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

The hon. Member for South Antrim (Dr McCrea) is a hard act to follow. I thank him for making those points very strongly. I will vote against the Bill for three reasons: first, the economic arguments are not very convincing; secondly, and most importantly, I am very worried about the effect on workers; and thirdly, I still believe that there is a case for keeping Sunday special. I very much welcome the Olympics coming to the UK and the opportunities that that offers to showcase the UK, and I am sure that we will welcome many foreign visitors. However, let us be realistic about those foreign visitors. If they are coming to see the Olympics, they can go shopping on Saturday, they have six hours to go shopping on Sunday, and they can go shopping again on Monday if they want to go to a big store, but I think that the vast majority are more likely to pop into a convenience store or go into cafes or restaurants, because that is what people do when going to a sporting event. However, they will have plenty of chance to go shopping if they so wish. As regards UK residents, let us be honest: people have a finite amount of money to spend, particularly as this Government seem incapable of finding a growth strategy and are letting us slide back into a recession. We are seeing displacement trade, with the same amount of spending being spread over more hours, and we are likely to see big stores drawing away yet more trade from local convenience stores, as the hon. Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) said. I am disappointed that he seems incapable of voting against the Bill even though he talked about people who may lose their livelihoods in his constituency because they depend on the times when an awful lot of people use convenience stores because none of the big supermarkets is open, particularly on Sundays from about 4 pm to 9 or 10 pm. The danger of extending Sunday opening hours for the big stores is that it will have a very detrimental effect on small convenience stores. In the past, supermarkets have driven people out through loss leaders, whether it was fishermen because they had bargains on their fish counters or the local music shop because their popular items were available in the bigger type of store. In the same way, this summer some local stores may close because eight weeks is too long for them to do without the trade that they have usually been getting. Of course, life has changed and we have far longer shop opening hours than 50 years ago, and we accept that emergency workers have to do some Sunday shifts. However, Sunday is a day when children are not at school but at home. Many workers do not work on Sunday, so it is a time for families to be together and for parents to spend valuable time with their children. The majority of shop workers are women on low incomes, and if stores are open for longer on Sunday, there will be pressure on them to do more of their hours on Sunday. They will not get more hours; rather, instead of doing them on weekdays, they will be asked to do them on Sundays, cutting down on the time they have to spend with their families and children. Many of those women will walk to work because there is no transport on Sunday, particularly very early in the morning or late in the evening, and that raises huge issues regarding their safety. It is bad enough walking when it is for a 10 am start and a 4 pm finish, but if it is much earlier or later, there are far greater implications for safety. The Government are rushing this Bill through having not realised that there would not be enough time under the existing legislation for someone to give three months' notice if they do not want to work on Sundays. Now the proposal is that workers have to give notice by 22 May. Again, there is a huge rush to get that done. Some families may well have prepared activities for the summer holidays, when they want to do something special on Sundays—they may already have plans afoot. It is all very well to say that such working will be voluntary, but it will never be voluntary. People will feel pressurised into working, that their promotion chances are damaged and that it is not fair on their fellow workers if they opt out of working on a Sunday. The idea that such working is voluntary is nonsensical for many reasons.