SHOPS BILL [H.L.] (Hansard, 12 February 1957)

HL Deb 12 February 1957 vol 201 cc664-79 664

§ 2.43 p.m.

§ Order of the Day for the House to be put into Committee read.

§ Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Viscount Hailsham.)

VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLS-BOROUGH
My Lords, on the Motion that the House do resolve itself into Committee, I should like to ask the noble Viscount in charge of the Bill a question of which I have given him notice. It is strongly rumoured (I know that rumour is sometimes a "lying jade") that it is the intention of the Government to withdraw this Bill. Before we go further with any of the stages of this Bill, as this is the initiatory House in this case, I should like to know whether there is any substance or fact in that suggestion, because it would be convenient for us to know at this stage.

§ VISCOUNT HAILSHAM
No. my Lords: we intend to go on with our business.

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§ LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH
My Lords, following upon the question asked by my noble friend and the noble Viscount's answer, my information is that the Government do not intend to bring this Bill into force, if it should pass all the necessary stages in Parliament, until 1959. The reason, I understand, is that by that time the Government may have made up their mind as to the reorientation and, very likely, the disbanding of some local authorities' functions and duties. This Bill transfers the functions of enforcement to the district councils, which may or may not have their boundaries altered, and may or may not be in existence upon that date, and leaves some functions unrepealed by the 1950 Act with the county councils. As the noble Viscount will have seen, I have down some Amendments to try to bring order into what I think may be chaos, and I should not like the Committee to proceed upon the very lengthy consideration of this Bill without the knowledge that it is the Government's intention to implement this Bill before 1959.

§ VISCOUNT HAILSHAM
My Lords, the noble Lord's information does not accord with mine.

§ LORD LUCAS OF CHILWORTH
My Lords, that is a brief and, perhaps, to the noble Viscount, a satisfactory answer. But it was published in the Press the other day that, as a result of the consultations between various interested parties and the Government Department for whom the noble Viscount will be speaking when he conducts the passage of the Bill, this Bill would not, if it received the Royal Assent, come into force under Clause 76 until January, 1959.

§ VISCOUNT HAILSHAM
My Lords, I can only say that if the noble Lord wants any further information he must put a Question down. He did not give me notice of this.

§ On Question, Motion agreed to; House in Committee accordingly.

§ [THE EARL OF DROGHEDA in the Chair]

§ Clause 1:

§ Weekday closing times.

§ 1.—(1) Subject to the provisions of this section and to the following provisions of this Act, every shop shall be closed—

(a) on each of the weekdays (except one) of each week, not later than seven o'clock 666 in the evening or such earlier time as may be fixed by order of the local authority within whose area the shop is situate; and
(bon the remaining weekday of each week (which shall be ascertained in accordance with the following provisions of this Part of this Act and is therein referred to as the "late day"), not later than eight o'clock in the evening or such earlier time as may be fixed as aforesaid:

§ Provided that on any weekday which by this Part of this Act is required to be observed as respects a shop as an early closing day the shop shall be closed not later than one o'clock in the afternoon.

§ (2) An order under this section may be so framed as to extend to the whole of the area of the authority by whom it is made or to part only of that area, as to have effect as respects the generality of shops within the area to which it extends (either without exception or subject to an exception for shops where a particular trade or business is carried on) or as respects shops within that area where a particular trade or business is carried on, and as to have effect either at all times or at particular periods of the year, and different times may be fixed by order under this section—

(a) for the purposes of different trades or businesses;
(b) as respects different parts of the area of the authority;
(c) on different days in the same week or the same day in different weeks;

but the fixing, by an order under this section, of a time for the purposes of a particular trade or business shall not, in the case of a shop where that trade or business is carried on, operate so as to require it to be closed not later than that time for the purposes of any other trade at business carried on therein.

§ (3) The power conferred on a local authority by paragraph (a) of subsection (1) of this section shall not be so exercised as to fix a time earlier than six o'clock in the evening, and the power conferred on a local authority by paragraph (b) of that subsection shall trot be so exercised as to result in a shop's being required to be closed on the late day in any week for the purposes or trade or business of any kind earlier than one hour after the latest of the times at which it must, by virtue of paragraph (a) of that subsection, be closed on other weekdays of that week for the purposes of trade or business of that kind.

§ VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH moved, in subsection (1) (a) to leave oat "seven" and insert "six". The noble Viscount said: Before I come to this Amendment, perhaps your Lordships will permit me to say that I welcome the general fact that this Bill has been introduced, and that it makes some progress in the struggle in which trade union, co-operative and labour organisations have been engaged for a long number of years (I have been in it myself for 667 nearly forty years), although in the view of some of us it does not go far enough. I do not want it to be thought that, with regard to any Amendments that I may move or support, I do not welcome the fact that, after nearly ten years, many, if not all, the recommendations of the Gowers Committee will be found in this Bill.

§ When I come to deal with Clause 1, I find that in their Report the Gowers Committee did not see fit to bring into statutory proposal the basis of the case so well delivered to the Gowers Committee, both by the representatives of trade unions and by the co-operative societies. In both cases a very large and powerful membership were unanimous in the view that, in order to continue the progress which had been made on the general question of shorter hours for the workers, yet still providing reasonable facilities for the consumers, it was essential to move towards the kind of hours which I have laid down in my Amendment. So I beg formally at the start to move the substitution on page 1, line 13, of the word "six" for "seven", which would involve the general provisions of the Bill providing for a closure of shops at 6 o'clock.

§ It is our view, at any rate in the trade union concerned with the organisation of labour defence in shops, the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers. that the proposed hour of 7 o'clock as the latest general closing hour is not in accordance with the need for progress in this matter, and is not, in fact, an hour which is in general observance in the country at the present time. I should say—and I shall be interested to hear what the noble Viscount has to say in reply to this point—that it is the practice to-day for the overwhelming majority of shops to close at 6 o'clock or earlier. This has obtained right through the post-war years, ever since 1945, and in that period the trade union concerned has periodically made inquiries into which are the current closing hours throughout the country. The latest of these inquiries was carried out as recently as November of last year. The position certainly has not changed since then.

§ This inquiry covered the London area; it covered most of the provincial towns and cities and, in addition, almost half 668 of the co-operative societies in the whole of the country, and so it represented a reliable and substantial cross-section of the retail trade. The results showed that closing times on the ordinary nights of the week—that is to say, other than the late day which is provided for in the same clause—varied in most cases from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. In only a very small proportion of shops did the closing hour go beyond 6 o'clock, and that proportion varied, in the different districts which were inquired into, from between 1½ per cent. to 3 per cent. of the total. The only exception to this pattern was the newsagency, tobacco and confectionery trade, where between 20 per cent. and 30 per cent. of the shops closed after 6 o'clock.

§ It is noteworthy that, again with the exception of the newsagency, tobacco and confectionery trade, between 67 per cent. and 77 per cent. did not observe any late day of opening at all during the week. Even where a late day was observed, it did not necessarily mean that the shops kept open an extra hour.

§ It will therefore be seen that, in urging that the new Act should lay down a general closing hour of 6 o'clock, with one late day allowed at 7 o'clock, the people who desire this Amendment which I am moving ask only what is now the majority established practice. When I look back at all the struggles which I have seen carried on in another place for the last forty years, in connection both with shops legislation and with carrying out the wishes of the Early Closing Association, which were always supported by Members of all Parties, I find it difficult to understand upon what grounds, with regard to present-day facts, the Gowers Committee went no further than they did in their recommendation in this respect. Where there is considered to be a good reason for a later closing hour—and I can see that there may be some good reason in a few cases like the newsagency, tobacco and confectionery trades, where need can be proved—then I think one ought to be willing to accommodate these exceptions by enabling the local authorities, where necessary, to fix a later hour, up to 7 p.m. If the Government will be good enough to accept my present Amendment, we could arrange to deal with that point later in the proceedings.

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§ In recommending a general closing hour of 7 o'clock, the Gowers Committee justified their proposal on the ground that the public would not be content to accept a 6 o'clock closing hour when circumstances changed, when there were plenty of things to buy and no ration books or coupons. But that Report is ten years old, and the situation to-day, as I have indicated and as shown by the inquiries of the promoters of this suggested Amendment, has entirely changed. Ration books and coupons now have disappeared for years and to-day, when the shops are full of goods, the facts do not bear out the conclusions of the Gowers Committee.

§ Will a general 6 o'clock closing hour amount to unreasonable curtailment of shopping facilities for the customer? Apart from the evidence to the contrary about present closing hours that I have already indicated, there is other telling evidence to show that this would not be the case. In all these matters, I consider that we need to place considerable emphasis upon the views of the Trades Union Congress, as well as on the views of the Co-operative Congress. The T.U.C. (as we call represents more than 8 million workers, including 1½ million women employed in industry and commerce. In its evidence to the Gowers Committee, the T.U.C. said that it was concerned to ensure, on the one hand, that reasonable shopping facilities are provided for the consumer and, on the other, that reasonable hours are worked by those employed in the distributive trades. It believed that those conditions could be met by a general closing hour of 6 o'clock, with the power to fix earlier or later hours by a local order.

§ What of the point of view of women working in factories and offices? The Standing Joint Committee of Working Women's Organisations, by far the most representative organisation in the country of housewives and women in industry, came down on the side of a 6 o'clock closing hour in the views which they presented to the Gowers Committee in 1946. The views of the T.U.C. and of the Standing Joint Committee of Working Women's Organisations remain the same to-day as they were in 1946.

§ The Co-operative Movement, which I have mentioned, with a membership of between 11 million and 12 million, and 670 with its own women's organisation in the Women's Co-operative Guild, can also, I think, be claimed to be a reasonable and reliable barometer of what are consumers' views, particularly on closing hours. A member of a co-operative society can, if he or she likes—and I wish more of them did like—attend at any time a quarterly meeting of his or her society of member shareholders and register his or her dissatisfaction with the board of management if they do not meet them, not merely in regard to price but also in regard to service and service facilities. Yet it is the Co-operative Movement which has associated itself throughout with the demands for a general statutory closing hour of 6 o'clock, with the qualification of a late day of 7 p.m. closing.

§ I come next to the organisation which I said just now had been supported at all sages of its history by members of all Parties—the Early Closing Association, long identified with the problems of the shopping closing hour. To-day, that Association stands strongly in support of 6 o'clock as the general closing hour on which new legislation should be based. A number of important national traders and employers' organisations vitally concerned with the question have also been pressing for a general closing time of 6 o'clock, with a late day of 7 p.m.

§ I think it would be a good thing to put on record here what trades are covered by these employers' organisations. There are the National Federation of Grocers' and Provision Dealers' Associations, the Scottish Grocers' and Provision Merchants' Association, the National Federation of Fishmongers, including poultry and game traders, the National Federation of Meat Traders' Associations, the National Dairymen's Associations, the Incorporated National Federation of Boot Trades Associations, the Stationers' Association of Great Britain, the Booksellers' Association of Great Britain, as well as the central body, the Co-operative Union of the vast Co-operative Movement in this country. That is an extraordinary gathering of people on the side of the trade unions and the consumers' organisation in regard to the Amendment which I am now moving. It can hardly be said that in moving it from a trade union point of view I am therefore moving it in a class sense. It is a general provision that is not only desired by the 671 workers in the organisation but also supported by the working women housewives of the country. It is also supported by this formidable list of distributive trade employers' association.

§ So far as I am concerned, I still feel strongly that any provision for a general closing hour in a new Act of Parliament which went beyond 6 o'clock would be a grave weakness. Longer shopping hours must mean longer working hours for shops staffs, involving regular overtime working. It has been suggested that longer working hours can be avoided, either by a staggering of hours or a system of shift working. I wonder whether any of your Lordships happened recently to see and hear on television the arguments upon this particular question from different points of view. For example, someone who spoke on behalf of the newest kind of retail distribution to be found, the super-market, argued strongly in favour of having these markets open almost all round the clock. He contemplated anything up to 10 o'clock, or even later, and said that they could quite easily find organised labour to work on a shift system. But when the argument was put from the other kind of trader, what a different story, was told! Then we had the story put by the individual grocer—not entirely the one-man shopkeeper but the person with two or three assistants only—who said he would find it impossible to contemplate the expense even of wide staggering of hours or to operate a shift system. In order to maintain anything like a competitive basis between the small trader of that kind and the big super-market of the future, the small trader would have to work his assistants longer, whatever overtime he paid them. What a weary time these people would have! Every item of the extra cost would go on to the cost to the consumer.

§ We looked into the figures and found that, according to a census of distribution in 1950, the total number of retail shops in Great Britain, including the service trades, was 551,214, of which no fewer than 355,157, or 64 per cent., were shops in which three persons or under were engaged. What sort of chance have those people of dealing with staggered hours? What sort of chance have they of getting anything like leisure if, as one would think from some of the Amendments I see upon the Marshalled List, longer 672 hours than even the Government suggest are inserted in the Bill? What sort of chance have those people to get a decent outlook upon life, or any reasonable leisure, or any real share in the social progress that the nation has been demanding for the last seventy or eighty years? It seems to me to be an extraordinary view to take.

§ It is, therefore, quite clear that shift systems and rota working would be practicable only through a big increase in manpower in the distributive trades. I am quite sure the noble Viscount who is going to answer will remember the controversy there was during the between-war years about the constant and steady increase of employment in the distributive trades, sometimes said to be to the detriment of our general productive expansion. There has already been, in the last year or two, a slight increase in that direction. I think that that needs to be taken into consideration. Either way, as I have said, the cost involved, whether by additional staff or by overtime payments, would be very large indeed—a cost which must always, in the final reckoning, be reflected in the price at which the goods are sold.

§ At present, the normal working week of shop workers—that is, before they become entitled to overtime pay—is from 44 to 46 hours. Advocates of the advantages of longer shopping hours pay little regard to the consequences—the cost in terms of longer hours for the shop worker, higher prices for the goods in the shops, and the unnecessary and undesirable burden upon the shopkeeper who would be bound by the pressure of competition to conform to later closing hours. He knows from experience during the last fifteen years, year after year, that this 7 p.m. closing is entirely unnecessary. I think it is the responsibility of Parliament to bear that important consideration in mind. I hope, therefore, that the Committee will give serious consideration to the Amendment which I move, and, most of all, will bear in mind that what I am asking should go into the legislation is no more than the general practice of the majority of shops to-day. I beg to move.

§ Amendment moved— Page 1, line 13, leave out ("seven") and insert ("six").—(Viscount Alexander of Hillsborough)

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§ 3.8 p.m.

§ VISCOUNT HAILSHAM
May I first of all thank the noble Viscount for the general support which he proposes to offer to the Government in the passage of this Bill. We welcome support from whatever quarter it comes, and the noble Viscount is undoubtedly a doughty supporter to number in the phalanx which, if one cannot at least command, one can rely upon as allies in debate. I am afraid that I shall have to ask for a good deal of his indulgence as we get on. This is the first Bill of any kind that I have attempted to pilot through either House of Parliament as a member of the Government. It may be that I shall speak too much; it may be that I shall speak too little but I am sure that I can rely on the noble Viscount to point out the particular trap into which I fall on any given occasion. I hope he will do so compassionately; I will endeavour to learn as I go along.
I think, if he will allow me to say so, that some of the noble Viscount's last remarks were not so much shafts directed against the Government for the purpose of causing them to accept this Amendment as Parthian arrows directed to the noble Lord below the gangway, who is about to move an Amendment in directly the opposite sense; because of course it is no part of this Bill to prolong hours or to advocate shift systems or staggerings of hours at all. On the contrary, I must reiterate that the effect of the clause in the Bill as it stands unamended is to reduce the number of hours for which, by and large, the shops are open, day by day and week by week. At the moment, broadly speaking, it is eight hours normally, and nine on the late day. The Bill proposes seven and, late day, eight. The effect of the noble Viscount's Amendment, were it to be passed, would be to reduce the number of hours still further, from the present eight to six, instead of seven, and from the present nine, to seven, instead of eight. It is a two-hour reduction and not a one-hour reduction which the noble Viscount is proposing. In addition, unless I am mistaken, the Amendment would make the early closing hour 12 noon, instead of 1 o'clock.
I am glad that the noble Viscount made the speech he did straight away, because, quite clearly, he establishes the strength 674 of public opinion which he could muster in support of a reduction in hours. And when we come to consider, as we shall have to do later on, proposals in quite the opposite direction—to remove all restriction or to increase the number of hours—my noble friends would do well to bear in mind that public opinion on this subject can be mobilised in quite considerable strength in either direction. It is, of course, the case that the noble Viscount can command a very responsible body of organised public opinion not confined to one class or one Party, and still less to a single interest, which has pressed for many years for a reduction in shopping hours. So far as he does that, I should not complain if, in supporting this Bill, he should put forward those arguments. On the contrary, I shall myself be employing some of them at a later stage, and therefore it would ill become me to complain of them. On the other hand, when the noble Viscount proposes to reduce the hours still further than the Bill at present does, I suggest to the Committee that he is really going too far, and that the Bill has struck the happy mean in this matter much more than has the noble Viscount. Who, in this particular debate, is right out on the Left Wing.
The Gowers Committee reported in favour of the solution which the Bill, on the whole, has adopted. The noble Viscount, having admitted that this was so, says however that the Gowers Committee Report is ten years old. That, of course, is a very powerful argument. It is so powerful that it is precisely the argument which is propounded in the opposite direction by those who want to prolong the hours. "Backward Government!", they say: "insensitive to modern trends. Anybody who has an eye to the future can see that shift working, staggered hours and all-night opening are the way of progress and expansion. Why bother to deal with a fusty old document like the Cowers Report?" A very powerful argument, but one which cannot be right in both directions. If it be true, as some critics of the Bill say, that the Report is out of date because it proposes too great a diminution in hours, it cannot, at the same time, be true that it is out of date because the diminution of hours which it proposes is too small. On this 675 occasion, therefore, though I shall propose to enlist the noble Viscount on the next Amendment in my support, I now enlist against him my friends behind me who, on Second Reading, proposed the other argument.

VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLS BOROUGH
If the noble Viscount will forgive my interrupting him, the argument I was making was that not only was the Report of the Gowers Committee ten years old but that one of the main reasons why they brought forward their recommendations had been disproved by experience since then in the trades concerned.

§ VISCOUNT HAILSHAM
I followed what the noble Viscount was saying, and he said it very well. The only thing I was remarking upon was that critics in the opposite direction say that it has been disproved in exactly the opposite way. I did not profess to choose between these doughty protagonists of entirely opposed points of view, but ventured only to assert that on this they were inconsistent. I should have thought that that proposition was almost self-evident.
One has to ask oneself seriously what are the real criteria for which one looks in a Bill of this kind. I believe that one of the overriding questions, though perhaps not the only overriding question, is the convenience of the public. Whilst, on the whole, I agree with the noble Viscount that the facts and figures he has produced establish a strong prima facie case for the reduction of hours to the level which the Bill proposes, he has not established a case for the reduction of hours in excess of what is proposed in the Bill. It is perfectly true that a very large proportion of housewives can be shown to shop before 6 o'clock. They have to, of course, because most shops shut at 6 o'clock. If the shops were to stay open, I daresay that a large proportion of housewives would shop at a different hour. It is also true, of course, that many shopkeepers are quite satisfied to shut their shops at 6 o'clock, some of them no doubt, because they know that the public have to shop when the shops are open and cannot do their shopping when the shops are shut; so that in a sense, if it suits shopkeepers to shut at six, they can do so with perfect impunity. These are only ways of illustrating the obvious.
676 The point I wish to make is that, after reviewing the whole of the evidence, the Gowers Committee found as a fact that many people would not be able to complete their shopping by 6 o'clock. It may be that those people are in a majority, though I myself should think they are quite a small minority. But at any rate, to my way of thinking—and I invite my noble friends and noble Lords on all sides of the Committee to agree with me—the mark of a free society and of a democracy, in matters of this kind, in obtaining the necessities, comforts and decencies of life, does not consist only in catering for the majority, but in catering for everybody—including minorities; and if it can be shown, as the Gowers Committee claim to show (and I still believe that their Report is the most impartial and reliable guide on this matter), that many people would not be able to complete their shopping by 6 o'clock, then I should hold that to be a strong argument against accepting the noble Viscount's Amendment. The Gowers Committee went on to say that many people had stated that they would find 6 p.m. closing much too early. Again, such people may not constitute the majority, but this is a free society, and in matters of this kind we should consult the convenience and interests of minorities, as well as that of majorities. I believe we should be mistaken to disregard the opinion of any shopkeepers in this respect.
There is another argument to which I also pay a certain amount of attention. As noble Lords will realise, there is, at the tail end of the Bill—which I hope ultimately we shall reach—a long list of exemptions. I believe that most of us, simply as amateur legislators, prefer, in principle, to see exemptions made as few as possible. I am advised that if the noble Viscount were to have his way, and the number of hours was reduced, we should be under strong pressure to make other, and numerous, exemptions from closing hours, altogether or partially; and this would complicate the Bill. So I venture to suggest to the Committee that this Amendment, which I hope the noble Viscount will think I have treated both courteously and carefully, although it is supported, as I do not deny, by a very responsible and respectable body of public opinion coming from 677 many sources, is not calculated to improve the Bill. On the contrary, I should have thought that it was just the way to exacerbate criticism of the Bill in the opposite direction, and so prevent its passage into law. For this reason I ask the Committee to reject the Amendment.

§ VISCOUNT ALEXANDER OF HILLSBOROUGH
I make no complaint at all as to the manner in which the noble Viscount has replied. I would only suggest to him, despite the fervency with which he has argued against my Amendment, that he might have recalled something of the work of his famous grandfather, who was such a great advocate of social, reforms. I should have thought that we might have heard from the noble Viscount more of the human element, more about the workers who are concerned in this industry. Nearly all the arguments which the noble Viscount has so carefully deployed are arguments which I have heard at every stage of my fight over the years for reducing shop hours. And they have all been disproved by forty years of gradual change in the other direction. In that time, we have succeeded in gradually giving a little better life, providing a little more time for recreation and relaxation, and generally improving the conditions of shop workers who, when I was a boy, used to work from 8 o'clock in the morning until as late as 10 p.m., 11 p.m. or even midnight. I should have thought that in reasonable legislation now there could have been incorporated what in the last ten years since the war has proved to be the general practice of the majority of branches of the industry. So in that respect I am disappointed at the answer of the noble Viscount.