Enterprise Bill [Lords]

Hannah Bardell Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I can appreciate that parts of London would want to come forward as a zone. For example, some of the evidence shows that, in the west end alone, that could be worth almost £400 million a year for the economy, with 2,500 jobs being created. However, it would be for areas to bid to be one of the pilot areas.

London is actually a really good example of how the market drives these things. Even on the days when shops can open for as long as they like, Members may find that, if they wander to the west end in the middle of the week, shops do not open particularly longer hours, so that, by the time we finish in this place, they are not open. Businesses can make that choice; what we want to do is make sure that they have that choice, that it is locally driven and that local residents have a choice as well.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

For the purposes of clarity, will the Minister tell us how the proposals, which we have not yet seen, will assess the impact on premium pay not just in Scotland but in the rest of the United Kingdom?

[Brandon Lewis]

I would say to the hon. Lady and to colleagues around the House that, as we put these proposals forward, it is important that we make sure that the key performance indicators that will come back to the House a year after the pilots—we will run the pilots for 12 months—cover a whole range of issues. She makes a fair point, and if it is one of the points she and her colleagues want looked at in the pilots, I am very happy to make sure it is. [Interruption.]

The hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) asks from a sedentary position whether I am going to use up the entire time, and I would gently say to him that, no, I will not. I am about to conclude, but I would just point out to him that I have been spending much of my time taking interventions from his hon. Friends. I find his comments slightly surprising, bearing in mind that this is not an issue he felt needed voting on in Committee.

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[Bill Esterson]

I am going to make some more progress before I take any more interventions.

The larger retailers that open longer will have to find a way to reduce costs, which means removing the premium for shop workers. Given that the major retailers operate UK-wide, a change in pay and conditions in England and Wales will mean changes in Scotland and Northern Ireland as well. Premium pay on Sundays is viable across the UK because large retailers in most of the UK are restricted to six hours’ opening. The time and a half paid to many shop workers will be under threat to make up for staying open longer across the UK, which, of course, is why this is a UK-wide matter and why it is entirely appropriate that Members from across the UK have a vote on this very important proposal.

Removing time and a half would cost shop staff who work an average shift in Scotland £1,400 a year, which in anybody’s money is a very significant hit, particularly for those on low pay in the retail sector. The proposed changes in England in Wales would have a profound effect on workers in Scotland, and I am glad that the SNP recognises that Scottish workers will be hit. I was a bit surprised when the hon. Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) told us in Committee that, while her concerns focused on Scottish workers, the SNP welcomed the additional employee protections in the Bill, which she ascribed to

“the strong and principled action of the SNP”.––[Official Report, Enterprise Public Bill Committee, 25 February 2016; c. 322.]

We will come to how those protections will not do what the Government claim they will, but I am glad that the letter from my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and the leader of Scottish Labour, Kezia Dugdale, has had the desired effect. I welcome the SNP’s confirmation that its Members will vote against the Government, and I look forward to them joining us in the Lobby.

[Hannah Bardell]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Bill Esterson]

I don’t have a choice, do I?

[Hannah Bardell]

On a point of clarity, the hon. Gentleman can read the record for himself, as can members of the public and Members of this House, but we have been very clear. We engaged with all sides of the argument up until the point where we took a decision at our group meeting as part of a democratic process.

[Bill Esterson]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that intervention. All I will say is that I am glad that she and her colleagues came to the right decision in the end; it does not matter how they got there.

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[Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I rise to speak because if I said this in an intervention, I would test the patience of the House by speaking for too long.

When I first arrived in the House, I was told by a veteran that in the House were good men, clever men and those with good grace. I want to pay tribute to the Minister, who has somehow managed to climb the greasy pole while embodying all three qualities. As Members on both sides of the House know, he is an incredibly hard working Minister for Housing and Planning. When were in opposition, I was always quick to praise Labour Ministers, including those who once held a similar position. I will forgive him for the fact that he is sending notes to love bomb the waverers.

I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes). It would have been a shock, from what I know of his 11 years in the House, if he had not led on this amendment today. He is a man of huge principle. Those of us who have been in the House during those 11 years and have heard him speak with huge conviction on such issues will understand why he has led on this amendment and why so many of us support him.

This whole issue is rooted in devolution, the natural direction of which is towards localism. Therefore, at the risk of sounding like the Leader of the Opposition, I want to speak on behalf of my constituents. Mr Kishor Patel was shortlisted for retailer of the year last year. He came to the House of Commons and was the runner-up. He runs Nisa in Toddington in my constituency, where he has opened a number of stores. He is an amazing small retailer. He recently took a derelict pub in my constituency and turned it into a restaurant. He says that he does not want me to support the proposal in the Bill; he wants me to vote against it. His pub is at its busiest, with families enjoying themselves, on Sundays. He is incredibly worried that, if the proposal goes forward and bigger stores can open for longer on Sundays, pubs like his will not stay open for longer, but will fail. It is the business he does on Sundays, when families can enjoy themselves at the local pub, that makes the difference between its being profitable and not profitable.

Mr Patel also does not want me not to support the proposal in the Bill because of the impact on his small high street shops, which are valued by local communities. In my constituency, it is not particularly easy to get out to the big stores, so people depend on small high street stores. However, the situation would be quite different if the big stores were open all day, because people would make the effort to go out to the bigger stores or to travel into London, and that would have a huge impact on local shops in Mid Bedfordshire.

I want to declare an interest in that my family owned a local shop. The hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) mentioned the Trafford centre. When that opened and got busy, the family local shop stopped opening on a Sunday and began to suffer as a result. It is a known fact that small high street shops must constantly go the extra mile to compete with the big stores. They do not have the resources to man their stores seven days a week—and seven nights a week, because the paperwork, the ordering, the PAYE and so on is done while the shop is closed, not when it is open.

This proposal was not in our manifesto. The Bill began in the Lords, not in this House, and the policy has never received sufficient public discussion. If we want to do this, let us put a measure in the Queen’s Speech and let the public know about it properly, and let us have a full consultation and a public debate.

[Hannah Bardell]

I am pleased that we have the opportunity to debate the extension of Sunday trading hours. Since the original proposals were withdrawn by the Government, my colleagues and I have been engaging widely with people and organisations on both sides of the debate. Contrary to media speculation and the misinformation peddled by Government Front Benchers, the SNP has, as we said we would, reached our conclusions on the basis of the evidence that has been presented to us.

There are a variety of views across this House and across the country. I intend to outline my concerns about the effect of the UK Government’s proposals on workers’ rights and benefits in Scotland and the UK. However, I should say at the outset that my SNP colleagues and I have no objection to the principle of extending trading hours on Sundays. After all, in Scotland, as has been said many times, we already enjoy unrestricted trading hours on Sundays. It is important to note that in the past, restraints on Sunday opening in Scotland have existed, but they have largely been social rather than legal. There are, of course, areas of Scotland where there is greater religious observance and Sunday opening hours are more restricted but, in general, the practice of longer opening hours on Sundays, particularly in retail, is now well established throughout Scotland, and some evidence suggests that that has been the case since the late 1980s.

The UK Government’s proposals represent the uniform deregulation of trading hours restrictions across these islands. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but without adequate legal protections, which we and others have called for, the employment protections of workers and their remuneration would be threatened.

The Government’s impact assessment, which was published only this morning, identifies more than 450,000 retail workers across the UK who receive premium pay, but in the 44-page assessment, the Government dedicate just one paragraph to that and dismiss out of hand the concerns of workers and of USDAW. Even now, faced with defeat, the UK Government refuse to offer assurances about premium pay. They engage in ping-pong politics, looking for ways to get the numbers through the Lobby.

[Alan Brown]

My hon. Friend rightly underlines the point that we have always made about the long-term erosion of premium pay. A sham of a pilot has been offered, but does my hon. Friend agree that that cannot address the long-term erosion of premium pay? Nobody participating in a pilot is going to take away premium pay—they will have to wait until the pilot is finished.

[Hannah Bardell]

I entirely agree.

My SNP colleagues and I made it clear in November last year that we would oppose the UK Government’s proposals, and we oppose them now. We challenged the UK Government to think again about how they could provide the necessary guarantees and safeguards to shop workers in Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom. I was pleased that the Government tabled a new schedule in Committee—it now forms part of the Bill, although it is threatened with removal—that sought to amend the Employment Rights Act 1996 to give more explicit protection to shop workers opting out of Sunday work, including protections against such workers being discriminated against. Our Labour colleagues have referred to the legal opinion that they obtained.

SNP Members welcome the extra protections for workers. They show that the UK Government can, when they want to, listen and, on occasion, act to do the right thing. The SNP commissioned its own legal opinion from a leading Scottish silk to examine the protections in detail. We are satisfied that they represent a significant increase in employment protection across the UK, and those protections would not have materialised without the SNP’s opposition.

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[Chris Philp]

Will the hon. Lady confirm that if these proposals are passed, they will increase protections for workers in Scotland? Will she also confirm that the arrangements in Scotland and England would be identical, meaning that she will be voting against arrangements that already apply in Scotland?

[Hannah Bardell]

As I have just said, employment protections will increase, but no Minister has said anything about pay protection, which I shall speak about later.

Low-paid workers might lose out even further if they lose their premium pay. USDAW has expressed significant concern that when universal credit is rolled out in May 2016, any loss of Sunday premium pay by families working in retail would trigger the end of their transitional protection at tax credit rates and they would be transferred to the far lower rate of universal credit. That is an extremely important point.

It is an interesting phenomenon that a greater proportion of lone parents work in retail on Sundays than on any other day of the week, yet if one of those lone parents was to lose their premium pay and to be transferred to the lower rate of universal credit, they would have over £2,000 less in their pocket. I and my SNP colleagues are not prepared to gamble with the pay packets of some of Scotland and the UK’s lowest-paid workers.

Moreover, it is an obvious point, but the erosion of premium pay as a result of Sunday trading hours is a real threat not just to Scottish workers, but to shop workers across the UK. We said ahead of the 2015 general election that the SNP would be a progressive force in Westminster and that we would work with others to pursue progressive policies and protect the most vulnerable—and not just in Scotland, but across the UK. In voting against these ill-conceived measures, that is exactly what we are doing. We in the SNP do not just write our manifesto commitments down; we actually deliver on them.

Although the crux of our argument is about the erosion of premium pay, there is a wider debate going on. We should focus our minds on the wider issue of fair pay. In my maiden speech, I spoke about the importance of decent pay for decent work, and about my own family heritage, being from mining and shop worker roots. My grandfather was a miner and believed firmly that no worker should have to seek overtime to make ends meet. Therefore, while we must protect the premium pay of the lowest paid, we should also be continuing the fight for fair pay for the lowest paid in our society. That means a real living wage, not the fake one dreamt up by this UK Government.

We have challenged the UK Government to give assurances and to provide safeguards for the provision of premium pay in Scotland, and they have failed to do so. There is not a single clause in the Bill, or any sentence that any UK Government Minister has uttered in our proceedings on it, that is significant enough a reassurance that Scottish shop workers, and indeed shop workers across the UK, will not lose out because of a lack of protection for their traditional rates of pay. We will oppose anything that puts in doubt the premium payments that lower-paid shop workers in Scotland have for Sunday working.

[John Stevenson]

The hon. Lady is banging on about fairness. Is it fair for a business in Scotland potentially to have a competitive advantage over a business that is 9 miles away?

[Hannah Bardell]

The hon. Gentleman is missing the point. What is not fair is for the UK Government to bring in provisions that will have a knock-on impact on Scottish workers and reduce wages. It is on that basis that we oppose them. The UK Government have had time to bring forward the necessary safeguards and guarantees that there will be no detriment to shop workers in Scotland or the rest of the UK, but they have failed to do so.

There is a fundamental point about process and respect for Parliament, its Members and the constituents we represent. We owe it to our constituents to do our business in a manner that is fair, open and transparent. The Secretary of State and the Minister should listen to that. The way in which the provisions have been shoehorned into successive Bills as a last-ditch slapdash amendment is appalling. The Government should do their business better if they want to command the support of the House or the UK public.

The UK Government have left it to the last possible moment to publish the impact assessment and the family test, and they would not devolve employment law to Scotland. For that reason, and for the good of shop workers across Scotland and the UK, and the 450,000 of them who receive premium pay, my SNP colleagues and I will support the amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) to remove the Government’s proposals from the Bill.

[Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)]

I rise to speak in support of amendment 19, which I suggest is a workable compromise. As Second Church Estates Commissioner, I met Treasury Ministers to try to understand the reasons why the Government wanted to change the original compromise of the Sunday Trading Act 1994. I was told that there were two principal reasons: first, to address the demise of the high street; and secondly, the need to remain competitive with neighbouring countries, notably France.

Online shopping was cited as the principal cause of the recent demise of the high street, but longer-term competition from out-of-town shopping centres has also caused that demise. I doubt very much that keeping shops open longer on Sundays will stop people shopping online. Anyone who has been shopping with their teenage or young adult children will know that they go to the shops to look, and say, “Mum, we won’t buy it here because there’s an online discount.” Rather like Canute, we will find it very difficult to turn back the tide.