St George’s Day and St David’s Day Bill

David Nuttall Excerpts

Friday 13th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. I would just remind him that because of a quirk this year, we have had a number of bank holidays, and the nation found them positive. There were some economic benefits too. It may be preferable to have a bank holiday at a different time of the year, but for me the importance of St George’s day overrides that consideration.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

I entirely agree that we should have a bank holiday on St George’s day. Could not the problem be solved by moving the existing bank holiday on May day to 23 April? If we need to create an extra bank holiday, one could be created on, say, Trafalgar day.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. My Bill calls for an additional bank holiday, not the movement of an existing bank holiday. I hope those on the Treasury Bench are listening and taking note of such suggestions. I am pleased that my Bill is provoking debate and such good ideas.

To many, St George’s day is a celebration of all that is great about our nation. At the last election, every major party vowed to promote national integration and social cohesion. A national day celebrated by all, regardless of their background or heritage, would only help that process. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education has said, we must all encourage our children to learn about our nation’s past, the bad and the good, and we must celebrate our shared history. What better way to do that than a national day, officially recognised by the Government?

There are those who say that St George’s day is a Christian holiday and not representative of our multicultural nation, and those who say it plays to the fringe right of this country. I disagree. St George, after all, is the only Christian saint to appear in the Koran and the only saint to have a mosque bearing his name. Even in the world of faith, he is not uniquely Christian. Yes, the fringe right may well have hijacked our symbol of patriotism, which should sadden all of us in the Chamber, but today in the House we can go a long way towards reclaiming it.

Let us remember what our Prime Minister said on St George’s day last year:

“Today we are celebrating St George’s Day, and we are reclaiming St George’s Day as an important day . . . for good reasons.

And one of the most important reasons is that we should be reclaiming the flag from the BNP and saying the flag belongs to the English people, all of them.”

He went on to say:

“People come to our country and want to feel part of our country.

They want to feel part of something and celebrating St George’s Day will help them feel that sense of belonging.”

As the son of immigrants to this country, a son of parents who fled persecution to find safe haven here, I could not have put it better myself.

It is important to lay another myth to rest—that an extra bank holiday would affect our productivity and be economically damaging. As a businessman and an entrepreneur, I have built up a strong and enduring business and I totally reject the idea that one extra bank holiday would have that effect. The working people of this country will get done the work that they need to get done, regardless of an extra day away from the office. The concept of work has changed. It is no longer about turning up at a particular time and leaving at another time. It is, instead, about outputs and what is done, not how long it is done for.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hayes]

My hon. Friend is certainly right. Although we cost such proposals in a clear and empirical way—and notwithstanding my comments about utility—it is right that we should consider the matter in the round. We should assess the effects, both good and bad, on business, because clearly many businesses will benefit from an additional holiday. The tourist business, many of our resorts and parts of our leisure industry would benefit. However, there would be other costs to business, and it is right to listen to what business organisations say. Indeed, I will describe what they have said as we progress through this short but important debate.

The history of bank holidays will help us to draw some conclusions. Bank holidays are a relatively new phenomenon, of course. Before 1834, the Bank observed about 33 saints’ days and religious festivals as holidays, but in 1834 the number was reduced to just four: 1 May, 1 November or All Saints day, Good Friday and Christmas day. Frankly, in my view, that was rather a meagre ration. In 1871, the first legislation relating to bank holidays was passed when the banker and politician, Sir John Lubbock, introduced the Bank Holidays Act 1871, which specified the days as holidays.

I understand that Sir John Lubbock was an enthusiastic supporter of national and local cricket, and was firmly of the belief that bank employees should have the opportunity to participate in and attend matches when they were scheduled. Dates of bank holidays are therefore dates when cricket games were traditionally played between villages in the area where Sir John was raised. It is that rather partisan approach to bank holidays, built around Sir John’s personal tastes, which forms the basis, or at least the origins, of the matters we are speaking of today. Nevertheless, people were so glad to be given time off, whether it was to watch cricket or not, they called the first bank holidays St Lubbock’s days for a while. That did not perpetuate, but I hope that politicians of note might consider that, at least in popular if not official terms, special days could be named after them; one never knows, but if my hon. Friend’s Bill were to be successful, his name might, at least colloquially, be attached to the day’s holiday that people enjoyed. However, that rather self-interested motive of course has nothing to do with his bringing the Bill to our attention.

As is often the case, Scotland was treated separately because of its separate traditions, and so, for example, new year’s day was a holiday there whereas Boxing day was not. The 1871 Act did not specify Good Friday and Christmas day as bank holidays in England, Wales and Ireland because they were already recognised as common law holidays, and common observance had meant that they had become customary holidays since before records began.

Exactly a century after the 1871 Act, the Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971, which currently regulates bank holidays in the UK, was passed. The majority of the current bank holidays were specified in the 1971 Act, but holidays for new year’s day in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and for May day were introduced later. From 1965, the date of the August bank holiday was changed to the end of the month. Curiously, there were a few years—for example, 1968—when the holiday fell in September, but this no longer occurs, presumably reflecting a change in the way of defining the relevant date. The Whitsun bank holiday, Whit Monday, was replaced by the late spring bank holiday, which was fixed as the last Monday in May in 1971.

Under the 1971 Act, certain holidays are written into legislation. Those which are not are proclaimed each year by the legal device of a royal proclamation. A royal proclamation is also used to move bank holidays that would otherwise fall on a weekend, so adding an additional one-off holiday, as was the case this year. In that way, holidays are not lost in years when they coincide with weekends. These deferred bank holidays are termed bank holidays in lieu of the typical anniversary date and in the legislation are known as “substitute days”. Although we have fewer public or bank holidays than many other European Union member states, they do not always have substitute days and so, in some sense, the comparison is misleading. That point has been made by a variety of speakers today, including the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central.

To give those north of border a chance to have a longer celebration at new year, 2 January was made an additional bank holiday in Scotland by the 1971 Act—the rest of the country was given the chance to celebrate, less enthusiastically perhaps, by having new year’s day off instead. May day is the most recent of the eight bank holidays and is thought by some to be a controversial choice. It was introduced by the then Employment Secretary, Michael Foot, in 1978, just before he went on to lead the Labour party. At the time many opposed the move, saying that the May day holiday was essentially a communist idea because most countries behind the iron curtain enjoyed it, but it is now in the calendar and a fixture in bastions of communism such as the United States. I think we can assume that those charges did not bear as much weight as their advocates suggested.

The first bank holiday Act was a welcome innovation—

[Mr Nuttall]

Will the Minister give way on that point?

[Mr Hayes]

On the point of communism or bank holidays?

[Mr Nuttall]

On the point of the May day bank holiday. Does the Minister agree that one solution to the problem of finding an extra bank holiday for St George’s day would be simply to move the May day bank holiday to 23 April? That would resolve the problem of a loss to the economy, which has been discussed, and it would create a day around which we could all unite for St George’s day.