Enterprise Bill [ Lords ] (Eighth sitting)

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Thursday 25th February 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Bill Esterson]

And my hon. Friend makes the point brilliantly. It is a very serious point. Of course, the Government would say that what might be called trivial points about local decision making—I do not think that they are at all trivial—mean nothing because, at the end of the day, consumers want change and shop workers want the opportunity to work more hours and earn more money. In fact, the Minister did say that.

Again, the Government are ignoring the facts. In September, research from Populus showed overwhelming support for the existing Sunday trading compromise, with two thirds of the public supporting the existing measures. The majority—61%—agree that Sunday is different from the rest of the week as it enables shared time with family and friends. Only one in eight people thinks that there is not enough time to shop under the current Sunday trading hours. One in eight. We are changing the law to ignore the views of seven in eight. That is remarkable.

Sunday trading laws work for the country. They are an important part of the fabric of our society. Sunday is a communal day of rest when people of faith or no faith can spend time with their family and friends and recharge their batteries for the rest of the week. The same is true for shop workers, the most important stakeholders in this debate whose views are completely ignored by the Government.

Some 91% of shop workers do not want a change in Sunday trading laws. They support the current compromise that allows them to spend a couple of hours a week with their families. Let us not underestimate how important that is for shop workers who already work more weekend hours. Some 63% of people employed in retail are already working overtime, compared with an average of 57% across all sectors. Barely half the people who work in retail report being satisfied with the amount of leisure time they have, suggesting that many experience a squeeze on the time they have available to spend with their partners and children.

Shop workers already face significant pressure to work on Sundays. They currently have the right to opt out of Sunday working if they give written notice to their employer with a notice period of three months. As the Minister told us, the Government have proposed to enhance the opt-out for shop workers in larger stores by reducing the notice period to one month. Staff will be able to opt out of working hours that are additional to their normal Sunday hours, which are averaged over a 12-week period. There is simply no evidence that the existing opt-out rules help to protect Sundays for shop workers, so it is clearly questionable for the Government to suggest that extending the opt-out rules will alleviate pressure on staff in the sector, if and when the legislation is passed and implemented.

The fact is that many shop workers are unable to use the Sunday working opt-out because of pressure from management. To ensure that they can cover all shifts whenever necessary, retail managers request seven-day flexibility from staff. Those who apply for a job invariably have to complete an availability schedule as part of their application. If they do not include availability on Sundays, they are not offered an interview. Employment contracts in retail then stipulate that staff have to give availability across the days and times that they have indicated. If staff ask to opt out of Sunday working, they can be told that they are not fulfilling their contract.

One USDAW member described it as follows:

“Sundays used to be a day of rest. Now my contract says 5 over 7”—

that is, they have to work for any five days in a week. Another said:

“My employer now only takes on part-timers willing to work every weekend.”

In fact, an independent survey in September 2015 of more than 10,000 USDAW members working in large stores found that 58% are already under pressure to work on Sundays when they do not want to. One member responding to the survey said:

“I’ve been told I’d be letting the team down if I don’t work extra on a Sunday. If we refuse a request to work extra then they are extremely unlikely to honour a request for an appointment or for time off”.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Sir David. I am not sure how many members of the Committee have done shop work, but I certainly remember my two years as a Saturday girl in British Home Stores. That was 30 years ago. Those were the days when there was no Sunday opening, but in the run-up to Christmas there were four Sundays. As a young woman living in recession-hit Coventry in the early ’80s, I certainly relished the chance to work on a Sunday—but that was also because I was getting double pay on a Sunday. On the rare occasions when I worked on a bank holiday, I was getting treble pay.

I think it is a real shame that over the past 30 years the retail industry has gradually eroded workers’ rights and pay and conditions, and is relying ever more on a temporary and part-time workforce, partly so as not to pay the employers’ national insurance contributions. Employers would find that people would be more likely to volunteer to work on Sundays if the pay and incentives were correct.

[Bill Esterson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point and reminding us that there was a time when workers received overtime payments for unsocial hours. Bank holidays were triple time. I have similar experience, so long ago that I cannot quite remember, but I know that overtime payments were as my hon. Friend described, and there has been a fundamental change. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West will deal with some of those points a bit later.

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[Catherine McKinnell]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I am keen to add my voice to those who share deep concern about both the substance of the changes and how they have been introduced by the Government. I do so on behalf of shop workers in my constituency and across the country who are interested in the issue, small businesses and convenience stores in my constituency and across the country and the large number of people who, whether due to religious faith or otherwise, feel strongly that Sunday should be kept as a special day for faith, community or cultural reasons.

It is important to put it on record that although I speak on behalf of a wide range of people, I have a personal interest in the issue in that my husband works in retail, and the changes will have a direct impact on my family. I wanted to declare that interest. It is clearly not financial, but although I am not speaking about my personal experience, it informs my understanding of the impact that the changes will have, particularly on shop workers and communities throughout the country. I hope that it helps inform the debate as well.

There is a big question remaining in my mind, having heard the Minister introduce the proposals and my hon. Friend the shadow Minister make a strong speech setting out clearly why the Government have not made the case for the changes. I genuinely cannot understand why the Government are introducing them, why they are necessary and why they think that they are a good idea. We have a more than 20-year-old compromise on the issue, and the overwhelming consensus is that the public support the current arrangements. A recent Populus poll showed that 67% of the public, or two thirds, support the current rules about trading hours on a Sunday. Another poll by Ipsos MORI back in 2012 found that more than half the public actively oppose any extension to the Sunday trading hours. There is a clear level of consensus about the trading hours that the balance is about right.

The Government argue that this is about localism and giving local areas the opportunity to grow, create more jobs, be more competitive in an increasingly online world and reinvigorate high streets, but the truth is that without any proper consultation or results from that consultation published by the Government, the evidence available to us on whether those claims and intentions stack up shows that it will achieve quite the opposite.

Even large retailers, which the Government claim will benefit from the changes, share many of the concerns. Asda, for example, has admitted that it hopes that the changes to the Sunday trading hours will be dropped altogether, because it has concerns about the workability of the proposals. Other retailers worry whether there will be enough of an uplift in demand to justify the extra costs incurred through longer opening hours. My hon. Friend the shadow Minister clearly outlined the question about the cost-benefit analysis of extending hours for the same amount of trade.

Perhaps the biggest worry for large retailers is how they will cope with the complexity of hundreds of different rules for different stores throughout the country about when and for how long they can open on Sundays. One big supermarket group recently told The Times:

“This is all becoming more and more opaque. The government says it is trying to cut red tape but now it wants to give local councils this subjective ability to pick and choose which areas can have extended trading, and who will benefit from that. It all seems a bit of a shambles…and the data the government is using to support its argument is from 2006 before the recession.”

Surely the new clause flies in the face of the Government’s deregulation agenda, which we considered earlier. Will the Minister clarify whether the Government have undertaken an impact assessment, and whether they will publish it, on how the new clause will affect the Government’s business impact target, which requires Ministers to consider the economic impact of statutory provisions on businesses?

The Government claimed that this change will boost high street footfall, but what of the economic impact on businesses that will have to comply with tens, if not hundreds, of different regulations and Sunday trading restrictions? Far from cutting red tape for businesses, devolving powers over Sunday trading will do the opposite. Businesses large and small agree, and have expressed their concerns about that.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central said, the best and only test we have of the effect of extending Sunday trading hours is their temporary relaxation during the 2012 Olympics. He talked about the difference between the retail sales in July, August and September, when that temporary relaxation was in force, and those of the earlier months of May and June, when the restrictions remained in place. ONS figures show that the level across all of those months was the same as the previous year, which calls into question the claim that extending Sunday trading hours will bring an increase in trade. It will, however, increase retailers’ costs.

Although the case for extending Sunday trading hours based on the economic impact on businesses is far from certain, it will have a big impact on small shops and convenience stores. The London Olympics give a useful indication of the impact that a permanent relaxation might have on small businesses and convenience stores, which play a vital role in all of our communities not only by providing post office services, which we have discussed, but by being available as a convenience—hence the name.

My hon. Friend referred to the Oxford Economics study that found that, as a result of the temporary relaxation during the Olympics, convenience stores within 1 mile of a supermarket lost £1,300, or 3.4% of their weekly sales. That evidence is very different to anything the Government have cited in support of the changes. I would be surprised if hon. Members on both sides of the House are willing to support their wish and hope—I have a dream, to go back to the Abba bingo—over the clear evidence from past experience that shows that the change will damage convenience stores and could cost the sector up to 6,500 jobs, far outweighing any projections for the jobs that may be created in the larger stores.

[Mary Creagh]

My hon. Friend made an interesting point earlier—I have been reflecting on it during her speech—about the risks to the retail sector, and in particular to the large stores. The sector does not have a unanimous opinion on this issue. A risk that has been raised is that if one store opens, causing every other store to feel that they have to do the same, they will end up becoming less profitable because there will not be enough footfall. Perhaps people in Wakefield do not want to go shopping or whatever else at 9 o’clock on a Sunday morning. They might be having a well-deserved lie-in or taking the dog for a walk.

[Catherine McKinnell]

Indeed. My hon. Friend makes an important point. [Interruption.] The Minister from a sedentary position keeps repeating the mantra that it is not obligatory. Is that what she is saying?

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[Caroline Flint]

I will come on to Scotland shortly. I am proud of being English; in England we do not have to do everything that they do in Scotland, and vice versa. That is the beauty of devolution. Sometimes we are right and they are wrong—and, to be fair to Scottish National party Committee members, sometimes Scotland gets it right and we get it wrong. I pay tribute to the fact that the Scots chose to go ahead with the ban on smoking in enclosed public spaces before England did. As public health Minister, I went to Scotland to learn from its success. It was a good example of seeing where things could be done differently and how we could learn from them.

I think England is very different from Scotland when it comes to the retail sector. No offence, but England is a much bigger country with a much larger population. The density of our cities and their proximity to each other—putting aside Glasgow and Edinburgh—means that the changes the Government are suggesting could end up, as my hon. Friends have outlined, having a mushrooming effect as one city makes one decision under one local authority and that leads to pressure on others. I worry about that.

According to a survey by USDAW of more than 10,000 shop workers, the vast majority work at least some Sundays. Most work every Saturday. Perhaps there is a reason why the Government want the changes. My hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central made an interesting point: he said we need to tighten up the protection of workers’ rights in this area because 35% of staff in large stores would like to work fewer hours on a Sunday. That indicates, along with other evidence, that undue pressure is already being put on workers in retail today. Regardless of whether our Parliament decides to go ahead with the Government’s proposals, I hope that the Government will extend the protections under the existing arrangements to retail workers who work on Sundays.

I happen to think that not every day of the week should be the same. It is good to have something a bit different and a bit British. I am old enough to remember the halcyon days when we had half-day closing on a Wednesday. My grandparents were publicans. My parents worked in pubs, and I have worked in pubs. I remember when we opened at 12 o’clock on a Sunday and closed at 2 o’clock, then did not open until 7 o’clock that night. There are some issues around the opening hours of that sector as well.

I also remember when banks were first allowed to open on a Saturday. In fact, it was on a new Saturday opening of the NatWest branch in Richmond when my husband and I happened to go in with our children to get some pocket money for them and we managed to foil an armed bank robbery. Having done that and the robber having been apprehended by the police, my husband and I were put on alert that we might have to give evidence in court; on that particular Saturday, staff had been brought from another branch and had forgotten to put the cameras on inside the branch. As a result, there was no evidence, so my husband and I were the only persons who could put the armed robber in the bank and outside the bank at the relevant time.

There is often confusion about what the opening up of these arrangements means for staff. How ironic it is that all these years later, after all that extension of banks’ opening hours, we are now seeing bank closures. Throughout the villages in my constituency, I see banks closing from Monday to Friday, when consumers would like to see them open.

According to a statement from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills:

“The current Sunday trading rules are restrictive, stifling business efficiency and competitiveness and inhibiting consumer choice and reducing the ability of our major cities to compete for international tourism.”

In the words of Victor Meldrew, “I don’t believe it!” I happen to have in my constituency the excellent Yorkshire Wildlife Park, which is one of the fastest growing tourist attractions in Yorkshire. You are very welcome to visit, Sir David, if you happen to be in south Yorkshire on a weekend.

[Mary Creagh]

I thank my right hon. Friend for enlivening our afternoon deliberations with her armed robbery-foiling story, which I have heard many times. I heartily recommend the full version; I am sure we can all adjourn to Strangers’ at the close of the Committee to hear the unexpurgated version. However, she neglected to mention the meerkats at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park, which is a gross injustice to that excellent tourist attraction.

[Caroline Flint]

I thank my hon. Friend for that added promotion of the park. May I return the favour by mentioning the excellent Yorkshire Sculpture Park in her constituency of Wakefield?

The BIS statement says that these measures will somehow improve international tourism, but do you know what? I want people to come to the Yorkshire Wildlife Park on a Sunday. I want them to go to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park on a Sunday. I want proper measures to support international tourism outside London and the south-east, and we can do that by ensuring we have good transport links, good support and promotion and marketing of those wonderful assets and jewels in our tourism crown. In a few months’ time, we will have the Tour de Yorkshire, which will come through my constituency and is a major event to raise money and create jobs. What is this shabby deal we are being offered? Nobody is asking for this.

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[Caroline Flint]

Yes. To be clear, we all acknowledge that there is provision for Sunday opening. In England and Wales, stores that are larger than 280 square metres are allowed to open for six continuous hours between the hours of 10 am and 6 pm. Small stores—those under 280 square metres—do not have any restrictions on Sunday opening.

[Mary Creagh]

In her enunciation of the highlights of Wakefield, my right hon. Friend unforgivably neglected to mention the Hepworth Wakefield gallery, which is open on Sundays. It has an excellent café/restaurant and a shop. Both the shop at the Hepworth and the shop at Yorkshire Sculpture Park are open on Sundays because they are classified as small shops.

[Caroline Flint]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I am happy to take other interventions on how we support the UK tourism industry and do not undermine it by further encouraging people to shop even longer in the major shops in our cities and towns. I really do not think we need that.

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[Kevin Brennan]

Welcome back, Sir David. We have heard about people’s experiences. My first job was in Fine Fare, which is probably defunct now, stacking shelves and cleaning the toilets for 48.5p an hour. When I graduated to Marks and Spencer, my mother said it was the happiest day of her life. I have that grassroots experience of the retail industry, although it is not the considerable experience of the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds.

I will not detain the Committee for a long, because of the time. We have had an extensive debate. Most of the issues have been aired pretty well, and I will not repeat all the points. The Minister, the right hon. Member for Broxtowe, often chunters about us talking about process, but there is a fundamental objection about the process and the manner in which the Government have gone about introducing these things. The Prime Minister made commitments in April and suddenly changed his mind upon discovering the internet a few months later and decided that something needed to be done desperately and urgently. In the meantime, the convenience of a general election had intervened, meaning he would not have to face the electorate for another five years.

[Mary Creagh]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the invention of the internet is an argument against Sunday trading, because it gives busy working parents the opportunity to buy online from supermarkets and department stores and to have things delivered at their leisure and convenience, rather than dragging the kids around the shops at the weekend? Frankly, that is something that most families detest and despise—certainly my family do.

[Kevin Brennan]

The other growing trend is ordering things on the internet and picking them up in the shop at another time. That is increasingly how people shop these days; certainly my own wife does it frequently. [Hon. Members: “Ooh!”] Wait for it. I have yet to do that myself, because as a former Marks and Spencer Saturday boy, I like to try my suits on before I buy them. There are also, of course, different consumer rights for those who order online.

The changes have been introduced halfway through the Bill’s life, conveniently swerving around the Bishops in the House of Lords, who might have had something to say, as might other Members of that House, about keeping Sunday special. It is a highly controversial measure, and there is concern about it across this House, on the Conservative Benches as well as in other parties. That is why we properly have an extra half-day of time carved out on Report to discuss the Bill.

I was going to suggest that if working on a Sunday is nothing to be concerned about, perhaps that debate should take place on a Sunday here in Parliament, and we should all come back—I see the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds nodding in approval. I would be certainly happy to do so if the Government want to table it on a Sunday, because I am sure it is no inconvenience whatever to anyone to come to work on a Sunday. [Interruption.] I do not sense universal assent to my proposal, but the hon. Lady was in favour of it.

As a result of that extra time, we will have an opportunity to test the opinion of the whole House on this subject. As this is a House of Lords Bill, it is not enactable in this House, so constitutionally, in this instance it is the Lords who have a significant say, and no Salisbury convention applies, because it was not included in the governing party’s manifesto. Indeed, the Prime Minister said that he would do the opposite, and had no plans to do anything about Sunday trading until his sudden discovery of the internet.

Therefore, if the Bill survives Report in the House of Commons and their lordships get it back, I am sure they will want to spend extensive time on the measure, given that they were not allowed to consider it because the Government did not have the courtesy to introduce it at the beginning of the Bill. As one of my hon. Friends pointed out, the consultation was extremely short and was then sat on for months after the Bill had gone through its stages in the House of Lords before the Government announced, on the cusp of Second Reading, that they had had another sudden revelation and decided that they needed to put the measure into this Bill, even though it was halfway through its parliamentary journey.

We need time to cogitate further on the measure, but in doing so, I have certainly been convinced by the arguments made by my right hon. and hon. Friends that we are likely to oppose it on Report. I enjoyed all their speeches. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North spoke with a great deal of knowledge, not least, as she pointed out, because of her family interest, in the form of her partner’s occupation. My right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley entertained us hugely by telling us that she had foiled a bank robbery. The only disappointing thing was that apparently no video survives of that day; I am sure that we would all have liked to see it. We look forward to hearing the full story outside this room. She also made some vital points about why the measure should not be adopted. We also heard contributions in the form of interventions by my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield, and my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central set out an extensive case for why the measure is wrong.

I say to our colleagues from the Scottish National party that when people were debating a British compromise or an English compromise, I was feeling slightly forgotten over here in the corner, as a constituency Member representing a Welsh seat, because of course these measures also apply to Wales. However, they will affect Scotland and Northern Ireland. I know that USDAW has communicated with Scottish MPs on behalf of its 46,000 members in Scotland to say that its view is that the sort of premium pay that is available to workers in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland for working on Sundays is already under severe threat as a result of the nature of the market and the prospect of these measures being introduced.