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

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge]

My Lords, I am also most surprised that in just over a year in your Lordships’ House this is the second time I find myself speaking on this issue—the first being on the Remembrance Sunday (Closure of Shops) Bill. However, it is also perhaps apt as in 1992 it was this issue, as was the case for my noble friend Lord Bates, that prompted my first political activity. I distinctly remember sitting at my desk one Sunday while at university, looking out of the window at business premises that were silent and dark, so I wrote to my parents’ MP, Alan Duncan, to request that Sundays be kept special.

Things are of course different now, so much so that I, as an occasional Sunday shopper, found on a recent holiday to the Isles of Lewis and Harris that Sundays were quite a culture shock. However, it is interesting to note that certain businesses, including the Entertainer chain of toyshops and the Reg Vardy car dealership in the north-east, do not open on Sundays: decisions motivated by the desire of the employers to give a day off to their employees, as well as the owners’ Christian faith. I do hope this to be a new trend.

Although I am completely unsporting—my gym membership is perhaps best characterised as a charitable donation to the gym rather than a purchasing of its services—I think that London hosting the Olympics and Paralympics is fantastic. Surprisingly, I have even found myself a trustee of an Olympic-related charity, More Than Gold. Britain won the bid to hold the Games on 6 July 2005—a never to be forgotten date as it was the day before the 7/7 bombings, so I, too, am surprised how late in the day this issue is being debated.

Hindsight is a perfect science, and I usually think that there is little point in picking over the bones of how we got here, but I am told that the unusual use of the fast-track procedure, which hampers full consultation and scrutiny, when we have known for so long that the Games are coming to town, necessitates some questions and clarification that I hope that my noble friend can provide. First, and most importantly in my view, there are the views of shopworkers as expressed in the USDAW survey. I share some of the scepticism of my noble friend Lady Trumpington about such surveys, but I have to agree with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Judd. I worked for a living for five years in the catering industry and I know at first hand the pressure that one is put under to take on shifts and work when one would ideally choose not to do so. Can my noble friend say whether the figures from USDAW have been contradicted by other statistics from shopworkers? If not, precisely what concerns have outweighed the views of shopworkers?

Why does the suspension period begin with the Sunday before the Olympics start? The opening ceremony is not until 27 July, but shops will be open all over the country on 22 July. I cannot see why the deregulation could not be limited to the official merchandising outlets of the requisite size directly connected to the Olympics: in the Olympic Park, in the athletes’ village and in Hyde Park. Those areas are geographically discrete and the workers affected would, I assume, be temporary workers hired just for the period of the Olympics. In the context of my role as a trustee of an Olympic-related charity, I have dealt with the lawyers at LOCOG, and I rest assured that the intellectual property rights and association rights will leave no one in any doubt as to what is an official merchandising outlet, whether it be in London or at any of the other venues around the country.

I am also curious to know where the initiative came from for such legislation. Was it from the official merchandising outlets, which I accept are an anomaly, or was it Westfield in Stratford or the big supermarkets? Why was that issue not covered in what I understand to be two periods of legislative consideration of the Olympics and Paralympics?

I would also be grateful for any further information on why there is not a case to leave these longer hours on Sundays to the smaller businesses in the country for which such a boost in revenue, when they do not have to compete with the larger stores, is surely much more significant to their cash flow and profits than the additional hours on a Sunday for the highly profitable large supermarkets. What is the Government’s case or evidence that additional money would be spent during these extra hours in places such as Westfield in Stratford that would not otherwise have been spent at all, rather than having been spent in smaller shops? I am not 100 per cent clear about the financial or economic case being made for the liberalisation. I was grateful to hear the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Newby, regarding the experience in Germany. If it was possible for the Germans to estimate the economic benefits, why has it seemingly not been possible to come to a concrete estimate of what would be the economic case in our country, particularly for smaller businesses?

However, I am very grateful to hear the assurance from the Minister that this is not only temporary legislation with a sunset clause but that it is not being used as an experiment to see whether there will be a sufficient boost to the economy to use as a platform for further deregulation. I am so proud to be part of a Government who have kept to their commitment to give 0.7 per cent of our GDP in international aid, as the Prime Minister has stated that we refuse to build our recovery on the back of the world’s poorest. In my view, any further deregulation of Sunday trading would be seeking to build our recovery on the back of some of our poorest paid workers.