fairly regularly. He wrote to me and—excuse the language, Mr Deputy Speaker, and the inaccurate constitutional position that my constituent took—said, “Will you sack that idiot in the Cabinet Office who has made people fill up all their cars with petrol. I used to employ four people in this shop, I am having the greatest difficulty making ends meet, I might be out of business within six weeks and trade was just beginning to increase in the spring. Now everybody’s gone and spent their money on their cars and nobody is coming into my shop.”

That shows how difficult small traders are finding things at present. If we take the fact that the Olympic games are going to have a negative impact, that overall there will be less money about throughout the regions and that people are going to go into Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Asda and Morrison’s at times when they could not previously go into them and spend money, we find that the Bill is going to put small businesses out of business. They will not exist, and the Bill will have a greater negative impact on them than probably anything else at present.

That is the prime reason why I oppose the Bill, but I also urge some caution on the figures that Government Front Benchers have provided, because they are not net figures. I do not doubt that 6 million people are likely to come into the country during the Olympic games period, if that is what we are told, but the experience of many host cities is that, although people go to watch the games and to enjoy the sporting and cultural experience, many people who would otherwise visit the city—to look at the Tower of London and London’s other great tourist experiences, for example—do not do so. Los Angeles’ lowest bed occupancy in more than a decade occurred in 1984, at the time of its Olympic games.

I have been fortunate enough to go to a number of Olympics, and had Members been in Atlanta in 1996 they would not have known that the games were taking place—unless they had been in the stadiums or nearby. As many people went to those games as went to any other Olympics, but other people left the city. Even according to the impact assessment—my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) did a very good job of showing how inadequate it is—the impact is unlikely to be as impressive as it might seem.

It has been said several times that this will not be a precedent. I would advise people to go and look at a dictionary. Whatever anyone says, it is a precedent, because it has not happened before. Hon. Members are saying—I do not disbelieve them; they are honourable people—that they will not use it as a precedent, but other people might do so. Nothing can stop that, and it will be extremely bad for small shopkeepers and small businesses.

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is right to point to the concern that this may be used as a precedent. Was he as surprised as I was that the Secretary of State, in giving an example of this, could not cite another Olympic host city but had to cite the football World cup in Germany?

[Graham Stringer]

I was not surprised. I suspect that this is driven by lobbying by the very big stores, which want to open permanently in the long term—

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[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for South Antrim (Dr McCrea) is a hard act to follow. I thank him for making those points very strongly.

I will vote against the Bill for three reasons: first, the economic arguments are not very convincing; secondly, and most importantly, I am very worried about the effect on workers; and thirdly, I still believe that there is a case for keeping Sunday special.

I very much welcome the Olympics coming to the UK and the opportunities that that offers to showcase the UK, and I am sure that we will welcome many foreign visitors. However, let us be realistic about those foreign visitors. If they are coming to see the Olympics, they can go shopping on Saturday, they have six hours to go shopping on Sunday, and they can go shopping again on Monday if they want to go to a big store, but I think that the vast majority are more likely to pop into a convenience store or go into cafes or restaurants, because that is what people do when going to a sporting event. However, they will have plenty of chance to go shopping if they so wish.

As regards UK residents, let us be honest: people have a finite amount of money to spend, particularly as this Government seem incapable of finding a growth strategy and are letting us slide back into recession. We are seeing displacement trade, with the same amount of spending being spread over more hours, and we are likely to see big stores drawing away yet more trade from local convenience stores, as the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) said. I am disappointed that he seems incapable of voting against the Bill even though he talked about people who may lose their livelihoods in his constituency because they depend on the times when an awful lot of people use convenience stores because none of the big supermarkets is open, particularly on Sundays from about 4 pm to 9 or 10 pm. The danger of extending Sunday opening hours for the big stores is that it will have a very detrimental effect on small convenience stores. In the past, supermarkets have driven people out through loss leaders, whether it was fishermen because they had bargains on their fish counters or the local music shop because their popular items were available in the bigger type of store. In the same way, this summer some local stores may close because eight weeks is too long for them to do without the trade that they have usually been getting.

Of course, life has changed and we have far longer shop opening hours than 50 years ago, and we accept that emergency workers have to do some Sunday shifts. However, Sunday is a day when children are not at school but at home. Many workers do not work on Sunday, so it is a time for families to be together and for parents to spend valuable time with their children. The majority of shop workers are women on low incomes, and if stores are open for longer on Sunday, there will be pressure on them to do more of their hours on Sunday. They will not get more hours; rather, instead of doing them on weekdays, they will be asked to do them on Sundays, cutting down on the time they have to spend with their families and children. Many of those women will walk to work because there is no transport on Sunday, particularly very early in the morning or late in the evening, and that raises huge issues regarding their safety. It is bad enough walking when it is for a 10 am start and a 4 pm finish, but if it is much earlier or later, there are far greater implications for safety.

The Government are rushing this Bill through having not realised that there would not be enough time under the existing legislation for someone to give three months’ notice if they do not want to work on Sundays. Now the proposal is that workers have to give notice by 22 May. Again, there is a huge rush to get that done. Some families may well have prepared activities for the summer holidays, when they want to do something special on Sundays—they may already have plans afoot.

It is all very well to say that such working will be voluntary, but it will never be voluntary. People will feel pressurised into working, that their promotion chances are damaged and that it is not fair on their fellow workers if they opt out of working on a Sunday. The idea that such working is voluntary is nonsensical for many reasons.

[Andrew Gwynne]

I support my hon. Friend’s case. Has not evidence from the 1994 Act shown that, far from such working being voluntary, many shop workers have been pressurised into working on Sundays?

[Nia Griffith]

Absolutely, and the Bill will create extra pressure.

Last but not least, there is keeping Sunday special. Times have changed since my childhood, when the chores were finished by Saturday afternoon, and Sunday was a day when we certainly did not play cards or do any household tasks—people would never be seen washing the car or digging the garden. Families do lots of different things now, but Sunday is a time for worship, contemplation and reflection—time to take off from the working week. As many hon. Members have said, for the mental health of our nation, it is extremely important to have that break, and a day that is a little different from the rest of the working week. That is another reason for my firm opposition to extending Sunday opening hours.

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[Mr Prisk]

We have made it clear that this Bill does not change their statutory rights. Some will be engaged in contractual discussions. I have made it clear to employers, and I am happy to put it firmly on the record again today, that we will want to sit down again with both unions and employers over the coming weeks to make sure that if there are contractual issues, we are aware of them, and we will want to support them. That is important. We must make sure that this is not just about the statute before the House, as it is also about the contractual arrangements, which in some cases are better than the statute itself.

Several Members have raised the question of how much the economy will benefit from this temporary relaxation of the rules. For example, at Atlanta in 1996, about $5.1 billion was added to the Georgian economy. If we look at Sydney in 2000, we see that there was an improvement in the visitor economy of about $1.5 billion. We accept that, given the unique nature of the Olympics and Paralympics, it is difficult accurately to predict the precise financial benefit in advance.

In 2006, the then Government commissioned an assessment of the impact of a permanent relaxation of the rules. Based on those figures, a temporary suspension of the rules for eight Sundays would deliver benefits of up to £176 million. As alluded to by several hon. Members, the Centre for Retail Research has indicated that the figure would be closer to £189 million.

[Andrew Gwynne]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Prisk]

No, I will not, because the hon. Gentleman has made no contribution to this debate, other than intervening at the beginning. He made no speech and I want to respond to those who made the effort to speak in the debate, rather than those who make an occasional interruption. [Interruption.]

I was talking about the Centre for Retail Research, but some independent assessments have been even more bullish. The New West End Company, for example, estimates that the benefits of the measure for London retailers alone could be more than £180 million.

It is important to bear in mind that in these difficult times this measure will clearly benefit many of our hard-pressed retailers and their staff. We are supporting events not just in London. With football in Manchester, Cardiff, Newcastle and Coventry; sailing in Weymouth, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset mentioned; mountain biking in Essex; canoe slalom in Hertfordshire; and rowing in Eton Dorney, the benefits, the activities and the visitors will clearly spread far beyond the east of London. At the same time, big screens are being set up in towns and cities right across the country to enable people to gather and watch the games together. We believe that the Bill will help to make the most of the games economically, as well as showing to thousands of visitors from abroad that Britain is indeed open to business.