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Confident Consumers

Most of us are pragmatic and believe in a free vote when it guarantees that our side wins the vote. I may have to allow the argument to develop a little before I come down on one side or the other. This type of debate raises some genuine issues, and our approach should be to try to build the largest consensus. I think that we have a consensus at the moment. I have family members who work in the retail industry and who make the point to me that they quite like to work on Sundays. That is okay; it is what they choose. However, they like to work on the present Sunday, not a Sunday that might ultimately look like every other shopping day of the week. Keeping Sunday as a rather different day of the week is not necessarily to pander to ultra-Sabbatarians but to recognise that our way of life is best protected if our ordered week at least maintains something of the present character. I live in the middle of one of the most bustling cities in Britain, in the area where arguably such considerations apply least. Nevertheless, people still value the fact that one day of the week is a little different, and shop workers want to maintain the benefits of that. It could be said that the argument is not about the interests of consumers but about those of the very large stores, which still believe that they can gain a competitive advantage if they can open for longer on Sundays. That is questionable. It may not be in the interests of consumers if the result of longer opening hours for the large operators is smaller distributors being squeezed out of the industry. Interestingly, Tesco, which was one of the leading advocates of a change in the regulation of Sunday hours, has withdrawn from the deregulation coalition. I do not know why that is, but I am pleased that Tesco may have realised that it is not in its corporate interest to advocate a change that would be unpopular with the public. I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend the Minister to his new role. I can think of no one in Government who is quite as tenacious in supporting the interests of ordinary people against those who abuse their different forms of monopoly power. He has a great personal reputation. I am happy to say that publicly. We are not often given the chance to read our colleagues’ obituaries while they are still with us. I am delighted that the Prime Minister did absolutely the right thing in this instance in moving my right hon. Friend to the DTI in his reshuffle.