Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what recent assessment the Government has made of the potential merits of making St George's day a public holiday.

The Government regularly receives requests for additional bank and public holidays to commemorate a variety of occasions – such as cultural, history, military and religious events. The current pattern on public and bank holidays is well established and acknowledged within the country.

The Government appreciates the importance of commemorating St George’s day. However, we do not think it is appropriate to create a new bank holiday in order to support these celebrations. There is a significant cost to business of creating additional public holidays and there are many ways that important events and occasions can be commemorated.  The estimated cost to the economy of the one-off bank holiday for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee economy was £1.2 billion.