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

Thérèse Coffey Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Gordon Henderson]

I accept that there are people in the retail trade who want to work on a Sunday, and of course those people already have the opportunity to do so. [Interruption.] Yes, I do. Stores are allowed to open on a Sunday for six hours between the hours of 10 am and 6 pm. Major stores are open. Small stores of under 3,000 square feet are allowed to open any time on a Sunday. If people in retail want to work on Sunday, there is always the opportunity to do so. We are not talking about that; we are talking about relaxing the rules still further.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that stores are not allowed to open on Easter Sunday, and the world did not stop on that day?

[Gordon Henderson]

I could not agree more. The special nature of Sunday was recognised by the Sunday Trading Act 1994, which restricted opening hours to the times that I mentioned. It is worth pointing out that in recent years, some larger stores have tried to bend the rules by opening an hour earlier for what is called browsing time, during which time shoppers can fill up their baskets but cannot put those goods through the till. It is such tactics that make many workers suspicious of the proposals to suspend Sunday trading restrictions during the Olympics and Paralympics. I fear that many retail chains will feel that the proposals give them the green light to campaign more vigorously for restrictions to be dropped permanently.

--- Later in debate ---

[Meg Munn]

I am sure that my hon. Friend is right. We know that when someone receiving benefits has flexible hours the different amounts coming in can lead to great complexity and cause them many problems.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Meg Munn]

I will make a little progress.

The Association of Convenience Stores has strong concerns about the Government’s impact assessment. Two major studies referenced in the assessment failed to make the case for a significant amount of additional spending resulting from the liberalisation. The Centre for Retail Research has estimated an overall increase in sales of £189.9 million, but the impact assessment fails to set this in the context of the sales value of the UK retail sector, which is in excess of £300 billion. It uses a limited research base and is not a sound basis for estimating the impact of the legislation. This study is just a reflection of the Government’s hasty action in introducing legislation without understanding the full implications.

The total cost for the 40,000 convenience stores across England and Wales will be £480 million over the eight weekends of the Olympic and Paralympic games, which again raises the question of why these legislative changes will apply to the whole country. The impact assessment fails to recognise that convenience stores might be strongly affected. The Co-operative group has strongly expressed the view that the legislation threatens high streets and secondary shopping locations up and down the country, rather than helping them to stay vibrant. It believes that any relaxation of the existing Sunday trading laws will have a detrimental effect on independent retailers, who make a vital contribution to sustainable and viable local communities.

I must echo some of the feelings expressed in contributions made by hon. Friends. What is this desperate need to get to a shop? Under the coalition Government, we now live in a country in which it can take two weeks to get an appointment with a GP when something is wrong, so why do they think people cannot wait a few hours to get into a large shop? I must say that the reasons for that escape me. The Government must make it clear that there will be no future attempt to change Sunday trading rules without an extensive consultation period. If these changes are purely in the interests of national and community gain throughout the period of the Olympic games, they should be subject to more vigorous scrutiny, target the specific areas of London that will be affected, assure a temporary time limit and guarantee that shop workers’ rights will be protected.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Thérèse Coffey]

I have visited Great Yarmouth and it is a delightful place—just as delightful as the towns in my constituency. Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be useful for the Minister to explain why the Bill covers two Sundays when the Olympics and Paralympics are not happening—namely, 19 and 26 August, for which perhaps these arguments cannot be used?

[Brandon Lewis]

I am sure that the Minister will cover those details. One of the key reasons I am happy to support the Bill is that, as the Secretary of State confirmed, it is a temporary measure for the Olympics to open this shop door to the world. If it applied to a longer period beyond that, there would be an issue.

One of the unique selling points of small independent stores is their ability to have more flexible hours. My constituency is a mixture of big towns with all the big stores open 24 hours a day and small rural areas with village shops for which, over a longer period, this would be a real problem. When I talk to some of those small retailers, they say that they do not see the big stores in town and on the edge of the town as being as much competition as they might be in other areas. In their view, they offer a personalised service that is better than and different from that offered by the large stores. Equally, in some rural areas, they benefit from the fact that they are local to people who do not want to travel into the town or to out-of-town stores.

On Friday, I had a meeting with some local independent retailers in Great Yarmouth, all of whom had come to see me about their concerns about plain packaging. They are worried that that will massively affect their business, and I have sympathy with that. I asked them specifically about this issue, knowing that we were going to have this debate, and none of them had any great concern about the impact that it would have on them; in fact, quite the opposite. Their view was that it is a very good thing, on a temporary scale for the Olympics only, to have the shop door open; they understood the logic of it and were supportive of it.

We should support this Bill because it represents a clear economic opportunity for this country. If stores want to open, and if people want to work and take advantage of this opportunity, they can do so. It is not being imposed; it is a really good opportunity to say to the world, “We’re open and we’ve got some of the best shops and facilities in the world.”