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Sunday Trading (London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games) Bill [Lords]

I am sure that the Minister will cover those details. One of the key reasons I am happy to support the Bill is that, as the Secretary of State confirmed, it is a temporary measure for the Olympics to open this shop door to the world. If it applied to a longer period beyond that, there would be an issue. One of the unique selling points of small independent stores is their ability to have more flexible hours. My constituency is a mixture of big towns with all the big stores open 24 hours a day and small rural areas with village shops for which, over a longer period, this would be a real problem. When I talk to some of those small retailers, they say that they do not see the big stores in town and on the edge of the town as being as much competition as they might be in other areas. In their view, they offer a personalised service that is better than and different from that offered by the large stores. Equally, in some rural areas, they benefit from the fact that they are local to people who do not want to travel into the town or to out-of-town stores. On Friday, I had a meeting with some local independent retailers in Great Yarmouth, all of whom had come to see me about their concerns about plain packaging. They are worried that that will massively affect their business, and I have sympathy with that. I asked them specifically about this issue, knowing that we were going to have this debate, and none of them had any great concern about the impact that it would have on them; in fact, quite the opposite. Their view was that it is a very good thing, on a temporary scale for the Olympics only, to have the shop door open; they understood the logic of it and were supportive of it. We should support this Bill because it represents a clear economic opportunity for this country. If stores want to open, and if people want to work and take advantage of this opportunity, they can do so. It is not being imposed; it is a really good opportunity to say to the world, ““We're open and we've got some of the best shops and facilities in the world.””