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Sunday Trading (Horticulture) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Courtown for allowing us to revisit the restrictions on the types of business that are allowed to open on Sundays in England and Wales, which were relaxed by the Sunday Trading Act 1994—which has been referred to by those who brought it in. I thank him also for giving the House the opportunity to learn more about how the face of retailing has changed in Britain over time. He represents a retail-leisure industry that has grown hugely in popularity in our garden-mad country. I am sure that the exercise and peaceful pleasure, as well as the increasing food production that so many people are now enjoying in their gardens, will mean that this Bill has a sympathetic hearing today. Sentiment aside, this Bill is based on the desire of a trade group to give local authorities the powers to exempt garden centres from the restrictions placed on large shops. Under my noble friend’s Bill, garden centres could open on a Sunday for a maximum of eight hours between 9 am and 7 pm. Local authorities would have the power to pass a resolution allowing garden centres to open during these hours and could specify whether garden centres in their area could open on a Sunday, on specific Sundays or on a maximum number of days. We understand that the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform believes that the 1994 Act established a reasonable compromise between those supporting unlimited opening of all shops and those totally opposed to trading on Sundays. There are certain exemptions to the restrictions on large shop openings; farm shops, off-licences and pharmacies are exempt from the six-hour restriction. Shops with an internal floor area of less than 280 square metres—that is, small shops—are not restricted in the hours that they can open on Sunday. That explains why the little Tesco around the back of Great College Street amazed us all when it opened up by being able to open seven days a week, from 7 am till 10 pm. Your Lordships may be comforted to know that Schedule 4 to the 1994 Act contains employee protection relating to Sunday working. Even those who have taken up employment since August 1994 and whose contracts currently include Sunday working have the right to give notice to their employer that they are not prepared to work on Sundays. That seems to work well, and I hope that we will see no change there. We have two questions for my noble friend Lord Courtown. What criteria does he envisage local authorities considering when deciding how many Sundays a garden centre should be open for? Secondly, can he confirm that a local authority resolution to permit extended Sunday trading by garden centres would apply uniformly to all garden centres in the local authority area?