Question to the Department for Business and Trade:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, pursuant to the Answer of 3 March 2025 to Question 31822 on Public Holidays, if he will make an estimate of the (a) cost of introducing an additional annual bank holiday on a permanent basis and (b) financial impact on each sector of the economy.

Under the Better Regulation Framework, the Department would be expected to produce an Impact Assessment estimating the costs of an additional, permanent bank holiday if the Government proposed one. However, since the current pattern of bank and public holidays is well established and widely accepted, the Government has no such plans.

The best available indication at present is from the impact assessment undertaken by the previous Government in 2022, estimating the cost of the one-off Platinum Jubilee bank holiday.