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Sunday Trading (Horticulture) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I apologise for not having been alert to the arrival of this Bill. I was wrongly under the impression that it would be on the next sitting Friday, and therefore I gave notice only an hour before it started that I wished to speak in the gap. I am concerned with the 1994 Act and with Sunday trading. The issues to which I hope to return in Committee are the effect that the proposals will have on the family life not of people bringing their children to the garden centre but of the people staffing it. I shall also want to investigate the extent to which this small opening of the door of the wall that was originally, by parliamentary agreement, set around working times on Sunday may lead to further extensions, not least among the supermarkets and DIY trading stores that are already getting into this market. On the matter of Easter closure, the noble Lord is good enough to draw our attention to the fact that that could be changed by the Bill. I merely remind your Lordships that, in the Roman Catholic Church, Easter Sunday is formally a holy day of obligation, and it is informally so in the Church of England. The idea of devolving responsibility for the decision to local authorities may seem to be a good way of giving people their say, but in Committee I shall examine the effect of different adjacent local authorities having different policies and the effect that will have on the trades concerned.