HC Deb 04 August 1909 vol 8 cc1849-55
Mr. GLADSTONE

asked leave to introduce a Bill to consolidate, amend and extend the Shops Regulation Acts, 1892 to 1904.

The main purpose of this Bill is to secure reasonable hours of work for those chiefly engaged in the retail trades and businesses of the country. My right hon. Friend the Member for the Forest of Dean (Sir C. Dilke), who, with Lord Avebury, has done most admirable pioneer work on the shop hours' question, last year introduced a Bill the principle of which was to make the time of closing compulsory for all shops throughout the country. On that occasion I undertook, on behalf of the Government, that we would deal with the question ourselves, and would bring in a Bill this year, but, on careful consideration, it is clear that there are grave objections to the course which my right hon. Friend followed with regard to his Bill. In the first place, a system of compulsory early closing offers no satisfactory guarantee against undue employment after closing. That is one point. In the second place, when hours vary in different districts, the number of areas and the number of boundaries all add to the complexity and anomalies of the subject. Thirdly, the Australian experience shows, where you have a compulsory system, that what is known as the back-door system of trading is very liable to spring up, and is very difficult to deal with. In the fourth place, the principle of the Bill of my right hon. Friend is very strongly opposed by small shopkeepers throughout the country. By small shopkeepers I mean those who are either single-handed or only employ one assistant. That class of shop- keeper out-numbers the larger shopkeepers in the proportion of about ten to one. It is because of their opposition that the Shop Hours Act of 1904 has proved almost an entire failure. It has been proposed that small shopkeepers should be excluded from the Bill on the lines proposed by my right hon. Friend, but in such cases evasion would be very easy, detection would be very difficult, and, to my mind, the exception would be wrong in principle. At any rate, we ourselves, after careful consideration, have set it aside, and we propose to deal with the question by a different method. We propose to effect our main purpose, first, by restricting the hours of shop assistants; secondly, by compulsorily closing shops on Sundays; thirdly, by the provision of a weekly half-holiday; and, fourthly, by early closing, at the option of the local authority, on the procedure of the present Act, which we shall materially simplify. The Bill itself consists of 29 clauses, in four parts, has two schedules, and it is to apply to the whole country, except rural parishes with a population of less than one thousand.

Mr. HAZLETON

Will it apply to Ireland?

Mr. GLADSTONE

Yes, and to Scotland. I will go through the main proposals of the Bill. The first part deals with the hours of employment in shops. Shop assistants are not to be employed more than sixty hours a week, exclusive of meals, nor after 8 p.m. on more than three days a week. The occupier of every shop is to fix: first, the times at which employment begins and ceases; secondly, when employment is divided into spells of work, the times at which those spells begin and end are to be specified in a notice which is to be affixed in every shop. Meal times are provided according to a scale in the schedule of the Bill, and these meal times are also to be specified in the notice which is affixed in the shop. Overtime is allowed of two hours a day on not more than thirty days of the year. The second part deals with the closing of shops. In the first place, we provide that there shall be one weekly half-holiday for every shop. With a certain few specified exceptions, every shop is to close not later than two o'clock one day every week. The day is to be fixed by the local authority, which will have three options. First, it may fix different days for different classes of shops in its area; or, secondly, it may fix different days for different parts of that area, or, thirdly, it may fix alternative days subject to certain conditions. If the local authority fixes no day, then the occupier of a shop in the district where no day is fixed has to select a day for himself, and that day is to be specified in the notice put up in his shop. Special provisions are made for holiday resorts, and for Bank and all public holidays. The Bill provides that shops shall close on Sundays. The competition in retail business, I regret to say, has led to a constantly increasing tendency to open on Sundays, not because the shopkeepers desire it, but because somebody opens, and then the rest must open in order to keep their trade. We have found an almost unanimous feeling among shopkeepers, and, of course, among shop assistants, in favour of the closing of shops on Sundays. Of course, it will be necessary to make certain exceptions, which are provided for in the schedule. As regards the Jewish question, the Bill adopts the proposal made by the Joint Committee of Lords and Commons who sat in 1906. The Secretary of State may specify areas which are largely inhabited by Jews, and where there would not be an obligation to close before 2 o'clock on Sunday, if the shop was closed from sunset on Friday to sunset on Saturday. Similarly, street markets, where they are important and customary, may confer exemption on shops locally by Order of the Secretary of State. Thirdly, we give power to the local authorities to make early closing orders. The procedure of the present law is incorporated in the Bill, but we make material simplifications in that procedure. Notably, we propose that the area in London shall be the area of the County Council, instead of the area of each Metropolitan borough, which has absolutely and entirely defeated the object of the Act. We also provide against a danger which has arisen under the existing law.

Under the existing law unfair competition has been carried on by hawkers, "cheap jacks," auctioneers and others, by which the trade is taken from the shops, which are closed by order, after the closing hour is past. We stop that by the application of the Bill to trading elsewhere and otherwise than in shops, and by including auction sales in the definition of retail trade. Part III. of the Bill relates solely to questions of health, and deals with provisions relating to heating, ventilation, and sanitary conveniences. Part IV. contains a number of general provisions defining the powers and duties of local authorities, and specifies the offences and their penalties, and provides certain regulations which are necessary for Post Office purposes, and certain provisions which are applicable specially to bazaars, fairs, and exhibitions. This part also deals with the question of enforcement. As regards that we leave the responsibility for enforcement to the local authority, which will have power to take proceedings to enforce the law, and which may appoint inspectors to see that the law is carried out. But power is reserved to the Secretary of State, failing enforcement, proper enforcement, by the local authority, first to hold an inquiry, and secondly, if the results of the inquiry show cause, to authorise a factory inspector to take special steps for the enforcement of the Act in the particular district. In the main the Bill will work automatically. In every shop the assistant will see from the affixed notice his legal hours of work. If there is encroachment in any shop he will have his remedy.

That is a brief statement of the main proposals of the Bill. Needless to say, we do not propose to proceed any further this Session. There is much to be discussed in this Bill, and I have introduced the Bill largely with the object of promoting discussion in the country, with the view, if possible, of obtaining something like unanimous support of all its principles. I maintain that the study of the Bill will show that it is not intended to be in any way a contentious Bill. We have made every effort to arrive at an agreement with those who are principally concerned. We have been in constant communication for months past with various leading individuals, both employers and employed; and we have received twenty-one deputations from all the leading trades in the country which are concerned. This Bill concerns the daily life of, speaking in round numbers, a million shop assistants and over half a million of shop owners. The conditions of employment, of course, vary in every part of the country, and in every trade. There are some large shops where the conditions are excellent; there are a multitude of others where the conditions are atrocious. There are many shop assistants in this country who, with no possibility of remedy, are working over 80 and over 90 hours per week, one ceaseless round of daily drudgery. The main cause is the wasteful and mischievous system of competition. One man keeps a shop open and compels a number of others to keep their shops open, though the vast majority of the shopkeepers desire to keep reasonable hours. If you were to cut off at this moment 25 per cent. of the time during which the shops in this country are open you would still leave ample time for all the business that is conducted in those shops to be pressed into the remaining three-fourths of the time. We propose to bring in a Bill which will tend to change the customs and habits of the people and lead them to study the conveniences of those who are serving them more than they do. In no respect do we propose to interfere with the economic hours, that is, the hours occupied in profitable business. We are interfering to prevent a waste of the time and the money and the health of both employers and employed. No trade will be hindered, no trade will be diverted to the foreigner. We seek, by the intervention of the State—which is the only possible agency—to promote national efficiency.

Mr. HORATIO BOTTOMLEY

I ask the permission of this House to oppose the first reading of this Bill, a measure which if passed into law, though I understand there is no practical intention at present that it should be, would inflict, notwithstanding the vast Amendments it contains compared with the Bill of last Session, untold hardship upon thousands of shopkeepers and enormous inconvenience to the public. It is, if I may respectfully say so to the right hon. Gentleman, a violation of every democratic principle of justice, and is the crowning example in excelsis of that parental system of government which is becoming a veritable obsession with the occupants of the Treasury Bench. If there was one reason above others why I should suggest to the House that it should pass to other business instead of considering this measure it would be the admission of the right hon. Gentleman that the sole object in introducing it is to give the country an opportunity to add to its many bewilderments at the present time by considering the provisions of this Bill with a view to legislation presumably in the next Parliament. I am a novice in politics, and not an authority on constitutional history, but I venture to say that no one has ever before introduced a Bill in this House with such a recommendation. If it be legitimate to go through the serious form of asking the first reading of a Bill with an intimation from the responsible Minister that there is no intention whatever of proceeding with it at present, I and that its object is to form the basis of public controversy, then any Member of this House, whether on the Treasury Bench or in any other quarter of the House, would be entitled to avail himself of the ten minutes Rule to advance a Bill dealing with any particular topic which might interest him, in order that the public might have the opportunity of considering it or to influence a General Election. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] Hon. Members opposite applaud that sentiment as being sound. I invite them to act upon it. The provisions of this Bill, if they were limited to the laudable object of regulating the hours of work of shop assistants would commend themselves to every Member of the House. There is no objection to that, but what has Sunday closing to do with the matter. I thought we had heard the last about that in the present Parliament. Then what about public-houses?

Mr. GLADSTONE

The Bill does not apply to public-houses.

Mr. BOTTOMLEY

I venture to say even with that assurance that it does refer to public-houses, in the strict sense of houses for the public convenience. There are many districts, the right hon. Gentleman must know, where it is absolutely essential that there should be some shopping facilities for a large section of the community. But if the object of the Bill is only to limit the hours of labour, what has that to do with the innocent hawker, or the boy selling newspapers, which might announce the resignation of the Government, or something of that kind.

Mr. GLADSTONE

The hon. Gentleman has not seen the Bill.

Mr. BOTTOMLEY

I do not desire to see it. I saw last year the Bill of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for the Forest of Dean (Sir C. W. Dilke), and I have not got over the shock yet. I do not want to see even this emasculated edition of that Bill. Shop assistants may have their hours regulated by Act of Parliament. Nobody would oppose that suggestion, but it is a different thing to provide hours at which people should take their meals, even when the whole staff consists of the proprietor, his son and daughter, perhaps his mother and father—they are to take their dinners and their teas by Act of Parliament. The right hon. Gentleman deliberately stated that one of the objects of this Bill is to alter the habits and customs of the people. No Act of Parliament will ever do that. Speaking for myself, I will have my dinner when I am hungry if I can possibly get it, and I think the smallest shopkeeper is entitled to the same amount of freedom that I ask for myself. Looking at the Bill as a whole, I say that it is undemocratic. It is a Bill of the type of which I thought this House had had enough. I do not think it is called for, except for the regulation of hours of labour, which would have had my warmest support. Therefore, though I feel it somewhat of an impertinence to oppose the first reading of a measure of any Member, and especially of a responsible Minister, for the reasons I have given I must on this occasion object to leave being given to introduce the Bill.

Leave given. Bill presented accordingly, and read the first time. To be read a second time upon Monday, 9th August.