Lords Sitting of 21 January 1986

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Derby.

Soviet Ballistic Missile Defence Activity
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the extent of Soviet research and development into ballistic missile defence.
The Minister of State for Defence Support (Lord Trefgarne): My Lords, we are clear that the Soviet Union is embarked upon a major programme of research in these areas. I would refer my noble friend to the paper on this subject which I placed in the Library of the House on 12th December in response to a Written Answer from my noble friend Lord Alexander of Tunis.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, is it correct that in connection with that programme the Soviet Union is employing no fewer than 10,000 engineers on laser research and development? Do the Government have further plans to publicise that gigantic effort so that those still critical of the American counter-effort may be more firmly convinced that it is essential that the free world should continue with its R & D?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, we believe that the Soviet Union has about 10,000 scientists and engineers, or perhaps more, working in the area to which my noble friend refers. In addition, a substantial number are working in related areas. If we are referring to the Soviet effort in that and related fields, I need only remind your Lordships that the only deployed anti-ballistic missile system in the world is around Moscow.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the United States agreed that the antiballistic missile system deployed around Moscow could remain there under SALT II so long as it was not extended? Is he further aware that, although there is considerable effort going on in that area on both sides of the Atlantic, it is the Soviet Union which wants to stop it and the United States which refuses to do so?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, if I may refer again to the system around Moscow, it is presently being modernised to include GALOSH missiles, which are nuclear tipped and designed to intercept targets outside the atmosphere—that is, in space.
Lord Gladwyn: My Lords, is there not every reason to suppose that whatever experiments the Russians may now be conducting, they are just as unlikely to be
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able to establish a leak-proof, space-based ABM system by the end of the century as the Americans? Therefore, is it not possible that the present Russian experiments with lasers, phased array systems and so on, are just as likely to be connected with other spheres of defence as with the probably unrealisable SDI system?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I do not deny that the scientific hurdles that remain to be overcome before a leak-proof system (to use the noble Lord's words) can be achieved, whether in the Soviet Union or in the United States, are considerable. Nonetheless, I think that history leads us to suppose that sooner or later those hurdles will be overcome.
The Earl of Halsbury: My Lords, is it not the propaganda purpose of the Soviet Government to propose the abolition of anything in which it happens to have a temporary lead?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I am afraid that the history of negotiations leads us to suppose that the Soviet Union seeks to find itself in a position of strength before embarking on such negotiations.
Lord Boston of Faversham: My Lords, does the Minister agree that it is important to safeguard the anti-ballistic missile treaty? Can he say whether the Government have evidence that the Soviet Union has violated that treaty?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, there certainly is evidence to suggest that the Soviet Union has violated the treaty, although in some areas I recognise that there is room for more than one view.
Lord Zuckerman: My Lords, can the Minister say what proportion of the amount which is devoted by the USSR of its defence spending to strategic defence goes to ABM and to anti-aircraft? According to CIA testimony given to the Senate Armed Services and Appropriations Committees in June of last year, one-tenth of the total spent on defence goes to strategic defence; but I have seen analyses suggesting that far more than half the sum involved goes to anti-aircraft defence. Indeed, the record of the testimony, which I have read carefully, indicates that there is a blurring of distinction between ABM and anti-aircraft. I wonder whether we have our own views on that subject.
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I agree that there are respectable views along the lines suggested by the noble Lord; but reliable information about Soviet defence expenditure in terms that we can compare with our own is hard to come by.
Lord Taylor of Blackburn: My Lords, will the Minister not agree that, in view of the amount of money that is being spent by the Soviet Union on research and development in this and other fields, he should have a word with his colleague the Secretary of State for Education and Science to spend more money in this country on research and development in all fields?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I am not sure that this question directly arises from the one on the Order Paper. I can only say that whatever the sum of money being spent by the Soviet Union in these areas, the results in terms of hardware are very substantial.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, would the noble Lord not agree that there is substantial evidence that the Soviet Union is busy on space-based anti-ballistic missile defence research, as it is entitled to be under the ABM treaty, and that it is quite irrelevant for him, with respect, to quote the Moscow system of GALOSH missiles, which are ground-based, are agreed entirely with the United States and have nothing at all to do with the SDI?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I never suggested that GALOSH missiles to which I referred were other than land-based. The fact remains that they have a role to intercept missiles outside the atmosphere.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, if so much is known of development on both sides in this important field, why are the facts not laid on the table in Geneva following the apparently improved relations between Mr. Gorbachev and President Reagan during their last meeting?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, I can assure the noble Lord that the discussions in Geneva (to which the United Kingdom is not directly a party) are conducted very correctly, and that the United States brings forward all the information of the kind to which I have been referring this afternoon. So far as the Western Alliance goes, we do more than bring it forward in the confidential discussions; we publish it. That is why I placed the document to which I have referred in the Library.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, with regard to whether or not treaties are being honoured, can my noble friend put in the Library a list of those treaties of the past 30 years which the Soviet Union has honoured? Will he include diversions from Helsinki and the circumvention of many others? Will my noble friend also take the opportunity to tell the House how the Government are getting on with negotiating the proposal that British scientists and we, here in the United Kingdom, should share at least part of the American SDI programme?
Lord Trefgarne: My Lords, with regard to British participation in the SDI research programme, my noble friend will recall the Statement on this matter that I repeated just before Christmas. I understand that negotiations between companies and institutions leading to contracts are proceeding very well.

Terrorist Demands and Negotiations
2.45 p.m.
Lord Paget of Northampton: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether refusal to negotiate with or offer deals to terrorists and kidnappers is still their policy.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Glenarthur): My Lords, the handling of a terrorist incident will often involve a process of negotiation, usually conducted by trained police officers, in order to bring the incident to a peaceful conclusion with minimum risk to any hostages and to arrest offenders. The arrangements for handling such incidents are closely co-ordinated between police and Government, and follow the declared policy of the Government that we will not make substantive concessions to terrorist demands.
Lord Paget of Northampton: My Lords, while congratulating the Government on their own policy, particularly the handling of the recent case of the gentleman who escaped wearing a bedstead—that seems to have been admirably handled—is it not made somewhat difficult by amateur competition, particularly when it comes with the alleged endorsement of the established Church? We learn nowadays, do we not, that Mr. Waite is on his way, that he is being most graciously received, that he is negotiating with the assassins and that everyone seems to be a very good fellow indeed. In the very week that he tells us that Colonel Gaddafi is a deeply religious man, he is voted by viewers England's second most popular man. Does not this approach, totally opposed to that of the Government, make the running of the Government's policy a little difficult?
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I really do not think that I can go further than what I have already said. It is the policy of the Government to seek to achieve a peaceful resolution of terrorist incidents by a process of negotiation. This might involve minor concessions such as the provision of food, but stops short of conceding substantive political demands.
Lord Paget of Northampton: My Lords, is it not surely for the Government to make those concessions? The interventions of an amateur of this sort seem to some of us, at any rate, most mischievous.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I really cannot go further than what I have already said. I have given to the noble Lord the policy which the Government have followed in incidents that have occurred in this country. I do not think I can be drawn further.
Lord Alport: My Lords, would my noble friend agree that a great many people in this country admire very much the courage that Mr. Waite has shown and the efforts that he has made in order to prevent some further harm to those who are imprisoned at the present moment in the Middle East?
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I agree entirely with that remark. Yes, Mr. Waite has done a tremendous amount of service, and for that we should all be thankful.

NATO Secretary-General: Expression of Views
2.49 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the first Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they approve of the NATO Secretary-General criticising the views of elected Members of Parliament of the organisation's constituent states.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Young): My Lords, the Secretary-General of NATO has every right to comment on defence issues as he sees them affecting the alliance.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that on 19th December last the Secretary-General, Lord Carrington, criticised the policies of the Danish Government, the Greek Government, the Opposition in this country and the Opposition in West Germany? Is it right that an appointed official of an international organisation should be criticising the policies of elected Members of Parliament of the states that compose that organisation?
Baroness Young: My Lords, the views of the two Governments to which the noble Lord has referred on certain aspects of alliance policy are well known. They are not shared by this Government, or the rest of the alliance.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that opinion generally is more likely to attach importance to the experienced views expressed by Lord Carrington than to the views referred to by the noble Lord opposite?
Baroness Young: My Lords, I would agree with what my noble friend says.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, since when has it been right for a civil servant, either national or international, to criticise the elected Members whom he is supposed to be serving even when they are minorities?
Baroness Young: My Lords, the Secretary-General of NATO is, as I said in my original Answer, entitled to express an opinion about the views held by other Governments in the alliance. That is what he did in this particular speech.
Lord Morris: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether she approves of Members of this House of Parliament criticising fellow Members of this House of Parliament through the vehicle of a starred Question?
Baroness Young: My Lords, Members of your Lordships' House are of course perfectly entitled to put down Questions on matters which are within the general arrangements of your Lordships' House. I hope I have given noble Lords a fair answer to the Question.
Lord Mellish: My Lords, if Lord Carrington were to say and do nothing—which it is evidently the view of some Members of this House he should—would we not regard him as utterly and completely incompetent? Is it not a good thing to hear from somebody who is in a position of authority and knowledge saying what he really thinks?
Baroness Young: My Lords, yes. I am grateful to the noble Lord. I agree with what he says.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, is my noble friend the Minister aware that it is only those who fear criticism who oppose it?
Baroness Young: My Lords, I have given my view on this matter.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I fear that the noble Baroness has either misunderstood my Question or has avoided answering it. May I put it in another form? I am not criticising either the policy of the British Government or the views put forward by Lord Carrington. I am asking a different question. I am asking whether Her Majesty's Government believe that an international official, appointed, as Lord Carrington is, as Secretary-General of NATO, has the right to express his own personal views against, and in criticism of, the views of the Governments and the elected Members of Parliament of the organisation which he represents. Surely that is a perfectly fair and straightforward question, and one which the Government should take into consideration.
Baroness Young: My Lords, I have given a straight answer to the noble Lord. Let me make it absolutely plain. Lord Carrington's statement was not a statement of party politics but a statement on alliance issues. The activities of some of the peace groups in the West and of the parties which support them will inevitably encourage the Soviet Union.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, has the Minister any knowledge as to whether the Council of NATO has objected in the slightest way to what their Secretary-General has said?
Baroness Young: My Lords, not so far as I am aware.

Manufacturing Industry Output
2.55 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the second Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what change took place in British manufacturing output between 1979 and 1984.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Lucas of Chilworth): My Lords, the index of output for manufacturing industry was 8 per cent. lower in 1984 than in 1979.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for that Answer. Can he explain how it comes about that after six years of a government that is supposed to be restoring the economy of this country, manufacturing industry output has fallen during that period? Can the noble Lord further explain how it is that British manufacturing industry output has fallen by 8 per cent. in that period, whereas the output of West Germany's manufacturing industry has fallen by no more than 0·5 per cent., and that of France by no more than 3·78 per cent.?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, in the six years 1979 to 1985 the fall was as I have described. There was a trough in 1981. Since 1981 manufacturing output has been increasing steadily. Your Lordships will recall that the world recession in trade occurred at about that time. If one looks at a similar graph for the Community as a whole, or indeed France or West Germany, one will see very similar patterns. The figures may be slightly different. There was a depression in 1979 in both France and Germany. An increase occurred in 1983 and is continuing.
Lord Mowbray and Stourton: My Lords, bearing in mind the question by the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, may I ask what is the level of support that the Government are providing to promote the growth of employment in this matter?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, the Government support for employment covers other areas than just manufacturing. I am sure that my noble friend will appreciate that. However, in 1985–1986 some £1,860 million worth of expenditure on employment services and training schemes is anticipated with a further increase during 1986 and 1987. But that is of course across the range of employment.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, would the noble Lord not agree that while there have been striking successes in the manufacturing sector of British industry in recent years, we need many more such successes? How do the Government see their role in stimulating these further successes?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, because he is quite right. The policies of the Government—particularly financial policies—have led to a much fitter industrial industry which is more able to compete with the overseas markets. One recognises that in many of the traditional industries there is still a decline. Nevertheless, the policies concerning company taxation, employment, insurance surcharges and lifting burdens on business and others, are all designed to stimulate, and are having the effect of stimulating, industry to better performance both at home and abroad.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the very drastic decline in manufacturing output (which went down between 18 and 20 per cent.) that took place immediately after 1979 and continued into 1981, decimating the British industry, was caused by deliberately imposed, highest-
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of-all interest rates, with the maintenance of an artificially high rate of exchange that made British exports quite uncompetitive? Would the noble Lord also bear in mind that the present signs are that interest rates are going to be raised again thus forcing the exchange rate even higher than it should be, and thus inflicting further damage on the competitiveness of British manufacturing industry?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I do not accept the first part of the supplementary question of the noble Lord. The decline in the manufacturing figures after 1979 was in part due to the policies of the preceding Administration added to the consequence of a world recession brought about by the second oil crisis. This recession hit an industry already suffering from poor competitiveness following the years of very high inflation, which again are attributable to the Administration of which the noble Lord was a part.
Lord Avebury: My Lords, we are now in 1986. Would the Minister agree that if, as a result of a decline of two cents in the value of the pound, interest rates are allowed to go up yet again British industry will be hit twice? It would be hit once by a fall in its competitiveness compared with overseas suppliers by the difference in exchange rate, and secondly by the increase in the cost of borrowing.
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, that may well be so, but let me make it quite clear that manufacturing industries are participating in a growth and that output is well into its fifth year of growth: it is now 13 per cent. above the 1981 first quarter trough. The indications are that it will continue in that direction. The CBI forecasts and others indicate that it is on a growth pattern.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, the noble Lord has said that British manufacturing industry is fitter because of the policies of this Government. How can industry be fitter if it is producing 8 per cent. less, despite the fact that the Government have had the advantage of the oil revenues during that period? Moreover, the noble Lord gave a list of the advantages which the Government claim British industry is now enjoying, but what he did not mention is that last year investment in manufacturing industry in this country was 18 per cent. lower than it was in 1979, when the Government came into office.
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, has taken—and I do not object to it—the two years 1979 and 1981, which he knows (because he has read the graph) are the worst in our history for many years. Although we came into office in 1979 at a time of world recession and started implementing our policies, by 1981 those policies and the general upturn which those policies were designed to assist had shown that manufacturing production was increasing, and it has steadily increased in the last five years. Investment in British industry is now at a record level and is continuing; and so is productivity, profitability, the creation of wealth and employment.
The Earl of Halsbury: My Lords, is it not a waste of time jogging backwards over what happened in 1979?

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Do we not live in an immensely complicated system of international interchange, only part of which is under our own control? Ought our thoughts to be not on the past but on where we stand today and how we hope to improve our situation tomorrow?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Halsbury, for those comments, with which I of course agree. In looking forward, as this Administration does, if we continue our policies we shall end 1985 in a stronger position than was the case in 1984, 1983, 1982, and 1981. Over the rest of this decade we look forward to improving that position even further.
Lord Bruce of Donington: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that, even though it may be inconvenient politically to look at the lessons of the past, very often it is the truest wisdom to have some regard to them?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, we can all learn lessons from the past, and I think that the electorate of this country in fact learned that at the last election.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, with respect, the noble Lord did not answer my second supplementary question. Is it the case that last year, 1985, investment in manufacturing industry in this country was 18 per cent. below that of 1979? Does this hold out hopes for the future?
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, the answer is that last year investment was at an all-time record, and it is increasing. The prosperity of our nation will lie in further and greater investment in our industries as a whole. That is happening.

Business
3.4 p.m.
Lord Denham: My Lords, at a convenient moment after 3.30 this afternoon my noble friend Lady Young will, with the leave of the House, repeat a Statement that is to be made in another place on the evacuation from the Republic of Yemen. That will be followed by my noble friend Lady Trumpington, who, again with the leave of the House, will repeat a Statement on the Stanley Royd Hospital Inquiry.
It may be for the convenience of the House if I announce that the Committee stage of the Shops Bill will be adjourned at about 7.30 p.m. for approximately one hour, and that during this adjournment the Committee stage of the Education (Amendment) Bill will be taken.

Salmon Bill [H.L.]
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Gray of Contin, I beg to move the Motion standing in his name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That it be an instruction to the Committee of the Whole House to whom the Salmon Bill [H.L.] has been committed that they consider the Bill in the following order—

Clauses 1 and 2,

Schedule 1,

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Clauses 3 to 18,

Schedules 2 and 3,

Clauses 19 to 29,

Schedules 4 and 5, Clauses 30 and 31.

—(Viscount Davidson.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Shops Bill [H.L.]
3.6 p.m.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now again resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now again resolve itself into Committee.—(Lord Glenarthur.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD ABERDARE in the Chair.]
[Amendments Nos. 8 to 15 not moved.]
Lord Jacques Lord Jacques moved Amendment No. 16:
After Clause 1, insert the following new clause:—
("Special provisions
.—(1) Every shop may, save as otherwise provided by this section, be open for the serving of customers before 1 p.m. on Sunday.
(2) After consultation with representatives of employers and employees in the retail trade, consumers, the churches and the enforcing authorities the Secretary of State shall make an order specifying the essential goods and services for the provision of which shops may be open after 1 p.m. on Sunday.
(3) An order under subsection (2) above shall not have effect until a draft has been laid before Parliament and approved by affirmative resolution by each House of Parliament. Variations to an order under that subsection may be made by an order approved in like manner.
(4) Where the area or any part of the area of a local authority is a district which is frequented as a holiday resort during certain seasons of the year, the local authority may by order provide that on such Sundays as may be specified in the order shops or any class of shops, being shops situated in the district or in such part thereof as may be so specified, may, subject to such conditions and during such hours as may be so specified, be open for the serving of customers, provided that the Sundays specified in any such order shall not be more than eighteen in any year.
(5) Goods sold retail to a customer shall not be delivered or dispatched for delivery from a shop at any time when under the provisions of this section a customer could not be served with those goods in that shop:
Provided that this subsection shall not apply—

(a) on any Sunday being also Christmas Day; or

(b) on any Sunday when the succeeding Monday is Christmas Day.

(6) Nothing in this section shall prevent the sale, dispatch or delivery of victuals, stores or other necessaries required by any person for a ship or aircraft on her arrival at, or immediately before her departure from, a port or aerodrome.
(7) The foregoing provisions of this section shall extend to any place where any retail trade or business is carried on as if that place were a shop, and as if in relation to any such place the person by whom the retail trade or business is carried on were the occupier of a shop.
(8) In the case of any contravention of any of the foregoing provisions of this section, the occupier of the shop shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable to a fine not exceeding—

(a) in the case of a first offence, one hundred pounds;

(b) in the case of a second offence, five hundred pounds;

(c) in the case of a third or subsequent offence, one thousand pounds.

(9) A person who carries on the business of a shop, or carries on retail trade or business at any place not being a shop, on Sunday in accordance with the foregoing provisions of this section, shall not be deemed to commit an offence against any of the following enactments, namely—

(a) the Sunday Fairs Act 1448; or

(b) the Act of the third year of His late Majesty King Charles the First, chapter three, for the further reformation of sundry abuses committed on the Lord's Day commonly called Sunday; or

(c) the Sunday Observance Act 1677.

(10) This section shall not extend to Scotland.")
The noble Lord said: I rise to move Amendment No. 16. This amendment is a compromise. It has three main features. First, it proposes that there should be deregulation—that is to say, complete freedom in the retail trade—until 1 p.m. Therefore, there would be no restrictions and there could be no anomalies up to 1 p.m. It would be possible for the housewife who has run short of some foodstuff to get it from the local trader; it would be possible for her husband who is collecting the newspaper to buy anything else which the newsagent wishes to sell him and which he wishes to buy; and it would be possible for the man who is carrying out repairs to his house to go to a do-it-yourself shop and buy the necessary items.
The second element is that the amendment provides that the essential goods and services which can be sold after 1 p.m. shall be determined, not by schedule but by secondary legislation. It requires the Secretary of State to consult with the interested parties. The interested parties are the retailers, the retail employees, the consumers, the Churches and the bodies which have to enforce the legislation—that is to say, the local authorities. After consulting with them, the Secretary of State will make an order indicating what goods and services can be sold after 1 p.m. That order would require an affirmative resolution of both Houses. Any amendment to the order would be made in exactly the same way.
We believe that that is an improvement on anything which we have had in the past as regards restrictions on Sunday trading. I hope that no one will tell me that the task of making such an order is far too difficult. I point out that almost every country in Europe restricts Sunday trade and is able to make the kind of order for which I am asking.
The third element in this amendment is that it expands trading on a Sunday in the holiday resorts. At present a local authority in a holiday resort may make an order authorising traders within its borders to sell a restricted variety of goods during 18 Sundays in the year. They are specified as goods suitable for bathing, photography, and so on. In this amendment we say that the order may provide that any goods may be sold by traders in the resort.
They are the three main elements in this amendment. I moved a similar amendment on 29th March 1982 to the Trumpington Bill. In reply to my moving of the amendment the noble Baroness said, at col. 1177:
"I am tempted to accept the compromise which is offered in the form of this amendment. It would certainly be a great improvement on the present position".
Therefore, let nobody tell me from the Front Bench opposite that this is just the old thing over and over
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again and that it is no different from the position at the moment, as has been said in regard to some previous amendments.
Of course, the noble Baroness went on to say that she could not accept the amendment. She gave only one reason, and that was that this was a free country, and because it was a free country people ought to be able to do what they like on a Sunday. If they wanted to trade, they should trade. She said nothing about the freedom of the people who live near the shops, and who have only one quiet day during the whole week. She said nothing of the retailer who did not want to trade on Sunday but would be forced to do so in order to keep his market share. She said nothing of the retail employee who did not want to work on Sunday but, in order to make sure that he kept his job, did so to please his employer. These are real fears. They exist, and will clearly exist if this Bill goes through in its present form. I believe that this amendment would retain the special character of Sunday, and that is my purpose in moving it.
As I have on previous occasions told the House, I spent some time in California studying the shape of Sunday trading there, where there is a free-for-all, as this Bill proposes. I found on a Sunday morning that it was no different from here. The only shops open were the small convenience shops. It looked the same as a Sunday morning here. But at 2 o'clock in the afternoon the big shops opened in the shopping centres and were open from two until six. Some of them were commencing sales they had advertised the previous night in the newspapers.
It was the busiest shopping day of the week. Consequently Sunday was completely destroyed by the afternoon trading. In my opinion that is what would happen if this Bill were carried in its unamended form. I believe that Sunday afternoon will become one of our busiest shopping days of the week, and the purpose of this amendment is to prevent that. I believe, after a lifetime of working in retailing, that if freedom to open until one o'clock is given the small shops would open but the large shops would not be interested; they are interested only in the afternoon trade. Because I believe that this would preserve the special character of Sunday, I commend this amendment to the Committee.
3.15 p.m.
Lord Denning: I have added my name to this amendment because it seems to me to be the nearest approach we can get to a reasonable compromise. Your Lordships' House and others are divided on this controversy. Is Sunday trading to be free for all, or are there to be restrictions so as to keep the character of our Sunday, if we can? This compromise comes the nearest to a sensible arrangement.
My noble friend Lord Jacques has explained the amendment, but let all shops open, if you please, until one o'clock. That deals with the great majority of shoppers who want to do their shopping on a Sunday morning for things they have forgotten, and the like. Let them be open unrestrictedly until one o'clock.
Then there are some needs, or demands, which ought to be supplied in the afternoon, whether it is for food, refreshment, drinks, or medical supplies and the

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like. This amendment suggests that there should be a list not put in the statute but in a statutory order which can be amended if need be. The Auld Report, considering suggestions such as this, said at paragraph 234:
"All the problems of anomalies and discrimination that currently plague the Sunday trading law would continue".
That is their principal objection to this limited suggestion here. There is an answer to this. It can be found in our VAT Act, the Finance Act 1972, which has to have a list of those goods which are zero rated and those which are exempted from zero rating. There are eight pages of them, and you can sort out, if you like, anomalies among them. It can be said, "You have to pay VAT if you go and get hot coffee from a takeaway shop but you do not have to pay VAT if you buy iced coffee". Those are the kind of anomalies which you can suggest in any system of this kind.
It works well in the VAT field, and indeed there is provision for easy amendment in that connection. The Treasury can, by order later, raise or exempt any of those lists. My noble friend Lord Jacques's proposal does not give a list at the moment. Let it be prepared by the Secretary of State. Let it be easily amendable, if need be, by statutory instrument. That is a remedy by which anomalies could easily be removed and which meets this argument about anomalies. The Jubilee Trust have put in a pamphlet they have issued a sensible, good list of exemptions suitable for the present day. That is the second suggestion: let there be other shops open after one o'clock which can deal with exempted articles.
That is the main burden of this amendment. Of course, holiday resorts can be dealt with as they were before, and all the incidentals taken care of. I would suggest, as between the two great camps of controversy in our land at the moment, that this is the nearest approach we can get to preserving the character of our Sunday as it ought to be preserved. Therefore, I support the amendment.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: On Second Reading a choice was admirably and clearly posed for your Lordships. One course was a Bill based on the Auld Report which had been endorsed by an overwhelming vote in another place; that was total deregulation. The alternative, clearly and admirably explained by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham, was that there should be partial deregulation. That amendment was rejected by a substantial majority. The choice made was total deregulation. Since then we have had amendment after amendment attempting to go back on that vote and to have a partial deregulation. This is the latest one of them.
There is a great deal wrong with this proposed new clause but, in fact, the conclusive answer is given in the clause itself in a subsection to which the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, did not refer. That is the last subsection, subsection (10), which reads:
"This section shall not extend to Scotland".
Why not?—because they do not want it, they do not need it. In Scotland, Sunday trading was once regulated. It was regulated by the two Scottish Acts referred to in Clause 1. It is now deregulated and has been deregulated because those restrictive Acts have been abrogated by referendum.
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The people of Scotland have voted with their hands and their feet against that regulation. Under Scottish law, as against English law, such amounts to an abrogation of a statute by the doctrine that goes by the name of desuetude. So at present we have unregulated Sunday shopping in Scotland and, although this Bill extends to Scotland, this new clause shall not extend to Scotland. Again I ask why not? Because they do not need it and they do not want it. If they do not want it, why should we want it? If they do not need it, why should we need it?
There is a great deal to be said against the clause but I wish to advert only to subsection (2). We have had now a number of schedules of exemptions. There is the one in the 1950 Act itself; there was the one put forward by the Jubilee Trust; there was one put forward by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham, which he withdrew; there was one put forward by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London and there was another put forward by the noble Viscount, Lord Brentford. None of them stood up to examination; so that it is not surprising that now no attempt is to be made to draw up a list of exempt goods which may be sold freely on a Sunday afternoon.
The whole problem is passed without guidance to the Secretary of State to make regulations, secondary legislation, on a matter of vital importance as we have been told, and the regulations cannot be amended by Parliament; they can be amended only subsequently by new regulations, new secondary legislation, tabled by the Secretary of State. What are these essential services and goods? At present petrol may be sold on Sunday afternoon under the Fifth Schedule to the 1950 Act. Is that essential? Perhaps. It was not so to our grandparents; but that is perhaps an arguable case. But also under the existing law intoxicating liquor can be sold on a Sunday afternoon, can be sold after one o'clock. Is that an essential good? Supposing that a Secretary of State puts that into his list. Will he not be made the subject of mockery that he says that alcoholic liquors are essential? Also under the existing schedule—
Lord Jacques: I wonder if the noble and learned Lord will give way. He is surely aware that liquor is governed by the Acts relating to the licensing laws. That has nothing whatever to do with the Shops Act.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: The noble Lord is perfectly right when he says that I am aware of the position. The licensing laws restrict the hours of opening. This restricts them further. They have something to do with the Shops Act because, under the Fifth Schedule to the 1950 Act, you will find in paragraph 1(a) "intoxicating liquor". There can be no question, in my respectful submission, that if this new clause were passed intoxicating liquor could not be sold on a Sunday after one o'clock. Notwithstanding that the licensing justices might wish it to be sold, it would be precluded by this measure.
Then, the next matter that catches my eye is tobacco and cigarettes and so on. Are cigarettes not to be sold on a Sunday afternoon? As a member of a Government who put out on every packet of cigarettes, on every advertisement, a Government health warning, is the Secretary of State expected to

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say that cigarettes are essential goods within the meaning of subsection (2) of the new clause? Of course not! So no cigarettes can be sold on a Sunday afternoon, can be sold after one o'clock. It is restrictive. I could go on. There are ice cream, confectionery and so on. They can be sold throughout Sunday at the moment. But under this new clause they will be able to be sold only if the Secretary of State puts his tongue in his cheek and certifies that sweets, ice cream and confectionery are essential.
There is a great deal more to be said against this new clause. The holiday resorts throw up a host of anomalies. Indeed, the Auld Report reported that the local shopkeepers in holiday resorts found the present law far too restrictive. This merely repeats the present law as to holiday resorts. But, in the end, we come back to that final subsection that the Act shall not apply to Scotland because they do not need it; they get on perfectly well with the total deregulation for which your Lordships voted on Second Reading. So I hope that the noble Lord the Minister will not accept this amendment.
3.30 p.m.
Lord Sainsbury: I shall detain members of the Committee very briefly. This amendment is a variant of Amendment No. 8, which has been withdrawn, with the addition, as has already been said, that essential goods and services can be provided later than 1 p.m. on Sundays as determined by Government order. The difficulty is fundamentally defining what are essential goods and services. As the Auld Committee put it, this would be at best tinkering with an unsatisfactory law and substituting one set of anomalies for another. There will always be the difficulty of enforcement, particularly when shops sell a wide range of goods. I personally cannot support this amendment.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: The noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, speaks, as the Committee know, with considerable authority on the subject. I follow him very much encouraged by what he has said and encouraged also by the fact that this helps me to overcome the diffidence which I always feel in disagreeing with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, for whom, like all your Lordships, I have the most profound respect.
In moving this amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, referred to it as a compromise. On matters on which opinions widely vary this Chamber is very often inclined to accept a compromise. But is it a compromise? The Bill is perfectly clear. It seeks to remove the restrictions on Sunday opening of shops, to clear away the elaborate series of restrictions which exist, and to make it cease to be a criminal offence to open a shop and to sell something to someone on a Sunday. The amendment proposes to continue that for a good deal of Sunday and then, subject to all sorts of qualifications, in the other parts of the day, goes against the whole principle and purpose of the Bill—that is, to clear up a matter which is becoming increasingly a scandal.
Your Lordships know that a great many shops open on a Sunday morning and afternoon, contrary to the law. More and more of them are doing so. The various
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authorities concerned, probably with a certain good sense, are not setting the law in motion against them; but I hope I am not old-fashioned in taking the view that it is a very unhappy thing to have a law which is not enforced. Your Lordships are now faced with the dilemma of either seeking to enforce a law which the great body of public opinion does not accept, or of clearing up the restrictions in toto. The amendment would prevent that happening.
I was particularly surprised at this choice of authorising shop opening before one o'clock and imposing the restrictions afterwards. In our earlier debates a number of your Lordships took the view, with which I had some sympathy, that one wished to make sure that those of one's fellow citizens—now alas! a diminishing section—who desire to attend church on Sunday morning should be free to do so. However, this amendment flies full in the face of that. If there is any force in the argument that employees in shops will be inhibited from attending church because the shop is open, they will find that this amendment does nothing to help them. If this becomes the law of the land then under it the shops will be open on Sunday morning, which is precisely the time that the great majority of those of us who do still attend church go to church. I should have been more impressed, though I am bound to say I should not have supported it, if the noble Lord had proposed an amendment in the contrary sense of closing the shops on Sunday morning and opening them after 1 p.m.
The objections to this go further. The proposal that a statutory instrument should authorise on Sunday afternoons the sale of such articles as the Secretary of State may specify must lead to endless confusion. Shops will open lawfully entitled to sell some of the things on their counters, but subject to the fact that they commit a criminal offence if they sell others. Who on earth will enforce that? Who on earth will go round to the shops and say, "Yes, you could have sold that; but you sold this and therefore you are a criminal, guilty of a criminal offence"? Surely the time has come to take the criminal law out of this matter altogether and to say that if someone opens a shop and somebody comes in to buy something that is a matter between them and not a matter with which the law and the state need concern themselves. Surely in this day and age the example of Scotland, to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, referred, is conclusive. If people want to shop and if shops are open to serve them why bring in the criminal law?
It is even more complicated than that. As I understand it, there is nothing in this amendment to prevent someone opening a shop, bringing in his employees, and carrying out stocktaking, so long as he does not actually sell one of the goods that the Secretary of State has not specified in a statutory instrument. That is quite plainly a recipe for further breaches of the law and for making it even more difficult than at present.
I was thinking over the weekend of the criminal law being brought into these matters. One cannot help speculating on a conversation in one of Her Majesty's prisons. One chap says to another, "What are you in for?" The reply is, "I'm in for rape. What are you in for?" The chap says, "I'm in for burglary". He says to a third, "What are you in for?" and receives the reply,

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"I did a very terrible thing. I opened a shop on a Sunday afternoon and sold goods to someone who wanted to buy".
Lord Mishcon: As has been said before, the position of those who have the privilege of sitting on the Benches behind me is that on the matter of policy as to whether or not there should be deregulated Sunday trading, from our point of view there is a free vote. What happens to shopworkers and their terms and conditions (I equally made it clear) is a matter of such concern to us that I freely and frankly say to the Committee that there we take a disciplined view.
What a complex web we weave! Arguments about Scotland; arguments about all sorts of matters affecting this amendment that we seem to miss the heart of the whole problem before us. This is a Bill which seeks to alter something—and nobody argues against this—which has been a tradition of this country for many, many centuries. There is no doubt about that, and there is no doubt that in spite of what the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, said with his usual clarity, eloquence and persuasiveness, there is no clamour for any alteration, although the noble Lord talks in terms of a scandal. I have not heard local authorities complaining in loud language—they have much to complain about these days—about Sunday trading or their difficulties in enforcing the law. Nor has the public whipped up any enthusiasm about trying to deregulate Sunday trading in spite of what has been said.
What we have achieved by this Bill—I make it clear that I am speaking personally—is a cleavage of opinion in our land which is extremely serious. Sincere views are held on both sides—I admit that at once—and I am in the position, as I have frankly said, of not thinking it very proper that I should advance any religious arguments. But one knows where the Bishops' Benches stand and the opinions expressed from those Benches deserve respect in this Chamber and in this land.
I have referred before to the need for care in dealing with the complete deregulation of Sunday trading. I have put the matter in a way which I believe is very near to your Lordships' hearts. There are the questions whether or not it is desirable in our society to have one day which is different from the rest of the week; whether it is important, too, that people who want to have quiet and tranquillity on that day which we have called the day of rest nationally are entitled to have it; whether those who wish to attend church and also to buy goods on Sunday can have some convenient arrangement made for them.
We have a complete cleavage in opinion in this country. Somebody of the eminence of Sir William Van Straubenzee said yesterday what a dreadful blunder the Government had made in putting this proposal forward. But have we not a genius—possibly to be exercised at a late hour in our deliberations, whatever the speeches might have been on Second Reading—for compromise? Is not this amendment the ideal opportunity for taking advantage of it? I would describe it as a lifeline thrown to the Government to avoid further bitter controversy, and if they throw away that lifeline they have only themselves to blame.
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What is wrong with saying, "Yes, unless employers have the decency to respect a conscientious objection, shopworkers may have to work on Sundays"? So many employees unfortunately do have to work on Sundays in the public services. That has been mentioned before and one knows it; but there are people who want to do other things on Sunday and keep it as a day of rest, or those who want to have a family day on Sunday. May I say in parenthesis that we have discussed in this Chamber so seriously the way in which much of our youth is behaving—a way that we find absolutely dreadful because a third of our youth by the age of 28 have found themselves in some sort of trouble with the courts: that is a Home Office figure. We have said deliberately that family life has possibly gone out of fashion and that is really one of the responsible factors out of many. Yet at this stage what we are going to do is to ruin the day which is the family day in so many homes—or, if it is not, it should be.
Those of us who do not want to see complete deregulation have made a concession for the reasons we have given. We can say, "All right; let all the shops open until Sunday". But then come the problems which people put forward as well as the great problem that we are faced with of a divided country on this issue, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, so rightly said.
One question asked was: Why do we not apply it to Scotland? Scotland is used to living its own life and we are told that it is not going to have its life interfered with at the present moment in regard to shopping conditions. If it finds that it wants this—and it may well do if we deregulate completely—then it will have its own chance of bringing forward legislation or regulations.
There are problems of drawing up a list and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, dealt with that effectively. If I may answer the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon, this amendment provides for consultation with church, with employers, with people in industry and with trade unions. I am absolutely sure that their cleverness, associated with the great wisdom of the Secretary of State, will be able to get over that. If there are inaccuracies or illogicalities, I will bear with them, as will many other people in this land, rather than see the complete deregulation that is proposed at the present moment. I hope this amendment will be supported.
3.45 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: I wish to make only a very brief speech directed to the amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, has really, intentionally as I understand it, made a Second Reading speech in which he quite frankly—and he is always frank with your Lordships—said that he is using the amendment as a lifeline (if I have it right) to the Government to enable them to reconsider the effect of the vote taken at Second Reading.
I cannot follow the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, along those lines and none of your Lordships would wish me to do so, because there does not seem much object in having a Second Reading if one has to reopen the whole process on an early amendment in Committee. All I wished to direct my speech to was

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the amendment itself and to say to your Lordships that its object is clearly inconsistent with the principle of deregulation of Sunday trading as established at Second Reading.
It was said—I think it was said by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, and not the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, but it matters not which—that this amendment was a compromise. Well, between what? It is certainly a compromise between the opposing views expressed on Second Reading which were put to the vote. Is it really the function of your Lordships' Committee to reopen a Second Reading principle point by a compromise which defeats the sense of the vote which was taken on Second Reading? Surely a much more profitable—
Lord Mishcon: I am sure the noble Lord, with his customary courtesy, will give way. He has done so and I am much obliged to him. So that we really knock this point on the head once and for all, when we have a general amendment at Second Reading it in no way rules out a particular amendment later. We voted on a principle of general amendment at Second Reading, without any opportunity of considering in detail an amendment such as this one which is now before us. It is perfectly proper for us to consider this at Committee stage.
Lord Campbell of Alloway: I hear what the noble Lord says and so does the Committee. I was not saying that it was improper. What I was asking was: what is the object of it? It is a total waste of the time of your Lordships' Committee. Surely it is more profitable to pursue the sort of line—here I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, about the shopworkers—of, say, Amendment No. 11, which in no way conflicts with the principle of the Bill and which would or could largely go to meet the traditions of the country established over the centuries, to which the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, referred and to which I understand his party is committed in a more formal way than to other aspects of the Bill. Certainly, it is an amendment which I state quite freely attracts me. But this amendment, Amendment No. 16, is contrary to the principle of the Bill and does not.
Lord Rochester: Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, I do not take the view that this amendment is a waste of time and I find myself in sympathy with the general argument advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon. At the Second Reading of the Bill, I said that, in my view, this matter of Sunday trading was one which called for as much consensus as could be found in this House. I do not doubt that with the aid of the Whips the Government could get this Bill through both Houses of Parliament substantially without amendment, but, in my opinion, they would be very unwise to do so in circumstances where there is so small a degree of consent within the country.
The noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, said, as I understood him, that the majority opinion within the country is in favour of deregulation. I do not doubt from recent polls that six out of 10 people, when asked whether or not they wanted complete deregulation, answered "Yes". But the substantial and growing
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minority of people within the country who, as I understand it, are opposed to this Bill feel very much more strongly in their view than do the others.
As I see it, it is desirable that in this House we should seek to strike a balance between the claims of various social groups—churchgoers, customers, large employers, small traders, the general body of shopworkers in particular, to follow the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway, those living near busy shopping centres, and so on. I believe that this amendment provides perhaps the last opportunity that we have in Committee to do just that. It seems to me to be more practicable than some other amendments that have been proposed. It would help small shopkeepers and, as the noble Lord, Lord Jacques, has already indicated, the effect of passing this amendment would be to limit the extent to which big stores would find it economically worthwhile to open. It would call for concessions from everybody, not excluding—to return to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter—those churchgoers who prefer to go to morning rather than to evening services. One argument which has been used—
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: Will the noble Lord allow me to intervene, because he referred to me? Surely the proposal in this amendment is that shops should open up to 1 p.m. Does that not exclude church attendance at the time that most people go to church on Sunday mornings for those called upon to work during those hours?
Lord Rochester: That is so. That is precisely why I said that it would call for some concession on the part of churchgoers, among others, who might feel obliged to attend evening services rather than morning services.
One argument used to support the removal of all restrictions on the employment of shopworkers has been that already lots of other people have to work on Sundays. But many of them do so in essential services or in industry where there is need for uninterrupted production. I can speak from experience here, because I worked for a long time in the chemical industry, where there was need for continuous process work. But there were elaborate shift rotas to ensure that people were not obliged to work for more than one Sunday in three or four. They were protected by strong unions, as I know very well from experience in negotiating with them in this area, and invariably they were paid at double-time rate.
The position of shop assistants is quite different. They are largely unorganised, they are dependent for protection on the Shops Act, which is in the process of being dismantled under this Bill, and on wages council orders. We are to have a wages council Bill, but we have little idea as to what is to be in that Bill. What we can be reasonably sure of, I suggest, is that the single overtime rate that is proposed will give shop assistants far less compensation for working on Sundays than is available to people doing that in industry. In any case, the fact that a good many people already have to work on Sunday seems to me to be no very good reason why more should, particularly when, as in this case, so many of them are women working part-time and with family responsibilities.

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If I may, I should like to make just two more points. In the interval between the time when we last discussed this matter and now, two things have happened to me which seem to me of significance. One is the degree of opposition to this Bill, which I found in my own home town of Northwich in Cheshire on the part of shopworkers working in both large stores and small shops. The other is the experience of attending a carol service in Chester Cathedral on the afternoon of the Sunday immediately before Christmas. I realised with a pang that it might be the last time that it would be possible for me to view that lovely city with its Rows, with the city walls, with the river and the cathedral precincts and so on in peace and quiet, rather than with the noise which, if this Bill is passed, will presumably be there on Sunday like any other day of the week. For those reasons, but particularly in order to achieve the consensus about which I took the liberty of speaking when I first rose, I very much hope that this amendment will be supported by a majority of the Committee.
Lord Sandford: I wonder whether I may just add somewhat to what the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, said about the attitudes of local authorities in these matters. The enforcement of this legislation is in the hands of 400 authorities. Sixty-seven of them are metropolitan district councils and 333 of them are district councils, and I am the president of the latter group. This is what the Auld Report said about the Association of District Councils:
"The ADC, which represents 333 district councils, all of which are responsible for enforcing the shops legislation, urged upon us that the whole of the Shops Act 1950 should be repealed, subject to new provision being made to protect the conditions of service of shopworkers. However, in doing so [the ADC] does not claim to reflect the views of all its members. We noted that on the question of unrestricted Sunday opening the district councils were almost evenly divided."
I do not quarrel with that. That is an accurate statement of the state of opinion in that association when this committee was gleaning its evidence. The councils were almost all totally agreed on the difficulties of enforcing this legislation and were evenly divided about their views on unrestricted Sunday opening.
When this report was published, the matter immediately came before the general service committee of the Association of District Councils who, having studied this, came to the unanimous view among themselves that this was legislation which should be supported. They remitted the matter to the policy committee of the Association of District Councils, which took a similar view. They remitted it to the council of the whole association, and at their meeting, which I personally attended, that view was adopted without a dissenting voice.
4 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Baroness Trumpington): This amendment would create so many problems that it is difficult to know where to start. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, gave us some examples in his sparkling speech. I suppose the first question that needs to be asked is why Sunday mornings are seen as acceptable for shopping
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but not Sunday afternoons. As my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter pointed out, it can hardly be to allow people to worship. It seems to be, on the face of it, to prevent family outings to garden centres, and so on, which is the most popular form of shopping on Sunday afternoons.
If we read on, however, we see that essential goods and services may be sold on Sunday afternoons if designated as such by the Secretary of State and approved by both Houses of Parliament. Is it really suggested that if you have a puncture at 12.30 on a Sunday it is acceptable for you to buy a spanner, but if you have a puncture at 1.30 it is only acceptable to buy one if the Secretary of State and Parliament decide that it is an essential item? Of course, if it is your son who has a puncture with his tricycle, presumably we shall need to debate whether tricycle tools are essential. The debates as to what are essentials promise to keep us very busy.
The noble Lord, Lord Sandford, has made the feelings of local authorities very clear, not only today but on previous amendments. Yet the amendment provides that local authorities may allow any shops to open on Sunday afternoons, whether or not they are providing essential goods or services, as long as the local authority area includes a district which is frequented as a holiday resort during certain times of the year. What areas. I wonder, do not have such a resort? It seems then that the Secretary of State and Parliament may not decide by order that ice-cream may be sold on Sunday afternoons but that local authorities may allow anything to be sold. It will be hard luck on retailers in an area which cannot claim to have a holiday resort. Of course, local authorities will have to keep records to ensure that if they allow shops to open on Sunday afternoons no one shop may open on more than 18 Sundays in the year; but it is not entirely clear why, on the other Sundays, to open shall be a criminal offence. I should have thought that the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, as a very distinguished lawyer, would have realised the difficulty in keeping this kind of thing under review.
The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, in a speech of purple prose, disputed that the public were in favour of the Bill. I dispute his conclusion. The noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, has said that on the matter of Sunday trading there is a cleavage in our land: yet polls have regularly shown that people want to go shopping on a Sunday and that they do go shopping on a Sunday whether or not it is legal so to do. The latest poll, published yesterday by the Co-operative Union, showed that 69 per cent. of people already shop on a Sunday, although this does not appear in the report which was published in The Times
Lord Mishcon: I am going to give the noble Baroness the Minister the rest she deserves in order that she can stop that cough, which worries all of us. Perhaps I may merely say to her that what I was talking about was a cleavage in the land about total deregulation or partial deregulation or no deregulation. There are three sections of opinion. At least we might be able to satisfy a couple of them, even if we cannot satisfy the third.
Baroness Trumpington: I hear what the noble Lord says. I still say that there is a clear majority in favour

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of total deregulation. More than one-third of us shop illegally already on a Sunday. There really is proof that overwhelming demand exists.
The amendment now before us is very familiar, at least to me. The noble Lord, Lord Jacques, as he said, proposed an almost identical amendment to my Private Member's Bill in 1982. That amendment was, as I recall, resoundingly defeated by 118 to 46. The only difference between that amendment and this one is that the one before us is more restrictive and thus less realistic than the one proposed four years ago. That one allowed local authorities to permit the sale of any goods after one o'clock. This one allows only essential goods and services to be sold after one o'clock, and only if the Secretary of State makes an order and only if that order is supported by affirmative resolutions in both Houses of Parliament. Noble Lords made the correct decision four years ago. I ask them not to hesitate in reaffirming that decision. I ask the Committee to reject this amendment.
Lord Jacques: I shall reply only on the issue of polls. The Co-operative Union did not take its own poll; it engaged a research company to do it. Among the many figures which have been revealed by the research company we have these few which I shall give to the Committee. First, only 15 per cent. wanted full deregulation on Sunday. Secondly, 39 per cent. were against any change whatever in the law relating to Sunday trading. Thirdly, 29 per cent. were in favour of Sunday morning only. They felt there should be change, but on Sunday morning only.
There are many things I could reply to but I believe that Members of the Committee have made up their minds on how they are going to vote. I shall be happy to test the feeling of the Committee.
4.7 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 16) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 94; Not-Contents, 153.

DIVISION NO. 1

CONTENTS

Airedale, L.

Dean of Beswick, L.

Amherst, E.

Denington, B.

Ardwick, L.

Denning, L.

Banks, L.

Derby, Bp.

Beaumont of Whitley, L.

Diamond, L.

Birmingham, Bp.

Durham, Bp.

Blease, L.

Elwyn-Jones, L.

Bylton, L.

Ewart-Biggs, B.

Bottomley, L.

Falkland, V.

Brentford, V.

Gallacher, L.

Brockway, L.

Galpern, L.

Bruce of Donington, L.

Gladwyn, L.

Campbell of Eskan, L.

Glenamara, L.

Carlisle, Bp.

Gloucester, Bp.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

Graham of Edmonton, L.

Chichester, Bp.

Greenway, L.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Hampton, L.

Coleraine, L.

Hatch of Lusby, L.

Collison, L.

Hereford, Bp.

Crawshaw of Aintree, L.

Heycock, L.

Dacre of Glanton, L.

Hunt, L.

David, B.

Ingleby, V.

Davies of Penrhys, L.

Irving of Dartford, L.

130

Jacques, L. [Teller.]

St. Albans, Bp.

Jenkins of Putney, L.

St. Edmundsbury and Ipswich, Bp.

John-Mackie, L.

Kagan, L.

Seear, B.

Kilbracken, L.

Serota, B.

Kirkhill, L.

Stallard, L. [Teller.]

Leatherland, L.

Stamp, L.

Leicester, Bp.

Stedman, B.

Lloyd of Kilgerran, L.

Stewart of Fulham, L.

Lockwood, B.

Stoddart of Swindon, L.

London, Bp.

Taylor of Blackburn, L.

McCarthy, L.

Taylor of Gryfe, L.

McNair, L.

Taylor of Mansfield, L.

Mishcon, L.

Turner of Camden, B.

Molloy, L.

Underhill, L.

Mulley, L.

Vaux of Harrowden, L.

Murray of Epping Forest, L.

Wallace of Coslany, L.

Nicol, B.

Wells-Pestell, L.

Oram, L.

Whaddon, L.

Porritt, L.

White, B.

Prys-Davies, L.

Wigoder, L.

Rhodes, L.

Williams of Elvel, L.

Ritchie of Dundee, L.

Winchester, Bp.

Rochester, Bp.

York, Abp.

Rochester, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Ailesbury, M.

Gray of Contin, L.

Airey of Abingdon, B.

Grey, E.

Alexander of Tunis, E.

Gridley, L.

Allenby of Megiddo, V.

Grimston of Westbury, L.

Allerton, L.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L.

Ampthill, L.

Annan, L.

Halsbury, E.

Auckland, L.

Hanworth, V.

Aylestone, L.

Harmar-Nicholls, L.

Bauer, L.

Harris of High Cross, L.

Belhaven and Stenton, L.

Hayter, L.

Beloff, L.

Henderson of Brompton, L.

Belstead, L.

Henley, L.

Bessborough, E.

Hives, L.

Boyd-Carpenter, L.

Hood, V.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Hooper, B.

Brookeborough, V.

Hunter of Newington, L.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Broxbourne, L.

Inglewood, L.

Bruce-Gardyne, L.

Killearn, L.

Butterworth, L.

Kimball, L.

Caccia, L.

Kinloss, Ly.

Caithness, E.

Lawrence, L.

Cameron of Lochbroom, L.

Long, V.

Campbell of Alloway, L.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Carnegy of Lour, B.

Luke, L.

Chelwood, L.

Lyell, L.

Chitnis, L.

McFadzean, L.

Colville of Culross, V.

McGregor of Durris, L.

Cork and Orrery, E.

MacLehose of Beoch, L.

Cottesloe, L.

Macleod of Borve, B.

Cox, B.

Mancroft, L.

Davidson, V.

Manton, L.

De Freyne, L.

Mar, C.

De La Warr, E.

Margadale, L.

Denham, L. [Teller.]

Marshall of Leeds, L.

Donaldson of Kingsbridge, L.

Maude of Stratford-upon-Avon, L.

Dowding, L.

Drumalbyn, L.

Merrivale, L.

Duncan-Sandys, L.

Mersey, V.

Effingham, E.

Molson, L.

Ellenborough, L.

Montgomery of Alamem, V.

Elliot of Harwood, B.

Morris, L.

Elliott of Morpeth, L.

Mottistone, L.

Elton, L.

Mountgarret, V.

Erroll of Hale, L.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Ezra, L.

Munster, E.

Fortescue, E.

Norrie, L.

Fraser of Kilmorack, L.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Gainford, L.

O'Brien of Lothbury, L.

Geddes, L.

Orkney, E.

Gibson-Watt, L.

Orr-Ewing, L.

Glanusk, L.

Pender, L.

Glenarthur, L.

Portland, D.

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Rankeillour, L.

Sudeley, L.

Renton, L.

Swansea, L.

Ridley, V.

Swinton, E. [Teller.]

Rochdale, V.

Terrington, L.

Romney, E.

Teviot, L.

Rugby, L.

Thomas of Swynnerton, L.

Sainsbury, L.

Thorneycroft, L.

St. Davids, V.

Todd, L.

Saltoun of Abernethy, Ly.

Tordoff, L.

Sanderson of Bowden, L.

Trefgarne, L.

Sandford, L.

Trenchard, V.

Sandys, L.

Trumpington, B.

Selkirk, E.

Tryon, L.

Sharpies, B.

Vivian, L.

Simon of Glaisdale, L.

Ward of Witley, V.

Skelmersdale, L.

Westbury, L.

Somers, L.

Whitelaw, V.

Stanley of Alderley, L.

Windlesham, L.

Stockton, E.

Winstanley, L.

Stodart of Leaston, L.

Wise, L.

Strabolgi, L.

Wolfson, L.

Strathcona and Mount Royal, L.

Wynford, L.

Yarborough, E.

Strathspey, L.

Young, B.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.
4.17 p.m.
Baroness Hooper: I beg to move that the House do now resume.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.

Aden: British Evacuation
4.18 p.m.
Baroness Young: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I shall now repeat a Statement on the evacuation from the People's Democratic Republic of the Yemen that is being made in another place by my right honourable and learned friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs. The Statement is as follows:
"With permission, Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a statement on the action being taken to secure the safety of British subjects and others in the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen.
"On the 13th January fighting broke out in Aden. The ferocity of the fighting presented grave risks to the safety of British subjects. In those circumstances, and with the full agreement of Her Majesty the Queen, the Royal Yacht 'Britannia', which was just leaving the Red Sea, was ordered to remain off Aden; Her Majesty's ships 'Newcastle' and 'Jupiter', with the Royal Fleet Auxiliary 'Bramblelear, were ordered to Aden at full steam in case they were needed for an evacuation.
"The situation in the country continued to deteriorate and the level of fighting approached that of a civil war. After close consultation with the Russians and French, both in Aden and in the capitals, it was agreed that evacuation was necessary and that as far as possible our efforts should be co-ordinated. On the 17th January, Soviet merchant vessels lifted off from Aden about 1,000 people, mostly their own nationals. On the same day, the Royal Yacht took off 450 people, 38 of
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them British—44 nationalities altogether. Eighty-one French nationals were then transferred to a French ship, and the rest of the evacuees were taken on 'Britannia' to Djibouti. The Royal Yacht then returned to the area and on the 19th January lifted off a further 209 people from an area 35 miles from the capital. Eighteen of them were British. These have since arrived in Djibouti, after transferring to HMS 'Jupiter'. I am now very pleased to be able to add that 'Britannia' has this morning picked up a further 15 British nationals from Little Aden. 'Britannia' is maintaining close contact with the vessels of the other nations involved and remains offshore nearby to take on board further parties of British and other foreign nationals as soon as conditions permit.
"So far no British subjects have been hurt. However, a number of British subjects still remain in South Yemen and we are continuing to work out with other governments the best ways of evacuating these widely scattered communities.
"On the evening of 17th January, when the embassy and residence had been rendered uninhabitable, the Ambassador, Mr. Arthur Marshall, decided that he should withdraw all members of the embassy. At the end of the evacuation, he accompanied those on board to Djibouti but then returned on 'Britannia' to the area, where he will remain with a member of his staff while the evacuation continues. Another member of his staff is on board HMS 'Newcastle'.
"The success of the evacuation so far would not have been possible without the help given by a number of governments, and in particular the governments of Djibouti, the USSR and France. This has been a remarkable demonstration of what can be achieved through close international cooperation, and I take this opportunity to thank them warmly for their assistance.
"I should like to express my gratitude to all the staff of the Ministry of Defence and of the Diplomatic Service, at home and abroad, who have been involved in this operation. I should also like to thank our Honorary Consul in Djibouti, Mr. Christopher Reddington. I know too that the whole House will join me in praising the calmness and efficiency of our Ambassador in Aden, his staff, and their families throughout this difficult period.
"Their example has been matched by the fortitude of the British evacuees who helped to organise the evacuation of hundreds of other nationals and who set an example of disciplined behaviour throughout.
"This is the first time that the Royal Yacht has been involved in an operation of this sort. It has received magnificent support from Her Majesty's ships 'Newcastle' and 'Jupiter' and Royal Fleet Auxiliary 'Brambleleaf', with its merchant navy crew. I should like to pay tribute to Rear-Admiral John Gamier and all the officers and crew involved for the courage and professionalism they have shown in carrying out this operation in conditions of danger and difficulty. We can all be proud of them."
My Lords, that concludes the Statement.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Young, for repeating the Statement. The events that have been taking place in South Yemen, which have left up to 9,000 people either dead or wounded, are disgraceful and deplorable. We join in the expressions of sympathy to those who have been through this ordeal and we pay our warmest tribute to those who have participated in the rescue missions, especially the captains and crews of HMS 'Britannia', HMS 'Newcastle', HMS 'Jupiter' and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary 'Brambleleaf'. Their conduct has been exemplary throughout. We also warmly endorse the tribute paid in the Statement to the ambassador and his staff.
We note the number of people who have been rescued thus far. Can the noble Baroness say exactly how many British citizens remain in danger in South Yemen? May we assume that the four ships will remain in the area and be available if necessary to continue in rescue missions even after all the Britons are safely evacuated? We are also grateful that close and effective international co-operation has been possible, and we support what the noble Baroness said about that.
Finally, will the noble Baroness confirm that the immediate objective should be to secure a return to stability in South Yemen? Does she see any hope of this? Have Her Majesty's Government been in touch with the Soviet Government on the matter as it appears from the reports we have read that they would also like to see an end to the fighting? Is it possible that we might co-operate with France and our other allies in making this necessary approach?
The Viscount of Falkland: My Lords, we on these Benches also thank the noble Baroness for repeating the Statement which has been made in another place today. I hope that I may be excused for waxing rather patriotic on this Statement because I think it is a great pleasure to welcome an episode which reflects so well on the British in every respect. It is seldom that we have an opportunity to do so these days with so many gloomy and distressing events given prominence in the press and on television. The exercise—as anyone who listened to the radio this morning will have heard from the account of Rear-Admiral Garnier—was carried through with the utmost good humour, efficiency, and courage by all concerned.
Her Majesty the Queen must be thanked, as has been most eloquently expressed in the Statement, for her gracious permission to use the Royal Yacht.
Another aspect which we greatly welcome is the co-operation between other governments and our Government in putting their shoulders to the wheel and carrying through something without bickering and recriminations.
However, the one aspect which really strikes us here—and I hope all noble Lords will share my sentiments—is that there have been some British attributes and British characteristics shown which exist today in no mean measure but which are often little recognised. I can name a handful. I put compassion first, with resourcefulness, courage, good humour and efficiency. All these have been shown. They are held not only by members of the Armed Forces and are not confined to admirals, guardsmen,
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politicians or to trade union leaders; they are held in full measure across our society. There are certain sections in our society—particularly the young—where these qualities are also held in good measure. I hope that this episode will give heart to the young who, it is to be hoped, will be given the opportunity in the not too distant future to be able to show these fine qualities.
Baroness Young: My Lords, I should like to thank both the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, and the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, for their very good, kind and positive reception to this Statement. In what they said they reflect what we all feel in the recognition of, and our sympathy for, those who have had to leave South Yemen, and our tribute to those who are responsible for their rescue. I was glad to hear the tributes paid to our ambassador and his staff in Aden as well as to those responsible in the Royal Navy and the merchant navy for what they have done.
I think we all recognise the very important role played by her Majesty the Queen and are glad to pay our tribute to her.
The noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, asked a number of questions about the Statement. He asked about the number of British citizens who remain. It is difficult to give an exact figure because not all visitors are registered at the embassy, but from inquiries from British companies and from the de-briefing of evacuees we think the figure is likely to be about 40.
The noble Lord asked about the ships. Yes, my Lords, as I understand it the ships will remain in the area while they have some useful work to do in evacuation. As regards 'Britannia', Her Majesty the Queen has expressed her great satisfaction that 'Britannia' has been used to evacuate so many people from the South Yemen and is very content for 'Britannia' to remain for as long as necessary.
It is very difficult to say what the long-term future will be. At present the situation on the ground is very confused. The trouble appears to be caused by personal and tribal rivalries rather than political and ideological differences. However, I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, that we have been in touch not only with the Soviet Union but with the French over the whole situation.

Stanley Royd Hospital: Food Poisoning Report
4.29 p.m.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I should like to repeat a Statement being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Social Services. The Statement is as follows:
"I am this afternoon publishing the report of the Committee of Inquiry into the outbreak of food poisoning at Stanley Royd Hospital, Wakefield.
"Stanley Royd is a large hospital in Wakefield for mentally ill and psychogeriatric patients. In a major outbreak of salmonella food poisoning which began on 26th August 1984, 355 patients and 106 members of staff were affected. Food poisoning caused, or contributed to, the deaths of 19 patients.

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At the time of the outbreak and subsequently a number of allegations were made of errors in the control of infection, of poor standards of hygiene in the hospital kitchen and of other shortcomings.
"I announced in September 1984 that I was setting up a public inquiry into the outbreak under the chairmanship of Mr. John Hugill, QC. The other members of the inquiry were Professor Rosalinde Hurley and Mr. Patrick Salmon. The committee heard oral evidence between February and May 1985. They submitted their report to me last month. I am most grateful to the chairman and members of the committee for all their work on this complex inquiry.
"The report gives a detailed account of the background to the outbreak and its course and of the actions taken by National Health Service staff.
"The committee conclude that the cause of the outbreak was salmonella which was probably brought into the kitchen in contaminated chickens, and that cold roast beef was the most likely vehicle of infection. This infection was able to multiply because the beef was not properly refrigerated. The committee found that a number of unhygienic and unsatisfactory practices had grown up in the hospital kitchen.
"The report pays tribute to the work of the junior doctors on duty during the early days of the outbreak and the care given by nursing staff on the wards. These staff were working under very difficult conditions and their efforts were in the highest traditions of their professions.
"The committee make criticisms on a number of matters. In particular, they comment on the failure to ensure satisfactory management of the kitchen at the hospital. They criticise medical and nursing management and in particular the failure to seek, or accept offers of, help from outside specialists, both in the investigation of the outbreak and in the treatment of the patients affected by it. The regional health authority and some officers at regional and district level are criticised for failing fully to inform themselves firsthand of the situation once the outbreak had occurred.
"Since the outbreak Wakefield Health Authority have made a number of improvements in the kitchen and its management. I am now instructing them and the Yorkshire Regional Health Authority to consider all the points raised by the report and to report to me urgently on the action they have taken and propose to take in response to them. That response must cover the position of those people whose conduct may have contributed to these tragic events and the steps taken to ensure that such events do not recur.
"The report identifies serious failures of supervision and management. General managers have now been appointed by the Yorkshire Regional Health Authority and Wakefield Health Authority. As in all authorities, these managers carry clear and personal responsibility for securing effective action.
"A number of comments were made on the position at Stanley Royd prior to and during the
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inquiry. One of these concerned finance. On this the report says that it was not their
'view that the question of financial restraints or constraints above the level of the Region were relevant to any of the issues which we had to consider and, in taking this view, we are supported by the evidence given by the witnesses from the Yorkshire Regional Health Authority'.
"Another suggestion was that Crown premises like hospitals should be subject to the general food legislation. However, the report states that in the case of Stanley Royd the evidence did not support the need for the abolition of Crown immunity. The report says:
'We find it impossible to recommend any change in the law on the vexed question of Crown immunity where the entirety of the evidence given to us by the professional environmental health officers was to the effect that the sanctions of the criminal law would not have been employed in respect of the kitchen at Stanley Royd, even if they had been available'.
The Government will nevertheless continue the urgent review of Crown immunity for hospital kitchens including the suggestion in the report that a 'Crown Notice' form of procedure should be initiated.
"The majority of the report's formal recommendations are aimed at improving standards of hygiene in hospital kitchens and improving the investigation and control of any future outbreaks. The committee recognise that the departmental guidance on food hygiene in hospitals is basically sound and recommend that health authorities should be reminded of its terms. We had already done that before the report was received.
"In addition, I am urgently reviewing departmental guidance to health authorities on the steps they must take to ensure proper food hygiene in hospitals and to ensure that environmental health officers are encouraged to visit and that proper regard is paid to their recommendations. In doing so, I shall take full account of the Stanley Royd committee's recommendations.
"I am referring the recommendations about the arrangements for the control of infection and the handling of outbreaks to the Hospital Infection Working Group. This group was set up last summer to advise on the revision of departmental guidance on control of infection and I am asking them to give highest priority on contingency plans for dealing with outbreaks of infection—plans that will ensure that specialist help is brought in as soon as it is needed.
"There can be no doubt at all about the continuing need for proper provision of public health and community medicine advice within the management structure of the health service. The functions of the specialty of community medicine include not only the control of infectious diseases but the assessment of the needs of populations for health care, the planning and evaluation of health services and responsibility for prevention and health promotion.
"I have therefore decided that it would be right to establish an inquiry into the future development of the public health function, including the control of communicable diseases and the specialty of community medicine in England. The inquiry will be a broad and fundamental examination of the role

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of public health doctors including how such a role could best be fulfilled. The inquiry will be chaired by the Government's Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Donald Acheson, and I expect to receive its report before the end of the year. Details of membership will be finalised shortly. In the meantime, we will take every step possible to prevent a recurrence of these tragic events."
That concludes the Statement, my Lords.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for repeating the Statement made by her right honourable friend, in spite of her cold which I hope gets better soon. May I also thank Mr. Hugill and his colleagues for the thoroughness of their report?
The facts of the case were appalling. It was a major outbreak of salmonella food poisoning affecting 355 patients and 106 members of staff, with the tragedy of 19 people dying. It is a frightening story of neglect leading to avoidable deaths. I suspect that this is the worst case of salmonella poisoning, with the highest number of deaths, in the history of the National Health Service. I wonder whether the noble Baroness can confirm that.
The Statement must be seen in the context of the report last year by environmental health officers stating that 97 hospital kitchens they had examined would have been closed and legal action instigated had it not been that hospitals are covered by Crown immunity. The Statement must also be considered in the light of last night's World in Action, which may have been seen by some noble Lords, which gave a picture of hospital kitchens being in an appalling state of dirtiness, with in some cases rats, mice and cockroaches. That is a lamentable situation. If one cannot expect good clean food in a hospital, to what sort of catering department should one turn?
May I put a number of questions to the noble Baroness? First, why has there been what seems to be a delay in publishing this report? The inquiry ended on 17th May last year, and The Times the following day said that the report was likely to be in the hands of the Minister of Health by August. Was it? If it was, why was it not published months ago?
Secondly, I warmly welcome the decision announced by the noble Baroness that there is to be established an inquiry into the future development of the public health function including the control of communicable diseases and the specialty of community medicine in England. I say that in the light of what is said in relation to the recommendation on page 110 of the report:
"We were told that 10 per cent. of patients admitted to hospital with no evidence of infection"—
this was not to Stanley Royd Hospital but to hospitals in general—
"have their progress in hospital complicated by an infection contracted as a direct result of their stay there".
This seems to be an utterly appalling fact. One must suppose that they thought it true; otherwise, they would not have published it. I quote it because it shows the urgency of the study that the Secretary of State is to set up.
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Thirdly, will the noble Baroness say more about the question of Crown immunity? As she has said, the report states:
"We find it impossible to recommend any change in the law on the vexed question of Crown immunity".
I should like to know whether she knows why they found it impossible to do so. Of course, it would be possible to do so if they had chosen to do so. If the noble Baroness cannot explain why they found it impossible to do so, perhaps she can say what is the Government's view on an issue that has been frequently aired with a degree of urgency in this House. The Statement read by the noble Baroness said:
"The Government will nevertheless continue the urgent review of Crown immunity for hospital kitchens including the suggestion in the report that a 'Crown Notice' form of procedure should be initiated".
Why has this study not been completed? How urgent is "urgent" if, after all these many months, the Government cannot reach a conclusion on a situation that seems to most of us to be apparent and is now crucial, with all the mounting evidence of inadequately maintained hospital kitchens?
I should like, if I may, to put two more questions to the noble Baroness concerning the management of the situation in the Stanley Royd Hospital at the time. Will she confirm that when staff asked that a nearby hospital, the Snapethorpe Hospital, an old isolation hospital closed down during the cuts, should be used to isolate infected patients, especially the elderly and the frail, the management rejected this request, and that as a result only 3 out of 32 wards escaped infection?
My fifth and last question is this. Will the noble Baroness confirm that in such a situation normal instructions are that staff should only go back to work after three consecutive negative tests, but that at Stanley Royd, because of a staff shortage, which this report fully recognises, they were told to go back to work before they were over the illness, some even while giving positive tests? This seems a really appalling situation. I hope that the noble Baroness will forgive me if I say that the Statement that she read—not drafted, but read—did really seem to be rather complacent in view not just of the situation itself but of a situation that has become apparently a national one subsequent to the Stanley Royd disaster.
4.45 p.m.
Lord Winstanley: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friends on these Benches I should like to join the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, in thanking the noble Baroness for repeating this very important and indeed alarming Statement, particularly as I understand she has some difficulties at the moment. I hope that the length of the Statement—it is unusually long—indicates the seriousness with which the Government regard the contents of the report. I should like, too, to join with the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, in thanking the chairman, Mr. John Hugill, and his colleagues, for the expedition and the very thorough way in which they have inquired into these extremely complex and difficult matters. They have done that with greater expedition than the Government have perhaps shown in bringing the report to us. It was, of course, a very small committee. In that connection, I can perhaps say that the nature of the report points in part to the

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wisdom of appointing a very small committee in order to inquire into a matter of this degree of importance and seriousness.
As to the action to be taken, I certainly welcome the news in the Statement that new guidance is to be given to area health authorities regarding hygiene practices and standards in hospitals. It seems to me that there was nothing much wrong with the old guidance, save that no notice was taken of it. If more notice is taken of the new guidance, that is surely a good thing. We know from the report that the environmental health officer for Wakefield had warned the Stanley Royd Hospital over and over again regarding the deficiencies in hygiene practices and standards within the hospital. But no action was taken at all save the action taken by the bacterium, salmonella typhimurium, with the disastrous results that the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, has described.
I note that we are also to have a further inquiry. I welcome that, particularly as the further inquiry is to look into the future development of the public health function, including the control of communicable diseases and the specialty of community medicine in England. Here, there has clearly been a breakdown in communication, and at a very important stage. This further inquiry rather reminds me of the days before 1948, at the time of the old municipal hospitals, when we then had medical officers of health who were responsible to the same authorities. I worked in three of those old municipal hospitals in which the buildings, frankly, were deplorable, were antiquated and were in need of much work. But the medical officer of health for the area was very closely related to the hospital. There was no way, in those days, that any recommendation that he made would have been ignored in the way that the recommendations of the environmental health officer for Wakefield were ignored in the case of the Stanley Royd Hospital. I hope, therefore, that the further inquiry into that matter will see to it that communication between public health services and those who actually provide health care is very much closer.
I am also very interested in what has been said about Crown immunity. That must certainly be looked into further. I can perhaps ask the noble Baroness whether much thought has been given to the position of Crown immunity or otherwise with regard to hospitals in which catering and cleaning services have been privatised. Is it a fact that the privatised workers in those particular capacities, who are very important from a hygienic point of view, enjoy the same kind of immunity as apparently do those in this particular hospital? I should like an answer to that.
But, my Lords, what we need is not all these inquiries: we need action. I am very sorry, but clearly there have been deficiencies by the employees in this hospital. It should be understood, however, that in this hospital they were working in appalling conditions. To me, it seems a little disturbing and contradictory that only yesterday we were discussing spending billions of pounds on two tunnels under the English Channel—about the merits of which I say nothing—but apparently we cannot put hospital kitchens in order so that people do not die from salmonella.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, may I first say to both the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, and the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, that the Government thoroughly share the revulsion of, I imagine, all noble Lords at this report. In no way are the Government complacent about the findings, or about the future.
The first question that the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, asked concerned Crown immunity. The conclusion of the committee, as it says in paragraph 232, is:
"… we find it impossible to recommend any change in the law on the vexed question of Crown immunity where the entirety of the evidence given to us by the professional environmental health officers was to the effect that the sanctions of the criminal law would not have been employed in respect of the kitchen at Stanley Royd, even if they had been available".
In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, it is true that poor buildings did not help. But, as the report says, one can get bad hygiene in modern buildings. This was a case of bad hygiene.
With regard to the programme on Granada television last night, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has asked for an urgent report from the health authorities concerned, and has made it clear that whatever action needs to be taken should be taken without delay. Furthermore, there is a meeting of all regional health authority chairmen next week with my right honourable friend and this whole matter will be fully discussed by my right honourable friend and his team of Ministers.
I believe that this is the worst outbreak but I cannot totally confirm that. There was no delay in publication. The report reached Ministers last month.
With regard to the 10 per cent. infection rate in hospitals, the best available information about the position in this country is based on a survey carried out by the public health laboratory service in 1981. This showed that 9.2 per cent. of patients were suffering from hospital-acquired infections. A slightly larger proportion, 9.9 per cent., of patients were suffering from community-acquired infections; in other words, they had them before they went into hospital. It is important to bear in mind that not all hospital-acquired infection is preventable. It would be impossible to reduce it to zero. The problem exists worldwide. The use of comparative information is unreliable but it would suggest that this country's performance is about average for advanced countries.
Apart from issuing a great deal of technical advice on specific issues the department has set up the Hospital Infection Working Group to revise our guidance to management on day-to-day infection control and handling serious outbreaks.
With regard to the question of moving the patients to Snapethorpe, I think I can do no better than quote from the report, at paragraph 160, which says:
"In our opinion the suggestion that Snapethorpe Hospital should have been re-opened is wholly devoid of merit. The diversion and redeployment of nursing, domestic and ancillary staff from Stanley Royd at this time, and on the scale required, solely in order to provide an isolation or admission unit of 12 beds, would have been a gross error of judgment and added an enormous burden to a staff already stretched to the limit".
That perhaps wraps that question up.
I think that I have covered the various points made by the two noble Lords.
Lord Winstanley: My Lords, there was the question with regard to the cleaning and catering services.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, could the noble Lord repeat it?
Lord Winstanley: My Lords, the question was with regard to the position of Crown immunity in relation to those cleaning and catering services in hospitals which have been privatised.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, that position did not apply in this hospital. We would have to find out the general situation in order to see how that applies.
Baroness Bacon: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that, as I have lived the whole of my life within two or three miles of Stanley Royd Hospital, I realise only too well the appalling tragedy which happened in our area and the suffering not only of the patients but of the relatives of patients who were in the hospital at the time? Is the noble Baroness also aware that I am personally acquainted with the doctors, nurses, patients and others at the hospital, and, in spite of this tragedy, I feel that the patients are receiving all the medical care and attention from doctors and nurses which they would receive in other hospitals?
Is the noble Baroness further aware that I was interested to hear that the report—which I have not yet read—says that finance did not enter into this? I find that rather hard to believe because this happens to be one of the old Victorian hospitals—like so many others in the country—that need either demolishing and rebuilding or a great deal of money being spent on them.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, may I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bacon, for her remarks about the care of patients in the hospital. I think that she will see that the report bears out what she said about the excellent nursing and care which the staff and the junior doctors always give to patients there. On behalf of the department I should like to add warmly to the praise of those people who, at a time of great difficulty, worked magnificently and always cared for the patients.
Lord Auckland: My Lords, may I add to the tributes expressed to the noble Baroness the Minister on the report itself, which I have not seen because it has only just been published. Will the noble Baroness accept that those who watched last night's "World in Action" programme—and particularly those of us who are concerned with long-stay hospitals—will have been very disturbed by much of what was contained in the programme?
May I put one question to my noble friend? As I say, I have not seen the report. The programme concentrated very largely on the problems of ventilation particularly in the catering departments. Can the noble Baroness say what emphasis the Government will put on making sure that kitchens and other places where food is stored are properly ventilated or air conditioned so that contamination is much less of a risk than at the present time?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I am grateful for the point made by my noble friend Lord Auckland. Of course, the Government are taking into consideration all the issues arising from the report which include ventilation, refrigeration, making sure that cooked and uncooked food is not kept together, making sure that raw poultry is not kept near meat, and a great many other recommendations in the report.
While I am on my feet, may I say to the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, regarding a reference to my difficulties that I simply have 'flu. I am not having any difficulty in answering these questions.
Lord Boothby: My Lords, in view of the growing public anxiety over the state of hygiene in the kitchens of our national hospitals, may I ask the noble Baroness whether there is any valid reason why, even if Crown immunity—the exemption from criminal penalties—should be preserved, such immunity should preserve these kitchens from periodic inspections and reports on the state of hygiene, similar to those which are made in private hospitals?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, at the moment Crown immunity operates not only for hospitals but for prisons—and indeed your Lordships' House. All such places which come under Crown immunity have been told to welcome environmental health officers whenever they wish to come; and that their reports should be published. The fact is that the Stanley Royd report has only just come out. No district health authorities have as yet seen it. I am sure it is the hope of my department that this report is studied very carefully by the districts and the regions, and that the lessons will be well and thoroughly learnt.
5 p.m.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, I too join the other speakers in supporting the facts that have been made public today. Briefly, I should like to put two matters to the Minister. I believe that the report criticised quite directly both the district health authority and the Yorkshire Regional Health Authority. Is the Minister aware that, within days of this tragedy happening, the Yorkshire Evening Post produced an extensive report showing that the Yorkshire region as a whole has a far higher incidence of salmonella poisoning than any other regional health authority? Will the noble Baroness bring that to the notice of the committee which is being set up to hold the general inquiry in order to discover why that is the case?
Finally, the Minister made a point about environmental health officers for the local authority district involved offering their help and being refused access. It is about time that the Government reviewed the appointment of local councillors as chairmen of health authorities, irrespective of their political affiliations. There will be times like this—there have been in the past and there will be again—when the interests of the two are on a collision course. I submit that it is impossible for a prominent councillor of any particular political colour also to be the chairman of the local health authority and to carry out that task impartially.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, perhaps I may clear up one matter. I said that the findings of environ-

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mental health officers are published. I am not totally correct on that. Consideration is being given to publishing their findings.
The noble Lord, Lord Dean, asked me some questions and I am doing my best to answer them. With regard to the staff who were criticised in the report, which concerns his first question—
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, I referred to the regional health authority, not the staff.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, as I said previously, the authority will not have seen this report until today. Ministers will see the members of the authority this week to discuss the action to be taken on the report, and this will cover individual responsibility. Any disciplinary action is a matter for the authority and an appeal can be entered. Is the noble Lord anxious to hear my answers, because if he is not I will sit down and we can get on with the Shops Bill.
I do not think that it would be right for me to express any opinion on local councillors serving on health authorities, but I am quite sure that the noble Lord's remarks will be noted.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I should like briefly to return to two points made by the noble Baroness. The first is on the question of Crown immunity, and the noble Baroness quoted from the report. Inevitably she was selective, and that is no criticism of her. Paragraph 232, to which the noble Baroness referred, states that it would be wrong:
"for us to base any such recommendations on hearsay, second-hand or outdated information, or belief as to the position outside Stanley Royd".
Therefore, part of the reason that the report makes no recommendation on this matter is that the members of the committee were studying Stanley Royd and not the whole question.
Secondly, I referred to complacency and the noble Baroness said that there was no complacency. However, is she aware that illness from bacterial food poisoning in hospitals has increased fourfold since 1981 to over 1,000 cases a year? Is not this a very serious issue?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I take the point that the committee was looking at Stanley Royd with regard to Crown immunity, but that is the object of this Statement. With regard to bacterial food poisoning in hospitals, I hear what the noble Lord says.
Lord McCarthy: My Lords, will the noble Baroness not agree that although we know that Crown immunity has existed for a very long time, we do not know why it continues to exist? What is the justification for it?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I have already said that Ministers are very seriously examining the question of the continuance of Crown immunity. I certainly do not know its origin any more than I know why no noble Lord may die in the House of Lords.

Shops Bill [H.L.]
5.6 p.m.
House again in Committee.
Clause 2 [Removal of restrictions on working hours of adult shop assistants etc.]:
[Amendments Nos. 16A to 18A not moved.]
Baroness Turner of Camden Baroness Turner of Camden moved Amendment No. 18B:
Page 1, line 13, leave out ("eighteen") and insert ("sixty five").
The noble Baroness said: I beg to move the amendment standing in my name on the Marshalled List. I should like to commence by telling the Committee that my own position with regard to total deregulation when it comes to shop hours is resolutely against. I personally believe that the tradition of keeping one day a week in some sense special is valuable. I say that even though I am not a religious person or a churchgoer. If the special status of Sunday disappears, it will have a spin-off effect upon a far wider number than just those who work in shops and their prospective customers.
There is a complex infrastructure of production, distribution and administration which is responsible for the goods reaching the shops so that they can be sold. People working in this infrastructure will inevitably also be affected. I do not think that it will be to their advantage. That is my personal view.
However, I acknowledge that arguments have been made earlier in discussions on this Bill in favour of greater freedom of choice for the consumer. Such arguments have their attractions. Even so, I am quite sure that there are many in this Committee who will agree, irrespective of their views on deregulation as such, that freedom for one section of the population should not be bought at the expense of exploitation of another.
This is where I commend my amendment to the Committee. There is no reason why it should not attract support even from those who disagree with me about deregulation. What does it seek to do? It seeks to retain for all shopworkers the very limited protections in the Shops Act 1950. Indeed, the retention of this protection could be achieved without prejudice to the main purpose of the Bill. For what minimum protections does the Shops Act 1950 provide? It contains the following rights for all shopworkers, and I emphasise "all": the right to at least one half-day off per week; lunch breaks of at least 45 minutes in the shop or one hour outside the shop; a dinner break of at least 30 minutes and breaks of at least 20 minutes every six hours at other times; lunches to be between 11.30 a.m. and 2.30 p.m. and dinners between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m.; and the right to days off in lieu for Sunday workers, although there are some exceptions in certain trades.
If the Bill is enacted unamended, all those fairly basic and far from generous rights will be restricted to 16 and 17-year-olds alone. Why only them? Around 2 million people work in shops. They are among the lowest paid sections of the workforce. In 1984, 83 per cent. of female full-time workers earned less than £100 a week, and one quarter of women full-timers received

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less than £75 per week. Nearly 40 per cent. of shopworkers are part-timers, and many will already be disenfranchised from mainstream employment rights anyway because they work less than 16 hours a week.
The proposed repeal of the employment protection sections of the Shops Act, together with the proposed removal of many important aspects of wages council provision, will leave shopworkers wholly unprotected against the possibility of exploitively long working hours. As the Shops Bill stands now it will rescind both the trading hours restrictions and most of the employment safeguards contained in the Shops Act 1950.
It should be emphasised that Section 22 of the 1950 Act does not of itself prohibit Sunday employment. All it does is to give shopworkers the modest right to equivalent time off in the following week to balance the time worked on Sunday. The Act also limits the numbers of successive Sundays that an employee has to work by restricting Sunday working to two Sundays a month. These are reasonable protections for shopworkers, most of whom already work a five-day week, and the protections do not interfere—and I emphasise "do not interfere"—with the main intentions of the Bill.
As to the other sections of the 1950 Act, given that many shopworkers work from Monday through to Saturday, it is difficult to see what objection there can be to the right to a weekly half-day. The same can be said in relation to Section 19 of the Act, which gives a minimum 20-minute break for workers employed for more than six hours, as well as a legally enforceable lunch break and a meal break for early evening working. If that section is repealed it will mean that there will be no legislative protection governing breaks at work.
In case it should be said that there is no case for treating shopworkers in any special way and for giving them special legislative protection not accorded to other groups of workers, let me say that there has been a long tradition in this country of giving special protection where there is special vulnerability. That is why we have developed wages councils. They are currently under review, but nevertheless they have provided the poorest paid and least well organised with some basic protection in the past.
In case it is said that the regulation of terms and conditions of employment in this industry, as in so many others, is a matter between unions and employers, let me say that this is a difficult area in which to organise. It is very poorly organised indeed. There are many transient workers, there is a high turnover, and in any event the unions do not now currently have much legislative provision when it comes to helping them to organise and to gain recognition for workers once they are organised. It is a difficult area, and poorly organised. The repeal of the sections of the Shops Act in relation to all workers will have far reaching effects on the quality of life of nearly one in 10 of the workforce.
Again I stress that protection could be achieved without damage to the main thrust to Clause 1 of the Bill. There has been repeated reference during the debate to the Auld Report. May I quote one section of
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the Auld Report? This is what the committee said in 1985.
"Shopworkers need their protection … as much as ever, in fact more so now when jobs are harder to find and the already low membership of unions in the retail sector is declining. We have all been struck by how poorly paid many retail workers are."
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: I am sorry to intervene, but I did not get what paragraph the noble Baroness was quoting from.
Baroness Turner of Camden: I am afraid I cannot tell the noble and learned Lord that. I do not have the reference.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: I shall find it.
Baroness Turner of Camden: I hope that we are not going to be less compassionate, less civilised, and less caring today than our predecessors were in 1950 when the Shops Act was passed. For that reason I commend this amendment to your Lordships. I beg to move.
5.15 p.m.
Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran: I should like to support the amendment so ably moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Turner of Camden. With the committee's consent, perhaps I may quote the words of the Auld Report in relation to the effect of total deregulation upon questions relating to shopworkers, their exploitation, and their employment.
I shall ask your Lordships kindly to have regard first to the opening two lines of paragraph 277, which is entitled, "Shopworkers". The report says this:
"The likely effect that any change in the law might have upon shopworkers has been one of the most worrying questions of our Inquiry."
It then goes on to analyse it, by quoting what happened in Massachusetts some years ago. It then goes on to its final conclusions, which deal with wages, in paragraph 287.
"We set great store by the preservation of the role of Wages Councils in fixing statutory minimum weekly rates, holidays and holiday pay for the retail trades. Shopworkers need their protection in this respect as much as ever, in fact more so now when jobs are harder to find and the already low membership of unions in the retail sector is declining."
It is a privilege to me to be able to assist the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, on his intervention in the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, because when I was proposing an amendment at the beginning of the Committee stage of this Bill the noble and learned Lord intervened several times most helpfully in my speech. I am therefore able to tell him that the passage quoted by the noble Baroness was in paragraph 287 of the Auld Report.
I now come to the last paragraph in this section, which is called "Areas for Concern". This is paragraph 288, which is of great support for this and similar amendments concerned with conditions of shopworkers. The Auld Report says this:
"We understand that the Government has been considering the abolition of Wages Councils without replacing them with any similar machinery. If this were to happen, we believe that there would be a strong likelihood of exploitation of some shopworkers in the form of lower wages, particularly for unsocial hours of work, and possibly in a longer working week."

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The committee then says that no doubt good employers would behave themselves.
"but in the rapidly changing and uncertain conditions that might follow de-regulation of shop opening hours, if our recommendations were to be adopted, we cannot be sure that all employers would do so. Accordingly, although it is not directly within our terms of reference"—
and may I pause there to emphasise that the committee, chaired by Robin Auld, one of Her Majesty's Counsel, thought this matter of such importance that, having taken all the evidence it could, was not satisfied on this question as to the effect of deregulation on shopworkers and therefore stated:
"Accordingly, although it is not directly within our terms of reference,"—
and the next passage is in black, full print—
"we strongly urge the retention for retail workers of the machinery of the Wages Councils for the fixing of satisfactory wages and premium rates. Retention of Wages Councils is no adequate protection unless their orders are properly enforced. Accordingly, we also urge that there should be proper enforcement of the Wages Council Orders, by an adequately staffed Wages Council Inspectorate."
I hope that the Front Bench of the Government will not dismiss what I have said because the chairman, Robin Auld, has said that those observations were outside the scope of his terms of reference. That would be a technical approach to this matter of great significance to shopworkers. Therefore, I should like to ask the Minister what the Government are proposing to do to safeguard the position of shopworkers, whose situation was pointed out by the chairman of the Auld Committee, having regard to the Government's avowed intentions of abolishing the wages council?
Lord Campbell of Alloway: The problem of safeguards for shopworkers following deregulation is a matter of concern. It was a matter of concern, as has been said, to my friend Mr. Robin Auld. It was a matter of concern to the noble Lord, Lord Jacques. When he expressed this as long ago as 1982 I rose briefly to support him. It is a matter of concern today. This concern is in no way inconsistent with the principle of the Bill, the principle of deregulation. It is merely a matter involved in the implementation of that principle.
If Sunday working is to be truly optional, safeguards are required to ensure that it should remain optional. In the retail trades the unions are relatively weak compared with other sectors of industry. A large proportion of the workers are not members of any trade union. Irrespective of trade union membership or none, the workers are surely entitled to a measure of Government protection. Sunday is not the same as any other working day and should never be so regarded unless the workers concerned so choose to regard it.
While supporting the principle of the Bill, I repeat the very short point that safeguards of this nature in no way conflict with that principle. I should have been anxious to support, as I said, an amendment along the lines of Amendment No. 11, which was not moved, for the simple reason that subsection (2) of the proposed new clause in Amendment No. 11 would place on the face of the statute a measure of protection which would be vastly superior to the discretion of any industrial tribunal on such matters. But that amendment is not before us. I only hope that the
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Government will consider broadly in what way it might be possible to meet this concern, which is a genuine concern and in no way conflicts with the spirit of the Bill.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: I take very much the same point of view as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Alloway. It is now very many years since I could claim to have any acquaintance with the problem. In fact, it was on the Shops Bill 1956. But I can remember then being left with the impression that shopworkers were a vulnerable class of employee who needed special protection. In any case, it seems to me that we who take our stand on the argument of the Auld Committee cannot really pick and choose. I do not think we can disregard what was said in the two paragraphs that have been quoted—one by the noble Baroness and the second added by the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd. The only question is: are there sufficient safeguards?
I wrote to the noble Lord the Minister, who understandably passed my letter to the noble Lord, Lord Young, the Secretary of State. A day or two ago I received a reply, of which I sent a copy to the noble Lord, Lord Graham, with the consent of the Secretary of State. If I had known that the noble Baroness would move this amendment I should have sent her a copy, and one to the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd, as well. What the Secretary of State said was this:
"The decision was therefore taken to remove young people from the wages council regulation"—
to facilitate their employment—
"but to enable councils to continue to protect the two central elements of pay—a minimum hourly rate and overtime rate for workers aged over 21".
The first thing that strikes one is that there seems to be a lacuna between the age of 18, which will be the concern of the shops inspectorate for young persons, and the age of 21 mentioned by the Secretary of State.
The second question is really more fundamental. It is whether those two types of control are sufficient protection for a vulnerable class of employee. Your Lordships were probably struck by a speech—I do not remember at what stage it was made—of the noble Lord, Lord Galpern, who described with his great local knowledge what went on in Scotland. I gathered from that that the overtime rate was sufficiently generous to restrict a good deal of Sunday employment. That may be part of the answer.
The third question I wanted to ask is a purely managerial one. It seems a bit cumbersome to keep on the shops inspectorate for young persons and the wages council regulations for adults, which also require an inspectorate. I should be grateful if the noble Lord the Minister could deal with those three matters in due course.
5.30 p.m.
Lord McCarthy: I should like to support the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, in her amendment. There are several reasons one can give for this, some of which have already been given. The first is that the strongest arguments which have been made in the Committee for the Bill have related to the modifications in the Sunday opening provisions. All the arguments about anomalies—fish and chip shops and only being able to buy the Bible at London Airport—and all the

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arguments about the difficulties of enforcement and pressures coming from the consumers, have related to the case for modification of the existing Sunday opening provisions. That argument is out of the way. That, in terms, has been agreed. But virtually no arguments have been advanced—least of all, I would go on to say, from the Auld Report—for repealing Part II of the 1950 Act.
As the noble Baroness has said, this is a series of very small-scale protections for a very underpowered, under-organised group of 2 million or so workers. The noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, at Second Reading—and I should like to ask him to tell me what he meant by this—said:
"I should like to say a little about shopworkers. Conditions for them have changed enormously for the better over recent years".—[Official Report, 2/12/85; col. 1065.]
What is the evidence that conditions for shopworkers have changed enormously over recent years?
When the Shops Act was introduced in 1950 the level of unemployment in this country was less than 2 per cent. The level of unemployment now is over 13 per cent. Shopworkers are far less protected in terms of the labour market than they were in 1950 and the level of trade union organisation among shopworkers is as bad now as it was in 1950. Because an increasing proportion of shopworkers will be part-time workers, they will become (as the noble Baroness has said) increasingly difficult to organise.
What is the case for suggesting that they are so well looked after by the market or by the unions or in some other way, that we do not need these very elementary protections that were advanced in 1950? I would put it to the Committee that no argument has been made and that no argument was made by the Minister and, in particular, that no argument was made in the Auld Report. There have been a number of quotations from the Auld Report. I should like to make my quotation. If the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, wants to know the source of the quotation, it is from paragraph 285, page 65, where the Auld Report says,
"In our view, it would be unfortunate to remove all the protection that shopworkers now have at the very moment when, if our recommendations were to be adopted, they would feel at their most vulnerable".
So that the Auld Report does not say that they are immeasurably better off than they were in 1950. It says that they remain at their most vulnerable.
I go on to quote from further down in the same paragraph, where they say:
"It may be that the answer lies"—
that is to say, to the general protection of shopworkers—
"in the continuation and extension of the role now exercised by the Wages Councils to ensure not only adequate pay but also satisfactory conditions of employment for shopworkers".
So the Auld Report is saying that if we were to wish to introduce any diminution in the protection of shopworkers in this Bill, we ought first to do something to extend their rights under the wages councils. But this Government propose precisely the reverse. This is the difficulty. This Government propose that workers in general should come out of the protection of the wages councils. That is not what the Auld Report suggests. This Government propose that in general
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those workers who remain under the protection of the wages councils should only be young people up to 21, and that even then—
A noble Lord: Up to 18.
Lord McCarthy: No. I am referring to the wages councils. It is 18 in this Bill. Even then, as I was saying, all kinds of things which the wages councils can now do which might enable the wages councils to look after young workers (including the half day off, and so on), should be taken away from the powers of the wages councils.
What the Government are going to do is to introduce legislation which will mean, contrary to what the Auld Report is saying, that there will be no protection—no protection not simply for workers who are not young workers, the workers in general, but no protection for young workers through the wages councils in the very respects that the Auld Report says are particularly important. What this Government are proposing is in no way justified by what has been suggested by the Minister; it is in no way justified by the Auld Report, and it is in no way connected to the general movement, legitimate though it may be, to free Sunday trading. This is something added to the Bill which has no place whatever in the Bill. That is why I would support the amendment.
Lord Denning: May I say just one word in support of the amendment? To understand it you have to go back to Section 17 of the 1950 Act. This is what it says:
"Subject to the provisions of this Part of the Act, on at least one week day in each week a shop assistant shall not be employed about the business of a shop after half-past one o'clock in the afternoon".
I have heard no reason whatever why that provision should be repealed. There is nothing in the Auld Reort about it. What the Bill itself says is that it is still to apply but only for the purpose of regulating the employment of people who have attained the age of 18. Why should there be any difference between one and the other? In other words, I have seen no argument in the Auld Report or otherwise for repealing that section or the other sections in Part II of the Act. Therefore, I would support the amendment.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: I should like to ask the noble Baroness who moved this amendment in such agreeable terms one question as to what she has in mind. As I understand the effect of her amendment, it is that the protection given by the various sections of the 1950 Act to shopworkers, instead of going when they have attained the age of 18, should continue until they have reached the age of 65. My question is this. Why does she draw the line there? I need hardly say in this Chamber that there are a good many people over the age of 65 who work. One needs only to look around to see the number of extremely distinguished examples of that.
I should have thought that if the protection of these sections is required for middle-aged workers, it is even more required for those who are over 65 and therefore in the ordinary way of nature probably less physically enduring and less fit. Therefore, I would have understood it if the noble Baroness had moved to remove this provision altogether. But deliberately to retain the protection only up to 65 and leave the over

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65s unprotected seems, from the point of view of social legislation, very odd indeed.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: Before the noble Lord sits down, perhaps I may ask for clarification whether I am to understand that if the amendments that were not moved earlier today to delete Sections 17, 19 and 22 of the 1950 Act—amendments which do precisely what the noble Lord has just said—were to be moved at a later stage in the Bill, he would support them?
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: The noble Lord knows that that is a hypothetical question. He need not have worried about saying "Before the noble Lord sits down …" because we are in Committee so I can reply to him. If any of those amendments are moved, I shall listen to the arguments for them. I am not at the moment convinced of their validity; I am not convinced that there is any necessity for them but I hope that I am as fairminded as anyone of your Lordships and I shall listen to any arguments that may be adduced.
The noble Lord has committed the unkindness to the Committee of provoking me to continue longer than I was going to do. I only hope the Committee will forgive him. I would make the general comment on this debate that it is curious that noble Lords are saying, on the one hand, that shopworkers are increasingly in need of protection and, on the other hand, that they are less and less being represented by trade unions. It seems to suggest that the shopworkers themselves are not perhaps as conscious of this need for protection as noble Lords opposite seem to think.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: The Government have to be consistent. I do not think they can accept this amendment. I recognise how seductive are the arguments. The word "compassion" is used by the noble Baroness. Are we going to be less compassionate in 1985 then we were in 1950? Compassionate attitudes and a desire to do the right thing are just as acute now as they were then. You are not necessarily being compassionate and kind if you continue to do what we have done in the past, and that is to bring in legislation which is a shambles.
The reason we have this Bill at all is that by adding to the various pieces of legislation over 500 years we had reached the position in which the whole thing was in an unholy mess. It was not only unfair to the people trying to run their businesses: it was also making a nonsense of the law itself. The Auld Report went into the whole position and it stated, to paraphrase, that the situation was such a mess and such a shambles that we ought to wipe the slate clean, because it was not possible to go on amending and counter-amending, as had been done previously. Therefore, by our Second Reading vote we said we accepted that and, rather than have this jumble of contradictory legislation which brings the law into contempt and which does not bring about the sort of efficiency that we need in our retail industry, would wipe the slate clean and completely de-restrict.
We are only at the very beginning of this Bill, but if at this stage we start trying to retain some sections of what I have described as "the old shambles" I believe
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we shall be on the way to retaining something that was not working, that was unfair and (in legal terms) a mess, and we shall be retaining it with that risk. I think, personally, this Bill is absolutely right. I think it is good sense; and I believe that in the long run it will be more compassionate to let this Bill go through with complete de-restriction. I do not fear, as many of your Lordships do, that people will be taking advantage of it or exploiting people on anything like the scale that has been suggested. What I have in mind is that the people who run businesses—those who are what I would call the potential exploiters (if that risk is there at all)—have already seen what happens where they virtually provoke legislation in order to give protection when they take undue advantage and, as I have said, where they exploit.
I believe the very fact that it would be possible for Parliament to come back and reintroduce some of these things will create an atmosphere which will make it quite unnecessary. I believe that the outlook of people in industry and in the retail industry is quite different today from what it was fifty years ago. They have seen what happens when Parliament is provoked into bringing in legislation. As a consequence of that, I think a lot of it will not be necessary.
Nor have I the dismal outlook that the noble Baroness has as regards the effectiveness of the trade unions. I believe we are now getting back to a position where the trade unions are going to be more effective in the future than they have been in the past, because they have gone through a phase where they have lost a lot of their influence because they had shown bias and extremism in many areas. That is being removed over the whole of the trade union movement in this country, and I believe that if any protection is needed it will be able to be obtained by codes of conduct, with the influence of the trade unions and with the altered outlook of the people who will be the employers. I do not think there is any need to think that the only answer to these problems is to bring in more legislation; and in this particular instance, if we pursue what we started when we recorded our vote on Second Reading, and if we wipe the slate clean, I am certain that, with the experience of the past, there as an inducement to do the right thing, and we shall find that we get greater efficiency without in any way interfering with fairness or in any way reducing the sort of compassion that we want.
If I am wrong on that, if my judgment is wrong and we do get people who, because of the absence of legislation, will exploit or try to take undue advantage, then I and others who will sit on these Benches both here and in another place will bring legislation back to deal with those conditions. Parliament is continuing: it has done that in the past, and will do it in the future. I believe that, like a lot of businesses, we have got ourselves into a mess. I have called it a shambles. Let us get that clear; and if it turns out that the lessons of the past do not have their influence on the future, then Parliament would have a duty. But if they did have to bring in legislation because my judgment was wrong as to whether or not there would be a need for it then the duty they would have would be to bring in new legislation with the knowledge they had at the time at which they were bringing it in, and not to keep in existence legislation which, enacted even as recently as 1950, is 35 years old.
5.45 p.m.
Therefore, I would ask my noble friend to resist the very seductive and well-presented arguments that have been put up and, indeed, which have come from the Cross-Benches, too, rather surprisingly. I do not think that the consistency will do anything but good, and I would ask my noble friend to resist this amendment. I am certain the outcome will be that we shall have a more sensible arrangement in our retail industry in the future than we have had to tolerate over the last 50 years.
Lord Mishcon: Before the noble Lord sits down, for the benefit of the Committee would be explain why he thinks that the section in the Shops Act which is in force is not working properly? Would he like to produce that evidence to the Committee? He is talking about "shambles", and if he could explain that it would help us all to consider his speech in another light.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: Nobody knows better than the noble Lord that in terms of the law being applied through the courts and everywhere we had got to the point where it was a shambles. All these things added together: you did not know where you were; you knew that certain things that were supposed to be illegal were being disregarded and were not being brought before the courts; and you knew that it was being unfairly applied in one part of the country as compared to another. Nobody knows better than the noble Lord that that was the situation; and I do not believe that we shall get clear of that until the slate is wiped clean so that the thing is allowed to find its proper level, instead of foisting on Parliament legislation based on old-fashioned ideas which bear no relation to the times.
Lord Mishcon: Purely in order to get a logical argument before the Committee—and when the noble Lord presents it we always want to listen to it and see what force there is in it—the part that was the shambles that he was referring to is the principle of closing on Sunday, and deregulation. We are dealing now with labour provisions. Could he kindly tell the Committee, if he wishes us to take his speech as seriously as I am sure he would, what was a shambles about the labour provisions in the Shops Act 1950, and, specifically, what was the shambles in this section?
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: I do not know how many retail shops the noble Lord has owned or had to operate—
Noble Lords: Oh!
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: Just a minute: the shambles arose because the inspection of the terms of employment in shops was unfairly applied. On one occasion it was said that there were not enough inspectors in one area while in another area the inspectors were showing bias. I believe that the fairness being shown to the people who had to run the retail shops, because of the emphasis that was put on what
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was being done in one area as compared to another, justifies the description "shambles" that I have given to it. If the noble Lord had had to operate it and had had to come face to face with it on some occasions, he would very likely have been of my opinion.
Lord Murray of Epping Forest: The noble Lord, Lord Harmar-Nicholls, addressed himself at the opening of his speech to the issue of consistency. Let me take the same theme and ask where the consistency is in the proposals which are before your Lordships' Committee. Great play has been made, quite properly, of the advantages which it is said consumers and customers will gain from this measure. A picture has been painted to us of them rushing out and maximising their satisfaction on Sunday mornings in a way they cannot do at any other time in the week. So be it.
What of the owners? Those who own shops and decide to open them on Sundays will do so because they expect and intend to benefit and to gain from it. Although not all owners, particularly owners of the larger shops, will themselves have to stand behind counters on Sundays serving half pounds of bacon or metres of cloth, they will gain.
But who will lose? The burden of Sunday opening will fall upon those who are employed in shops. It will fall upon those who have no option. I will come in a moment to the issue of the option which is apparently offered to those who are already in employment. The burden will fall upon those who will not be able to secure compensation and whose lot will be not as it is now, but worsened by this provision of the Bill.
Historically, as we have heard, workpeople in this industry have been in a weak negotiating position. That is why successive governments have introduced and have maintained the provision of wages councils. That is why, as we have heard, the Auld Committee emphasised the need to maintain and improve the wages councils provisions, and emphasised the need to increase inspection, which is the Achilles heel of wages councils.
Now, on top of what is proposed in the Bill, we are threatened, as has been said by my noble friend Lord McCarthy, with the weakening, or possibly even the repeal, of wages councils themselves. Certainly, there is no proposal whatsoever, so far as I know—and the noble Lord who is to reply will correct me if I am wrong—from the Benches opposite that we should increase the rate of inspection and enforcement by wages councils, or increase the numbers of inspectors in the wages councils inspectorate? If I am wrong, I shall be delighted to hear it.
So the very least we can do is to leave in place the existing meagre protections of the Shops Act which this amendment seeks to do. The alternative, if these are removed, will, I suggest, be an extension of the hours which people in shops are expected to work. But we are told that those who are in employment already will have the protections offered by the schedule which we have yet to discuss. I would not give you tuppence for that schedule in terms of the ability of not the more reputable, but the less reputable, employers to put pressure on their employees. Indeed, I should hope that this amendment would command the support of the good employers—among whom I count the noble

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Lord, Lord Sainsbury—in order to protect them from the invidious and unfair competition which will be adduced by employers of the other kind. In introducing the amendment, my noble friend Lady Turner talked about this as a modest amendment. I regard it as pitifully little, but as the very least that this House can do on behalf of those who otherwise will bear the burden of the consequences of this legislation.
Lord Glenarthur: We have had a long debate on this issue. It is the first of many concerning shopworkers—a different theme from that which has occupied us in the earlier two days in Committee, and indeed earlier this afternoon. The amendment is similar to the next amendment, No. 19, in that it seeks to reinstate the employment restrictions of the 1950 Act for shopworkers, but I suggest is much more lavish in that it seeks to reinstate the restrictions for all shopworkers up to the age 65, not just those up to the age of 21 to which we shall no doubt come later. This would, in effect, mean that the current employment provisions of the 1950 Act will continue to apply to the vast majority of shopworkers, not just to those aged between 16 and 18 as the Bill intends.
But this amendment seems to smack of something of a contradiction and I think that what I shall say now bears out much of what was said earlier by my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter. If it is a basic principle that the statutory employment provisions of the 1950 Act are deemed necessary for shopworkers, it is difficult to see why they cease to be necessary merely because an employee is over the age of 65.
In the distributive trades, some 5 per cent. of male employees and 7 per cent. of female employees are aged 65 and over. What of them? The noble Baroness, Lady Turner, began her remarks by using the words "caring"—indicating that what we are proposing indicates less care—and "compassion". I really cannot see that there is much care or compassion, at any rate for those people over 65, so far as the amendment is concerned.
But let me return to the main strand of the argument. The Government believe that the statutory employment restrictions of the 1950 Act are simply outdated and unnecessary nowadays; and this, perhaps, is an answer to the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, who quoted what I said on Second Reading. The provisions merely set shopworkers' meal breaks and require weekly half-day holidays and time off in lieu of Sunday working. Those amendments have not been moved. I could elaborate on them. But I cannot feel in 1986 that tea breaks, for example, are the kind of matters which should be written into primary legislation in the way suggested now—
Lord McCarthy: Is the noble Lord saying that tea breaks and lunch breaks do not matter to these workers, or is he saying that they get them without the law?
Lord Glenarthur: What I am saying is not at all that they do not matter to the workers. I am sure that they matter to the workers. They matter to all sorts of people. What I am saying is: is it the kind of matter which should be written into the law in the way that exists under the 1950 Act, and is it not something
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which could be negotiated reasonably between the people who are working in shops and those who employ them? I shall continue to develop that theme—
The Earl of Stockton: Why not? It has been for 20 years.
Lord Glenarthur: My noble friend Lord Stockton makes the valuable point that it has existed for many years. What I am trying to suggest to the Committee is that just because it has existed for so long it is not necessary now to maintain it, because the conditions have changed. I am endeavouring to explain that circumstances have changed, and to develop the argument so as to explain precisely why they have changed. The fact is that they are ineffective in controlling the length of the working week or day because they do not set maximum hours for adults. Here I am talking about the provisions which already exist. As I have said, there is no reason why shopworkers, like their counterparts in other sectors of the economy—and probably many of us have direct experience of precisely this—should not settle their conditions of employment with their employers. This is a theme which was developed by my noble friend Lord Harmar-Nicholls. I now turn to the question of the wages councils—
Lord Mishcon: Before the noble Lord leaves that point, which is so important and which the noble Earl, Lord Stockton, has so rightly brought to our attention, will be please deal with this matter? Everybody has said that the shopworker is the worker who, unfortunately, is least protected by trade unions. Therefore, is it not proper that we protect those workers by primary legislation, because to a large extent there is nobody who can negotiate for them?
Lord Glenarthur: I am not sure that the noble Lord is right in saying that there is no one to negotiate for them. Let us take some of the instances which we shall need, to explain the situation. Let us take, for example, meal breaks under, I think, Section 19 of the 1950 Act. Are we really to believe that adult shopworkers are unique among employees in that they are unable to sort out their tea and meal breaks with their employers? Are we really to believe that they want or need the full weight of an Act of Parliament to determine those points—
Noble Lords: Yes!
Lord Glenarthur: —and an army of officials to see that they are enforced? I fundamentally disagree. This kind of restriction is totally unnecessary nowadays. The adult shopworkers, like their fellow employees elsewhere, are quite capable of deciding that kind of thing.
6 p.m.
Lord Wedderburn of Charlton: I am most grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. He has made a fundamental point. The noble Lord the Minister has put forward the view that this should be pursued by negotiation. This is very important. If the noble Lord found from the debates on this Bill and elsewhere that

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shopworkers had difficulty in getting some employers to negotiate, would he advise his right honourable friend to bring in suitable legislation to support a right to bargain for such workers?
Lord Glenarthur: What I can say is that from Scotland we have some experience of the way the situation works. Perhaps I may develop that theme. If it is the view of noble Lords opposite that working on Sunday or working at any time of the day and meeting these needs is so difficult a matter that this has to be enforced by the kind of legislation which is being suggested, how is it that the system works so well in Scotland? How is it that there are those who actually prefer to work at odd times? How is it that it has become popular not just for the normal weekdays but presumably for Sundays as well?—because, of course, the same needs might apply there in regard to breaks and to conditions of the sort we are talking about now.
Perhaps I may develop my argument slightly, or we shall not get very far with this amendment. I should like to bring in the question of the wages councils, because that is a matter central to the argument we are discussing. The noble Lords, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran and Lord McCarthy, dwelt on this issue. They quoted from the relevant paragraphs of the Auld Report. They are quite right to say that consideration of the role of wages councils was not directly within the terms of reference of the Auld Committee. The noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, was good enough to suggest that they themselves recognised that. The Government, however, took account of all the points of view expressed during the extensive consultation on the operation of the councils, not least the effect of their provision on employment.
The Government concluded, first, that the system of wages councils should be retained; but, secondly, that the system as it stands imposes unacceptable burdens on employers and that it inhibits the growth of employment, especially for young people. Young people are those whom it is often suggested may suffer most. The Government therefore intend to limit the powers of the councils to setting a single minimum hourly rate and overtime rate for those aged 21 and over. As the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, indicated, this decision has already been announced, and a Bill will shortly be laid before Parliament giving effect to it. This is in keeping with the broader strategy of deregulation, and against this background there could be no question of extending the role of the wages councils.
The Government also accept that there may be a case for continuing the restrictions on the hours of work of young people. That is why they have left the provisions of the 1950 Act intact for those over compulsory school-leaving age but under the age of 18. The 1950 Act and preceding legislation clearly distinguished between those shopworkers aged 18 and over and those who are younger. It provided much more detailed restrictions for young shopworkers. It is sensible and quite logical to leave those restrictions well alone until a detailed review can be made of this and other legislation governing young people's hours of work. The Shops Act contains provisions very similar to those in the factories and related legislation,
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and it would be premature to tackle one lot in isolation from the rest and in advance of the review's findings.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, raised the question of enforcing authorities and why those authorities should be kept as separate pieces of machinery. I hope I have that point correctly. I can tell the noble and learned Lord that it seems sensible to leave the enforcement of the provisions of the Shops Act with the local authorities and the enforcement of the orders of the wages councils with the wages inspectorate. Each authority naturally has its own particular expertise and experience. I do not suppose that the noble and learned Lord would disagree that individual experience of how these pieces of machinery operate in each field is necessary for their proper operation. Secondly, with regard to young people, the Government are conducting a review of all the legislation governing young people's hours of work, and it would therefore be premature to alter the enforcement provisions in advance of that review.
Times have changed. It is all very well for the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, and other noble Lords who support him to suggest that that is not the case, but the fundamental arrangement whereby people who go to work in shops and in other occupations come to arrangements with their employers has changed in 35 years since the 1950 Act came into force. It would be totally unrealistic to think otherwise. Conditions have changed in dozens of areas, and conditions have certainly changed here. As I said earlier, I do not believe that they any longer require the kind of backing that is provided by this Act. It is a fundamental part of this Bill that this change should go ahead. I have listened with care to the arguments that have been expressed from the Benches opposite, obviously with considerable feeling, but I have to say that I am not persuaded by a single one of them. That is why I must ask the Committee to reject the amendment.
The Earl of Stockton: I must say frankly that I do not like this Bill at all, but we settled that point at Second Reading. I do not like it out of a traditional feeling that we are sacrificing, by what I can only call a sort of Pakistani relief Act, a very old tradition—because that is the chief object of the Bill: to make a lot of small shops legal which are now illegal. We are sacrificing a very old tradition. We are making another move in the gradual secularisation of our people and in abandoning the old principles which made our forebears great and kept them powerful. However, that is not the point now; we have done that.
What I do not see is the argument which my noble friend Lord Glenarthur and my noble friend Lord Harmar-Nicholls and others have introduced: that we ought somehow to go on a quite different issue, a purely economic issue, to this new extreme which seems, greatly to my regret, to have inspired part of my party. There are no longer the principles of Lord Shaftesbury, Mr. Disraeli or Mr. Churchill. We are reverting to a form of neo-Cobdenism based upon the worst elements of the Manchester school, supported by aphorisms that would have done honour to that popular writer, Dr. Samuel Smiles. The paternalist elements and traditions of the Tory Party that come from its very roots are now unpopular. We are making a great error. It is because the people as a whole trusted

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those whom they regarded as their natural leaders to help them, support them and protect them that we have had the great authority in the past in our country.
This Bill is meant to regulate Sunday trading—that is all right—to make it all legal. We have just rejected an amendment that I thought was attractively argued, which would have meant that shops would have to close on Sunday afternoon. I would have been much happier if the amendment had said that shops should be closed on Sunday morning. But this Bill is quite different. It is saying that because it is impossible to please or satisfy some opinions, and in order to please some strange new doctrine of liberalisation, we should adopt all the worst elements of the liberal Victorian tradition, which has somehow infiltrated my old party like some kind of disease. Are we to abandon a principle that has nothing to do with the main purpose of this Bill?
I do not know the details of the Shops Act because I have only been able to pick them up as I have followed the debate. It may be that some of the provisions of this Bill may be altered. It is said that some will not apply to employers after the age of 65. Sixty-five is a tuppenny age; a 65-year-old is quite a young person!
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
The Earl of Stockton: It is rather a pettifogging argument to say that the drafting stops at the age of 65. I should have thought that there would have been no difficulty about a phrase that made it clear that the provisions covered the whole of a person's working life.
I just feel that we should have in this debate an opportunity for the Government either to accept the spirit of this amendment or to tell the Committee that they will approach this whole problem with a rather more constructive purpose. The Bill is meant to make it possible for people to trade freely on Sundays. Whether or not they will do so on a great scale we do not know. But that is what this Bill is for. It is not meant to make life more difficult for shop assistants. It is not meant to make the conditions of their labour worse. I am not talking now about the kind of shops that probably will not open on a Sunday anyway; great employers of large, well-managed institutions. Or if they do, I am sure that they will not try to exploit their workers. Of course they will not. But there are many small shops that will take advantage of this legislation. They will be just the kind of people who will try to exploit the weak and often transient population who are kind of people likely to become shop assistants.
6.15 p.m.
I would have thought that given the present state of unemployment, especially north of the Trent, such people needed more protection than ever before. As one noble Lord has pointed out, there was 2 per cent. unemployment in 1950. In my old part of the world that I knew so well, it is now more like 13 or 14 per cent. People in such areas are more easily exploited. I do not imagine that the unions there are any stronger or are likely to become any stronger, because in a situation of perpetually moving employees, it is difficult to achieve union recruitment.
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Perhaps my noble friend will say to the Committee that this amendment may not have very good legal effects. He may say that it has some anomalies but that before this Bill leaves this House, the Government will make sure that we will preserve all the protection that now exists for the people who will be working under it. We may make people free to buy or sell on Sundays, in the mornings or afternoons, because that is what this Bill is for. But it is not meant to do anything else.
Let us remember that the great commandment that was handed down to God's chosen people was perhaps the greatest social reform in the history of civilisation; the concept that every man or woman, however humble, should have at least some period of rest. That was an enormous advance. We hardly realise what it has meant to the history of the world. Let us have our Sunday trading—as much as we like. We know that there have to be many anomalies now. Many people working in the social services, in the police and in other essential services, and in industrial operations that use hot metal all have to work day after day without intermission. But we should so far as we can preserve the existing protection. If this amendment is not the right method then we should find some other way of enclosing in this Bill a clause that will make it perfectly clear that the Bill does no injury at all, and is prevented from doing any injury at all, to the rights that have been so long-won for the humbler people in our country; won as much by both parties but conspicuously as a result of the old Tory tradition. Those rights were won for people who could not protect themselves and who had least power.
Your Lordships should make sure that before this Bill leaves us it incorporates a clause or clauses that will reinstate, in whatever form the draftsman thinks is right, the whole system of preserving rights and of preventing the exploitation of a large class of people who are perhaps among the weakest in our great industrial and commercial system. I beg your Lordships to do that. Whether or not we agree upon this Bill from a sabbatarian point of view is not the issue. It should leave at least this domain with everyone determined that nothing should flow from it that may do some injury to any—and especially to the weakest class.
I fear that I ought not to have intervened, but I listened to the whole debate and I was moved by it. I remember that when I led my party in the House of Commons, I warned young Members that on no account should they attend Committee stages of Bills. I told them that if they did so, they would always want to vote for the amendments because the arguments put up by the Government would not convince them. I told them to stay in the Smoking Room and to come out and vote when the bell rang. I am afraid that I have not followed my own advice today.
I just make this plea. Whether or not one intends to review other possibilities and the suggestions of other organisations, one should not let the fact that something is confusing or untimely serve as an excuse. The sole purpose of this Bill is to allow one to buy and sell on Sundays. Everything that we have built into legislation during the long struggle for the uplifting and benefiting of the mass of our people, and every other right, should be strictly preserved, and if necessary legislatively restated.
Lord Glenarthur: My noble friend Lord Stockton has given us a powerful example of the very important feelings which lie behind so much of his enormous experience. He was quite right to intervene after listening to the arguments, and I am sure that we are all grateful to him for expressing his views with such clarity.
With respect to my noble friend, much of what he said went wider than the amendment we are now dealing with. He touched on all sorts of areas concerned with the Bill. That is, of course, quite understandable because, as he so rightly says, the Bill encompasses a great deal when one is talking about the whole philosophy not just of Sunday trading but of weekday trading, too, and those who work in shops as well as go to the shops to buy whatever they wish to buy.
On this amendment I am afraid there is no question of advising your Lordships that there is any hope that I can take it away and come forward with anything better on the principle involved. We shall come to other amendments in due course and I shall listen with great care to what is said on them. As arguments develop there may be some scope to try to find some sort of way forward. What my noble friend Lord Stockton said in encompassing the whole question of employment in this Bill is that he hopes there is some way of protecting shopworkers in some form.
My noble friend did not, if I heard him right, seek to suggest that this was the only amendment in which there may be scope; but he encompassed the whole employment side of the Bill. We shall have to take those amendments on their merits and no doubt my noble friend, with his great experience, will listen to the arguments that are put forward by those who promote the amendments and to the response from this Dispatch Box.
However, I rest where I did before my noble friend Lord Stockton intervened. Times have changed however much we may regret that they have. There have been changes for the better in many fields that affect shopworkers, shoppers and all concerned. There may be some changes for the worse; and we all have personal views on that. I believe that what we are trying to achieve with this Bill, in allowing for the fact that those changes have taken place over the past 30 years and the way shopworkers come to arrangements with their employers, is not dissimilar from the way that workers in other fields have come to arrangements with their employers. I do not think that it is realistic to suggest that shopworkers are peculiar in the respect that they require this extraordinary and weighty approach to their problems.
I do not detract for one second from their importance and the valuable part that they play in our national life. I support much of what is said on their behalf, but I cannot believe that to proceed along these lines is anything other than an outdated approach to the problem and one that, in the end, will serve neither the country nor those employers in the way that both, in due time, would like to see.
Lord Mishcon: I can well understand the noble Lord's embarrassment after the very eloquent and telling intervention which brought back old memories
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of an old party that was respected by this Opposition as well as by others.
I merely record this. The noble Lord the Minister has not answered the noble Earl's main point—that is, that this Bill should not in any way decrease the protection given to workers under the 1950 Act. That is not supposed to be the purpose of this Bill. Talk in terms of times changing and suggestions that shopworkers can negotiate with employers were answered very clearly by the noble Earl when he said, as is the truth, that this is a largely unprotected system of employment in our country and that the employees in the industry are even less protected now than in 1950 because of the unfortunate level of unemployment.
That must be faced by the noble Lord the Minister. If he persists in saying, "No, I will not take this away to consider whether 'sixty-five' should be inserted or whether we ought to have an age limit at all; and I am not going to sacrifice my opposition to Clause 2 going out of the Bill", then I say to the noble Lord the Minister that he has painted for himself and for his Front Bench an even worse picture than the noble Earl, Lord Stockton, painted.
Lord Glenarthur: In responding to the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, may I say that on this particular amendment I do not in all honesty see scope for taking it away and coming back with an alternative either in principle or in detail? What I said, and the noble Lord did not refer to this, was that I would consider the other amendments that come forward—and there are some down in the names of my noble friends which may have some scope and I shall need to listen very carefully to the arguments—before I decide what can be done. I did not rule out—and this was very much the theme of the admirable speech of my noble friend Lord Stockton—that there may be some scope in due course.
We are now in the position of debating one amendment which relates to one particular aspect and which proposes the age of 65. The next amendment brings us down to the age of 21. What we must do, and what I shall do, is listen with great care to what is said on the other amendments concerning this theme and others before deciding how to proceed. In the meantime, it is only right to stick to what I said on the principle, even if the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, does not like it, that times and circumstances have changed and that what we are doing is not unfair and is perfectly correct and reasonable.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: There are many of us who wish the Bill well but have expressed unease on this amendment, though we do not necessarily or at all wish to cling to modes of protection which are out of date. What we ask is to be reassured that any system that may now supervene will give this class of worker, whom we regard as peculiarly vulnerable, protection which is at least as good as other ways they have heretofore had under statute. If the noble Lord can give that assurance and convince us, speaking for myself, I should be very well content.
Lord Glenarthur: The noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, asked for an assurance. I should

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certainly like to study what he said, and I shall do that, anyway. But what I cannot give is an absolute assurance from this Dispatch Box now without studying the point that he made. I shall certainly study what has been said. Many valuable points have been made. However, perhaps the noble Baroness would now like to wind up from her side.
Baroness Turner of Camden: Thank you. I have listened very carefully to what the Minister said. However, in view of the fact that he has not found it possible to give the assurances that I seek, I have no alternative, I fear, but to press the amendment. The reason I say that is that I cannot accept the argument that things have changed and we do not now need the protections that were thought necessary in the Shops Act 1950.
I refer to the Auld Report. It says in paragraph 284:
"outside the retail trade this sort of protection"—
that is the Shops Act—
"and often very much better, is usually to be found in collective agreements. In the case of shopworkers, with their weak bargaining position, protection can only be given in this statutory way".
That was written in 1984, which is not long ago.
We have to press the amendment if we are to preserve the minimal provisions in the Shops Act 1950. I think that that was the main thrust of the wonderful speech of the noble Earl, Lord Stockton. He was saying that we should not do away with existing protection in order to provide liberties of a different kind for a different section of the population; and that was the main burden of my speech in moving the amendment.
The noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, made the proposition that in my amendment I was not looking after people over the age of 65. That age was written into the amendment because it is the state retirement age for men and one hopes that people have pension provision after that age. If the noble Lord moved an amendment on Report to extend the age beyond 65, I should be happy to support it.
The main contention remains. We wish to preserve the minimum protections for people working in shops. As I said earlier, that is one in 10 of the population. I regret to say that there is inadequate trade union organisation among that large group of workers. I repeat that it is not easy to organise a workforce where there is a high turnover and where there is not much legislative assistance to unions to organise and, once people are organised, to get their employers to recognise them. For all those reasons, I wish to press the amendment.
6.32 p.m.
On Question, Whether the said amendment (No. 18B) shall be agreed to?
Their Lordships divided: Contents, 112; Not-Contents, 120.

DIVISION NO. 2

CONTENTS

Airedale, L.

Bacon, B.

Amherst, E.

Blease, L.

Ardwick, L.

Bledisloe, V.

Aylestone, L.

Blyton, L.

164

Boston of Faversham, L.

Lloyd of Kilgerran, L.

Bottomley, L.

Longford, E.

Brentford, V.

Lovell-Davis, L.

Broadbridge, L.

McCarthy, L.

Brooks of Tremorfa, L.

McGregor of Durris, L.

Bruce of Donington, L.

Mackie of Benshie, L.

Buckmaster, V.

McNair, L.

Campbell of Eskan, L.

Mar, C.

Carmichael of Kelvingrove, L.

Masham of Ilton, B.

Cledwyn of Penrhos, L.

Melchett, L.

Collison, L.

Mishcon, L.

Crawshaw of Aintree, L.

Molloy, L.

Dacre of Glanton, L.

Mountevans, L.

David, B.

Mulley, L.

Davies of Penrhys, L.

Murray of Epping Forest, L.

Dean of Beswick, L.

Nicol, B.

Denington, B.

Ogmore, L.

Denning, L.

Oram, L.

Diamond, L.

Parry, L.

Donoughue, L.

Phillips, B.

Eldon, E.

Pitt of Hampstead, L.

Elwyn-Jones, L.

Ponsonby of Shulbrede, L. [Teller.]

Elystan-Morgan, L.

Ennals, L.

Prys-Davies, L.

Ewart-Biggs, B.

Rea, L.

Falkender, B.

Ritchie of Dundee, L.

Gallacher, L.

Robertson of Oakridge, L.

Galpern, L.

Robson of Kiddington, B.

Glenamara, L.

Rochester, L.

Graham of Edmonton, L. [Teller.]

Sainsbury, L.

Seear, B.

Grantchester, L.

Sefton of Garston, L.

Grey, E.

Serota, B.

Grimond, L.

Stallard, L.

Hampton, L.

Stamp, L.

Hatch of Lusby, L.

Stedman, B.

Heycock, L.

Stewart of Fulham, L.

Hooson, L.

Stoddart of Swindon, L.

Houghton of Sowerby, L.

Strabolgi, L.

Howie of Troon, L.

Swinfen, L.

Hunter of Newington, L.

Taylor of Blackburn, L.

Ingleby, V.

Taylor of Gryfe, L.

Irving of Dartford, L.

Taylor of Mansfield, L.

Jacques, L.

Turner of Camden, B.

Jeger, B.

Underhill, L.

Jenkins of Putney, L.

Vernon, L.

John-Mackie, L.

Wallace of Coslany, L.

Kagan, L.

Wedderburn of Charlton, L.

Kilbracken, L.

Wells-Pestell, L.

Kinloss, Ly.

Whaddon, L.

Kirkhill, L.

Williams of Elvel, L.

Kissin, L.

Wilson of Rievaulx, L.

Lauderdale, E.

Winstanley, L.

NOT-CONTENTS

Airey of Abingdon, B.

Cork and Orrery, E.

Alexander of Tunis, E.

Cottesloe, L.

Allenby of Megiddo, V.

Cox, B.

Allerton, L.

Cranbrook, E.

Ampthill, L.

Davidson, V.

Auckland, L.

Denham, L. [Teller.]

Bauer, L.

Dilhorne, V.

Beloff, L.

Drumalbyn, L.

Belstead, L.

Dundee, E.

Bessborough, E.

Effingham, E.

Birdwood, L.

Elibank, L.

Boardman, L.

Elliott of Morpeth, L.

Bolton, L.

Elton, L.

Boyd-Carpenter, L.

Erroll, E.

Brabazon of Tara, L.

Fortescue, E.

Brougham and Vaux, L.

Gainford, L.

Bruce-Gardyne, L.

Gibson-Watt, L.

Buckinghamshire, E.

Gisborough, L.

Butterworth, L.

Glanusk, L.

Caccia, L.

Glenarthur, L.

Caithness, E.

Gray of Contin, L.

Cameron of Lochbroom, L.

Grimston of Westbury, L.

Carnegy of Lour, B.

Hailsham of Saint Marylebone, L.

Carnock, L.

Cathcart, E.

Hanworth, V.

Colwyn, L.

Harmar-Nicholls, L.

165

Harris of High Cross, L.

Orr-Ewing, L.

Harvington, L.

Pender, L.

Henderson of Brompton, L.

Peyton of Yeovil, L.

Hives, L.

Plummer of St Marylebone, L.

Hood, V.

Hooper, B.

Radnor, E.

Hylton-Foster, B.

Renwick, L.

Ilchester, E.

Rochdale, V.

Kimball, L.

Rugby, L.

Kinnoull, E.

St. Davids, V.

Lane-Fox, B.

Saltoun of Abernethy, Ly.

Lansdowne, M.

Sanderson of Bowden, L.

Lawrence, L.

Sandford, L.

Loch, L.

Selborne, E.

Long, V.

Shannon, E.

Lucas of Chilworth, L.

Sharpies, B.

Lyell, L.

Shaughnessy, L.

McFadzean, L.

Skelmersdale, L.

Mancroft, L.

Somers, L.

Margadale, L.

Stodart of Leaston, L.

Marshall of Leeds, L.

Sudeley, L.

Maude of Stratford-upon-Avon, L.

Swinton, E. [Teller.]

Teynham, L.

Merrivale, L.

Thomas of Swynnerton, L.

Mersey, V.

Thorneycroft, L.

Monson, L.

Trefgarne, L.

Montgomery of Alamein, V.

Tryon, L.

Mottistone, L.

Vickers, B.

Mowbray and Stourton, L.

Vivian, L.

Munster, E.

Ward of Witley, V.

Napier and Ettrick, L.

Whitelaw, V.

Nelson of Stafford, L.

Windlesham, L.

Norrie, L.

Wynford, L.

Nugent of Guildford, L.

Yarborough, E.

Onslow, E.

Young of Graffham, L.

Orkney, E.

Resolved in the negative, and amendment disagreed to accordingly.
6.41 p.m.
Lord Oram Lord Oram moved Amendment No. 19:
Page 1, line 13, leave out ("eighteen") and insert ("twenty-one").
The noble Lord said: When the Minister was replying to the last debate he said that he could not accept the amendment but that he would look favourably on some subsequent amendment, and the noble Lord referred to the one in my name. I hope that this will be one upon which he can look with a favourable eye for the reasons that I shall explain. In order to appreciate the special purpose of this amendment, as distinct from the last amendment, it is necessary to look not only at what this Bill proposes to do to shopworkers but also at what the Government propose to do in another Bill which has not yet seen the light of day but the outline of which has already been made clear. I refer, of course, to the Bill that will drastically reduce the powers of wages councils.
At the present time, shopworkers have two defences against exploitation. There is Part II of the 1950 Shops Act, discussed during the debate on the previous amendment. Secondly, the position of shopworkers is safeguarded by orders issued by the two wages councils covering the retail trades, one for workers in food trades and one for other retail workers. As I have said, we do not yet know the details of the Bill that will deal with wages councils but we have had a very clear outline of what it will contain in principle.
Mr. Tom King, when Secretary of State for Employment, stated that wages councils would be reformed rather than abolished, but that they would be reformed in such a way that they would have no powers in respect of workers under 21. Moreover, even
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for the over-21s they would have power only to set a minimum hourly rate of pay and one overtime rate of pay. So far as shopworkers are concerned, this will be, in my view, a gross diminution of the powers of the present councils. At present, they can deal with such matters as holidays, meal breaks and premium rates of pay for Sunday working. But all that, if the Government have their way in respect of the two Bills, will be done away with.
A particular group of workers will be especially disadvantaged if this Bill is not amended. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, referred, I believe, to what he called the lacuna, the gap in the provisions that the Government are bringing forward together with what they propose to do in the forthcoming wages councils Bill. I refer to the group of workers who have passed their eighteenth birthday. Below that birthday, they will still be protected by the present Bill. But those who have not yet reached their twenty-first birthday will have no protection either under this Bill or under a wages council. The group of people who are aged 18, 19 and 20 will be deprived of the protection of the 1950 Act and they will be deprived in future of any action by the wages council. They will therefore be left without any statutory protection at all.
My amendment would put that right. It would give them the same protection as they have at present under the 1950 Act until the age of 21. It may be said, and it has been said by the noble Lord. Lord Glenarthur, that things have changed and that they can have the protection of their trade unions. What the Auld Committee said, and what was said in the previous debate, makes it clear that it is most difficult to recruit into trade union membership this particular group of workers. It is difficult for trade union organisers to contact them in the very varied circumstances of the retail trading industry. For these reasons, they are most unlikely to have good protection from trade unions. These 18, 19 and 20 year-olds will be in the position of having no statutory protection at all and very weak organisation of their trade unions. It is for that reason that I am proposing in my amendment that we delete "eighteen" and insert "twenty-one". That, I believe, would fill this gap and give protection to what, in other circumstances, is a very vulnerable section of the shopworkers. I beg to move.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: I asked a question which the noble Lord, Lord Oram, has kindly repeated. I asked it on the last amendment. I did not press the noble Lord the Minister because I thought that he would probably prefer to answer it on this amendment. It really comes to this. If the over-21s need any sort of wage council assistance, why do not the 18 to 21 year-olds? Their case would seem an even stronger one. I am not particularly wedded to raising the age to 21. For most purposes nowadays people are regarded as adults at the age of 18. But what it seems to me is intolerable and barely understandable is that there is this gap when a group of persons whom one would think more vulnerable than the over-21s are left without either shops inspectorate protection or wages council protection.
Lord Glenarthur: As the noble Lord, Lord Oram, has described, this amendment would retain the provisions not only for young people but also for adults up to the age of 21. The Shops Act 1950 makes a clear distinction between adults and young people. I think that this is the point which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, was making. That Act lays down more detailed employment provisions for young people. A young person is defined as someone who is over compulsory school-leaving age but under the age of 18. As I think I said in relation to the last amendment, this is in line with the definition of young people in the Factories Act and related legislation, which also contains provisions on permitted working hours of young people.
The Auld Committee suggested that the case could be made for some form of continued protection for young people. We consider, therefore, that keeping the 1950 restrictions pending a review of all the legislation concerned with young people's hours recognises the need which the Auld Report so clearly set out.
We see no need to retain restrictions governing the employment of anyone over the age of 18 in shops. The question was asked: why is it 18 and not 21? I must make it clear that there will be ample opportunity to discuss wages council and pay rates when the Bill reaches your Lordships' House. However, as far as this Bill is concerned our predecessors saw fit to distinguish between young people and adults when setting their conditions of work and we are continuing that distinction for the time being, and, accordingly, we believe that the restrictions on hours for those aged 18 and over are simply no longer necessary.
On the question of the wages councils, again (and may I reiterate this?) they are being retained. However, the response to the consultative paper on wages councils showed a widespread support for reform, and hence the changes which were announced by my noble friend Lord Young in July. These reforms were necessary because wages council statutory rates and premium rates are too high, especially for young people. The effect of these rates is to price people out of work. Our reforms should encourage employers to take on more workers, and they should be encouraged to take on more young workers. It is particularly important at this time, with the regrettably high level of unemployment to which reference was made at some length when we debated the previous amendment.
So far as concerns the suggestion that the reform of the wages councils and the removal of trading restrictions might eliminate practically all statutory measures designed to protect shopworkers, I have to say that wages councils will continue to set a minimum rate and overtime rate for those aged 21 and over; and it is important to remove the over-regulation and the effects on job creation caused by the present system.
I do not think it is fair to suggest that the exclusion of young people leaves them particularly vulnerable to exploitation. The most important thing, as I have stressed, is to get young people into jobs, because in this way they will gain the experience and self-confidence that comes, as I am sure we all realise, with a crucial first job. The exclusion of people under 21 from wages council regulations will, I suggest, help to promote their employment.
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Although we are discussing one particular amendment, we are naturally bringing into our discussions those which lie ahead of us when we come to the Bill which deals with wages councils. On this amendment I have to say that it would add yet another category of employee for employers to consider; and it would be a completely unnecessary complication. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Oram, will see the force of that argument. It is not unrelated to the discussion that we had on the earlier amendment. I hope that the noble Lord will realise that and will not feel it necessary to press this amendment.
Lord Oram: The Minister has explained why "eighteen" is in the Bill, because that is the age which applies to employment in other categories of commerce and industry. He has also agreed with my interpretation of what Mr. Tom King said: that the wages councils Bill will provide wages council protection for those aged 21 upwards. But for the gap in between—those aged 18, 19 or 20—I find his answer most unsatisfactory. As I said in my opening remarks, it is leaving them without the statutory protection of either wages councils or the similar provisions in the 1950 Act. They will be completely without protection other than their trade union membership. As I have explained, and as the Auld Committee makes very clear, that is a most difficult piece of organisation to achieve.
The real reason which the noble Lord has given for leaving that group of workers in such a weak position is that the Government are determined to bring their already poor wages lower still in order to employ them. That is something which we on this side of the Committee cannot accept.
However, I recognise that my amendment overlaps very considerably with a Bill which we have not yet seen and which we shall have the opportunity of discussing in the future. I recognise that it might be better for discussions on these and a wider range of points to be taken up at that time. I am in no way accepting what the Minister has said—in no way at all. But I feel that it would not be appropriate for me to press this to a Division at this stage. We shall reserve our opinion about the wages councils Bill until we see it. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
7 p.m.
On Question, Whether Clause 2 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Graham of Edmonton: I have previously given notice of an intention to oppose the Question, That the clause stand part of the Bill. We have had a very good debate on the earlier amendments so ably moved by my colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Turner. That provided a number of insights. It was the first indication by the Government that they may be prepared to accept some amendments on this part of the Bill. That was not in response to the speech by my noble friend but came in the Minister's second intervention after the noble Earl, Lord Stockton, had made his very powerful speech.
The Minister and his noble friends behind him have constantly urged upon the Committee that it should

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trust the Government, that something will turn up, that they have something in mind, give them time, but that in the meantime they should please pass this Bill unamended, untouched. What my noble friends are saying on this argument is that the Minister should have come forward at an earlier time than the very close vote which we saw on the previous amendment and should have said: "We recognise that we may not have got this right so far as the employment protection clauses are concerned."
As regards Clause 2, the employment clause, we have sought piecemeal and in global terms to test the Minister as to whether there is any hope or possibility of the kind of protections which we believe we need. In response to my intention to oppose the Question, That Clause 2 stand part of the Bill, yet again the Minister has the opportunity to give us, not copper-bottomed guarantees, but the hope for which we have been looking.
In earlier speeches reference was made to the need to protect and retain the existing protections for many workers—not merely those who work in shops but those who work in retailing and distribution. They need not be shopworkers; they may be warehousemen, lorry drivers, or office workers who are ancillary to serving in shops. We are talking in terms of more than two million men and women. A good number of them are unorganised, are women and are part-time workers. We are not talking in terms of a cohesive, single group; we are not even talking in terms of one trade union. The prime unions involved are the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, the Transport and General Workers' Union, the General and Municipal Workers' Union, ASTMS, NALGO and others. All have members involved in this trade and all are appalled at the intention of and the necessity for Clause 2.
I believe that the noble Earl, Lord Stockton, did the Committee a powerful service in trying to get the Government to face this matter. The general public overwhelmingly think that the Government are simply trying to bring shopping hours up to date. I reject any charge that there is a "clamour" (that word is not mine; it is in the Auld Report) for a general opening of shopping hours. I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Stockton, for reminding the Committee that the shopping hours have been the main burden of the debate, so why go beyond that remit?
I remind the Minister that people are entitled to be suspicious that the Government are not merely tidying up but restricting. The headline in the London Standard tonight is: "New Curbs on Unions". The Minister will I hope forgive trade unions for believing that part of the nexus of this Bill is a platform used by the Government to tighten, restrict and remove existing protections not just for shopworkers but also for those in retailing and distribution. It is part of the raison d'être of this Government in their attitude to and confrontation with trade union members.
We on this side of the Committee have listened very carefully. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Harmar-Nicholls, in debating the earlier amendment on Clause 2, advised, "not at this stage". I have read very carefully previous debates in this House on the Bill promoted by the noble Baroness, Lady
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Trumpington—the Trumpington Bill. Four members opposite said that in any legislation they wanted to protect the workers in the industry. A great many people support the deregulation of shopping hours. I want to examine very carefully how it affects employees. Those who represent the interests of shopworkers and those in retailing and distribution are in no doubt about what they think of Clause 2. There is no doubt that USDAW detests the whole raison d'être of the Bill. Not only is that union opposed to Clause 2, but it is also opposed to Clause 1. It represents about one million of the two million workers. If organised labour says that it wishes these protections to remain, how can we judge the views of the one million unorganised workers who are primarily women and who are primarily part-time, working 16 or 20 hours a week? I can assure the Minister that the views put forward by the unions involved in these matters reflect very faithfully and well the general interest of members in that particular category.
The Auld Report has been used selectively by anyone who wishes to make an argument, and I am no exception. For the clause stand part debate I have the appropriate references in the Auld Report. Quite clearly that committee went outside its brief and one wonders why it decided to do so in relation to that recommendation. It presented the Government not merely with a recommendation completely to deregulate shopping hours, but it also said that if shopping hours were to be deregulated, there should be a strengthening not only of the wages councils but of the wages inspectorate. I wonder whether the Minister has ever contemplated what the members of the Auld Committee would say if, tonight or tomorrow, they had a conversation with him or this Committee on what the Government have done with their recommendations.
One of the members of the Auld Committee, Miss Frances Cairncross, at a conference organised by the Institute of Fiscal Studies, was quite blunt. She said that there is no logic in the Government's action in respect of the employment clauses following deregulation. The Government do not have a friend from informed sources upon which they sought to prevail in giving advice to the Auld Committee as to the logic and necessity for this. If there is complete deregulation, this Bill will not be a shops Bill but will be an employment Bill. Once the hours have been deregulated, it will be a Bill wholly concerned with the conditions, pay and negotiating stance of trade unions. With no disrespect to the Minister from the Home Office, who has dealt with this matter very fairly, honestly and forthrightly, it is a matter for the Under-Secretary for Employment.
Increasingly the Bill deals with deregulating employment. I say candidly to the Minister that he must tell those outside the House, the many friends of the Government in this House and his political friends in another place why he feels it is right and necessary. One only has to take the views of those who hitherto have written protections into statutes which 35 years later may not seem to be so important, to be reminded (as the noble Earl, Lord Stockton, reminded us), picking up a point made by my noble friend Lord McCarthy, that one radical difference between 1950 and 1985 is the jump from 2 per cent. unemployed to

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15 per cent. unemployed. I do not intend either to frighten or to warn the Minister that the atmosphere as regards employment in Britain in 1986 is very frightening indeed for those who are unemployed and for those who are on the margin of employment.
The Minister deludes himself if he does not believe that there are some employers who will be forced, by the fierce competition that they will be in once this Bill becomes an Act, to look carefully at a number of matters which may have been the subject of collective agreements. With the disappearance of statutory protection they will say, "There is a chance to trim a fraction of a penny off the wage rates." That is what it is all about. The margins of retailing in 1985 are very fine indeed. The ability of a company, large or small, to survive let alone prosper will depend upon whether it gets its wage rates right.
I am not concerned about later amendments. I am concerned in Clause 2 and with the weakening of the protections which employees enjoy at the moment. They are statutory. There is no need to remove them. The Minister has an opportunity to say why that is necessary.
Earlier this evening I was unable to attend a meeting of the all-party retail group in this House. That is a committee of which I have the honour to be an officer. One of the matters they were going to discuss was the Shops Bill. One of the papers they had was a paper entitled "Reform of Wages Councils in the Context of the Shops Bill". The Minister may not have seen this, and I should like to read what The Retail Consortium are saying about the problems faced because of the juxtaposition of the Shops Bill with no knowledge of the content of the wages councils Bill.
"The Retail Consortium is very concerned, however, at the implications of any removal of restrictions on shop hours for pay and conditions in the retail industry. Thus, the Retail Consortium is concerned that the debate on the Shops Bill should run in parallel to the proposed measures to reform wages councils. It will be important to safeguard against a situation arising whereby wages council orders remain active concerning pay and conditions, after deregulation of shops hours legislation, but prior to new and restricted powers for wages councils coming into force. Ministers have noted the problem but not offered a solution."
Earlier my noble friend Lord Oram dealt particularly with the gap between 18 and 21. It is not the Minister's fault (it is a matter of business management) but we are debating and being asked to approve clauses in the Shops Bill without the benefit of having knowledge of the detail of the other Bill. The Minister was quite right in reminding us that Mr. King, when he had responsibility, gave both Houses a look at the broad sweep of the legislation.
However, we are not looking at whether somebody is going to be able to go out and shop at the garden centre on a Sunday afternoon. We are not talking about someone who may have under-ordered in the supermarket on a Friday night. We are talking about men and women. We are talking about their conditions of work. We are talking about a real aspect of their lives, and that is the kind of protections which they have enjoyed. They are not large, and they have perhaps been bypassed in many good collective agreements not only negotiated by trade unions but agreed by good employers. We are not concerned about the good sense of good employers recognising
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that in order to get the best out of their workers they need freely to negotiate good agreements. We are concerned about the million workers in retailing and distribution who are not organised at all. We are also concerned about the ambiance, the atmosphere, and environment which will persist once this Bill goes through.
That is why I believe that it is right, in view of the disappointing attitude of the Minister to earlier debates and the clear intention that the Government do not intend to come forward with any meaningful amendments, to move, That Clause 2 shall not stand part of the Bill.
7.15 p.m.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: In parliamentary terms I should have liked the noble Lord, Lord Graham, to say that he would not push this matter to a vote. He has just made a very proper speech on the Question that the clause shall stand part of the Bill. It was full of detail that ought to be taken into account. We also had a detailed debate and an effective speech on the second amendment.
In parliamentary terms I should have felt, particularly in view of the response from the noble Lord in charge of the Bill, that it was proper to allow the noble Lord to confer with his colleagues who are responsible for this Bill to see what effect the arguments made on the amendments are likely to have on how they are likely to react in the future.
I do not think that it would be fair to expect an immediate reaction so soon after the arguments have been presented. I would have thought that it was good and accepted parliamentary procedure, knowing that the detailed and proper arguments are on the record, to give the Government a chance to consider the arguments. We still then have another chance at Report stage and Third Reading before this Bill goes out of our hands to another place.
While I accept the effective speech that the noble Lord has just made, I feel that it would have been helpful, having put the remarks on the record, to recognise that the speech would have to be considered and not to expect an off-the-cuff reaction to it. Having made clear the points to be considered, I feel that this matter should not be pushed to a vote.
Lord Denning: I have been rather embarrassed in all the discussions on this clause because in answer to the suggested amendments, what is really being said is, "Wait for the wages councils Bill". I do not have the first notion of what it is, or what is proposed. I doubt whether it is proper, in considering our clauses, to say, "Well, we may have something to deal with all this in a wages Bill which may be brought before the House later".
I should have thought that we ought to wait and consider that Bill, and that we ought to consider this clause on its merits as it stands without any notion of what the wages Bill would come to. Having said that, I would not go so far as to oppose the clause standing part of the Bill.
Lord Glenarthur: I do not think that it is necessary for me to reiterate what is removed in Part II of the

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Shops Act by this Bill. What I should point out is that Part II contains more detailed restrictions specifically on the hours of young people than those we have been discussing. In particular their maximum hours and their overtime are set, and their employment at night is controlled. Shop occupiers will also have to keep records of their working hours. The Bill before us does not alter these provisions in any way. They are being kept unchanged, at least for the time being. It is important to say that because it sets in context the other areas of the Shops Act to which the noble Lord, Lord Graham, referred and which have been referred to by so many Members of the Committee today.
The policy behind Clause 2 has several strands. So far as concerns adult shopworkers, the Government have accepted the recommendation of the Auld Committee that all the provisions contained in Part II of the 1950 Act should be abolished. This may look harsh at first sight, but let us be absolutely clear that in practice these statutory restrictions for adults are ineffective and very limited in their scope. They do not in fact set the maximum working hours per week for adult shopworkers. Nor do the trading hours' restrictions impose an effective maximum because, after all, shops are free to open now for at least 20 hours a day for six days a week.
Furthermore, it cannot be denied that these restrictions are out of date. We have heard many arguments to suggest that that is not the case. I am afraid I cannot agree. They do belong to another era—one that is long past. They originated in the early days of this century and even the most recent is nearly 50 years old. Yet despite the changes that have occurred since then in the retail industry and in society generally, these provisions have not kept pace with the times.
The 1950 Act consolidated much earlier legislation from the early years of the century. Conditions for shopworkers then were certainly severe; for example, their working hours were excessive and 70 hours or more a week was very much the norm. But these conditions of 70 hours a week and so on are not in existence today, as I am sure your Lordships will only too readily recognise. The reduction is not due to the operation of the 1950 Act, which sets no maximum hours for adult shopworkers. It merely requires a half-day holiday a week, meal breaks are set down and time off in lieu of Sunday working.
The reduction is not entirely due to unionisation either, because, as has been stressed by noble Lords opposite, unionisation is not widespread in the retail sector. The reduction is not due to the limitations on shop hours because at present shops can open for the times and on the days I have mentioned. Yet this does not happen. The general improvements in working conditions for shopworkers are part of the general improvements to be found in so many different sectors of our national life. The reductions are not due to the 1950 Act as it stands today and this is why we have recommended the repeal of the Part II provisions for adults.
All these factors lead to the conclusion, to my mind, that the time for statutory limitations is over. There is no reason why adult shopworkers should be treated differently from other workers who settle their working
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conditions through collective agreements or by individual agreement with the employer. This does not seem (how can it seem?) to lead to difficulties that cannot he worked out between employer and employee. This is precisely what happens in other sectors of the economy. They do not have, or, further than have, appear to need, this kind of inflexible statutory restriction.
What happens to all those shopworkers who, for example, have some sort of contract? The contract to work in a shop does not strike me as being so enormously different from the contracts that one might have or agree to in so many other different forms of life. It has been stressed—and I referred just now to the fact—that unionisation within the retail world is not as great as it may be in other areas. That is all very well but there still exists the opportunity to come to a sensible agreement on a contract basis. I do not see that in that case retail is so different from other occupations.
However, for young people the arguments are not so clear and the Auld Committee recognised this. Although we do not pretend that these provisions are anything but out of date, other considerations must also be taken into account. Young people who have recently left school may not have reached full intellectual and emotional maturity. They may have educational and recreational needs which should be taken into account in their work patterns. I am sure that is something we all readily understand. The Auld Report suggested that continuing protection could be given by adapting other, more general legislation when Part II was repealed. Tackling the Shops Act provisions in this way, however, did not seem a very sensible approach when we remember that they are just part of a raft of legislation governing young people's hours of work. Earlier I quoted the Factories Act. It would be unreasonable to tackle the Shops Act in isolation from the rest. The Government have decided, therefore, that a more sensible approach is to review all the legislation controlling young people's hours of work. It is, after all, high time that its relevance nowadays is assessed and a careful examination is made to see whether it could and should be updated.
As I have explained to the Committee, that review is in hand. The Health and Safety Commission and the Equal Opportunities Commission have been asked to consider it and let us have views by the end of next June. In the meantime the Shops Act provision will be retained intact for young people. I am sure that your Lordships would agree that it would be premature to consider them in isolation from the rest, rather in the same way perhaps as the noble Lord, Lord Oram, generously suggested—although he could not agree with what I had said in relation to the previous amendment—that in view of the fact that wages council legislation would appear in due course it might be best (if I got the drift of his argument right) to deal with many of the matters which he raised when we reached that point.
The noble Lord, Lord Graham, said that he was not asking me for a copper-bottomed guarantee. Indeed, from what I said earlier I am sure he would have realised that I cannot give him a copper-bottomed guarantee. What I have said in relation to the other

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amendments concerned with employment legislation, which form part of our consideration of this Bill, is that I will listen with the greatest possible care and study all the remarks made in connection with it. My noble friend Lord Harmar-Nicholls was kind enough to say that he thought that was a reasonable way to proceed.
I cannot say any more than that. I shall study and listen with the greatest care to the arguments which will be put forward both today and when we next return to the matter. I believe, however, that the changes which this Bill produces for Part II of the Shops Act stand out as being a first-class example of the changes that ought to be made. As I said, I could not agree to both earlier amendments, but I hope that with the further insight to the reasoning that lies behind the view that the Government have taken the noble Lord will not press his case that Clause 2 should not stand part of the Bill.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: The Minister has said that he is prepared to look with the greatest possible care at subsequent amendments. I have been under the impression that the Minister considers every amendment with the greatest possible care, but there will be even greater care taken with those in future.
I was also taken by the reference made by the noble Lord, Lord Harmar-Nicholls. He gave nothing away but in effect said, "Don't press your luck. Something may be coming. Give the Minister time to reflect and to study what has been said". He also used the words—and these are his words—"Perhaps the Minister may be able to confer with colleagues to see what is forthcoming". I do not intend to press this matter to a vote at this stage, recognising that there are other amendments now and that there are other stages of the Bill yet to come.
The Minister ought to be quite clear—as he was kind and courteous enough to explain the context in which he felt unable to accept either amendment—why he wants Clause 2. The reason why shopworkers in particular are entitled to protection above and beyond that enjoyed by others is that, sadly, they receive one of the lowest rates of pay. Wages council rates for adult male workers in 1985 were less than £75 a week. When one looks at the statutory provisions which are being deleted and puts them in the context of the minimum statutory rate of pay for those workers in 1985 being £75 a week, I think one can see why even something that appears to be almost inconsequential to all Members of your Lordships' House because of their personal circumstances assumes an importance which is far greater to the shopworker.
I think the Minister referred to the fact that not many people work 70 hours a week now. I have to tell the Minister that I am told that many in the management grades in retailing are working up to and in excess of 70 hours a week because of the six-day week now. When it becomes a seven day week, I venture to suggest we shall hear many tales of people with responsibility who are forced to work more than 70 hours a week in order to keep their jobs and make their businesses successful.
I am quite content to debate with the Minister subsequent amendments and other clauses to see
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whether it is possible for the Minister to be more helpful in the future than he has been up to this stage. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Lord Mishcon: Before the Question is put, I wonder whether the noble Lord the Minister, bearing in mind that the Report stage is on 6th February, could communicate any concessions that he finds it possible to make before that date so that one knows intelligently how one should put down amendments at Report stage and save the time of the House.
Lord Glenarthur: What I said when we debated the earlier amendment was that I would consider carefully the arguments which were put forward on amendments subsequent to the one on which we had a Division an hour or so ago. I undertake to do precisely that. I am sure that the noble Lord will be able to tell as we progress through those various amendments what my inclination is. But I stand by what I said. I will study with great care what takes place. If there is any news that I can give the noble Lord I shall do so. What I am not promising to do, and have not promised to do at any stage, is to bring good news; merely to study what is said and to listen to the arguments to see precisely how we can go ahead.
Lord Mishcon: There is no difference between the noble Lord the Minister and myself on this point. I was merely hoping that we could, as it were, make the wheels move a little easier if the noble Lord the Minister indicated his intentions. Then we would know where we stood at Report stage. That is all I said.
Clause 2 agreed to.
Viscount Davidson: It may be for the convenience of the Committee if we take a break now. I suggest that we do not resume the Committee stage before half-past eight.
I beg to move that the House do now resume.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.

Education (Amendment) Bill
7.34 p.m.
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Baroness Hooper.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in Committee accordingly.
[The LORD AIREDALE in the Chair.]
Clause 1 agreed to.
Clause 2 [Exclusion of certain remuneration from Remuneration of Teachers Act 1965]:
Lord Ritchie of Dundee Lord Ritchie of Dundee moved Amendment No. 1:
Page 1, line 17, at end insert ("and, in the interests of clarity, "midday supervision" shall only include the minding of pupils before, during and after the provision of a midday meal.").
The noble Lord said: I pointed out at Second Reading that the term "midday supervision" was insufficiently clear because it could be interpreted as including the many extra-curricular activities that teachers engage in during the lunch break. I am referring to such things as choir practice, dance classes, sports practice, computer studies and so on. These activities are not intended to be covered in the Bill, and I think it is important that it should say so explicitly.
Both functions—that is to say, the supervision of the meal and the conducting of extra-curricular activities—have traditionally been performed voluntarily by teachers. During the present dispute teachers have withdrawn their voluntary goodwill services from both. It is the intention of this Bill that teachers should be largely replaced by external supervisors in the first function as an emergency measure. In the second, they cannot be so replaced: professional teachers are indispensable.
It seems to me that this might give rise to an undesirable situation in which external ancillary supervisors and teachers under special contract were receiving payment while other teachers engaged in extra-curricular activities were not. Under the Bill as it stands, theoretically they could claim payment. This is extremely unlikely to happen. One really cannot imagine a teacher accepting (shall we say?) £1.25 for playing chess with some first-year secondary children for half an hour in the midday break.
Indeed, it is this very attitude towards their services and the suggestion that they will have carefully fixed payment for exact contributions that teachers so bitterly resent. They want to perform such services voluntarily or not at all. But they want to do so in return for a fair valuation of their worth in the form of a fair settlement of the dispute. This clause of the Bill seems to me to be in need of clarification, and also, I think, care should be taken not to anticipate in any way the settlement of the dispute. I hope that the Minister will consider the matter and discuss it further with his right honourable friend.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: In supporting this amendment I want to make it clear (and I know that the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie, would agree with me) that we are very conscious of the drafting defect of this and any other amendment to this Bill. The Long Title of the Bill refers only to amendment of the Education (Grants and Awards) Act 1984 and the Remuneration of Teachers Act 1965. Any amendment which is proposed which has any substance, as does the noble Lord's amendment to change (in his case) the definition of "midday supervison", or, in the case of subsequent amendments, to talk about training or minimum standards, ought not to be dependent upon the Remuneration of Teachers Act; in other words, the remuneration of teachers ought not to be dependent upon the provisons made in these amendments.
We perfectly recognise (so the noble Earl can cross out that part of his brief) that there would be a bizarre effect if these amendments were to be carried. This is done simply because the Long Title of the Bill is framed in such a way that there is no other way of doing it than by putting down an amendment which is out of order because it conflicts with the Long Title.
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It seems to me that the noble Lord, with his life-time of experience, has made a perfectly valid and resonable point about the definition of "midday supervision". It is unclear as it stands, and could lead to a further prejudging of the issue of restructuring, on which the Government are so keen. If the Government seriously mean that the £1¼ billion which they say they have set aside for restructuring is really open for negotiation and that only a very small part of it is to be taken up by the proposals in this Bill, then surely it is in the Government's interest to agree to this amendment, which more adequately defines and restricts the purposes for which these grants are to be made.
The Earl of Swinton: First, I must reassure the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, that I have not got that in my brief at all. I was not crossing out that bit: I was crossing out the nasty bit which, if the noble Lords were nasty to me, I was going to say back. But they have both been so very kind about this that it was that bit that I was actually crossing out.
In fact, I share the appreciation which has been expressed of the many extra-curricular activities which may take place at lunchtime, but neither those activities nor some of the schools' most basic functions can occur if there is no provision for supervision. When children are barred from the premises at midday the school day is disrupted, discipline may suffer and some pupils may not be willing or able to return for the afternoon's lessons. I believe the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie, is right when he draws a distinction between supervising the meal and the school generally at midday and the many extracurricular activities which may take place at that time or at times outside the normal school timetable. The latter activities are much more akin to the teachers' normal teaching duties, and it is certainly not our intention that they should be the subject of separate payments.
But I do not believe that the "clarification" offered in this amendment is clarification at all. The meaning of the exclusion from the Remuneration of Teachers Act in Clause 2 of the Bill—namely,
"remuneration paid to teachers by local education authorities under contracts relating exclusively to the provision of midday supervision of pupils in schools"—
is quite clear. This amendment introduces a potential source of ambiguity, since it could be taken to exclude supervision of pupils not taking school meals or supervision in classrooms and playgrounds away from dining areas, where many pupils now bring their own packed lunches to eat.
I really do not think it is in anyone's interest that such confusion could be created by the use of the word "clarification". This clause, as originally drafted, provides for the exclusion of contracts relating to midday supervision only to be outside the scope of the Remuneration of Teachers Act. I think this amendment is unnecessary, and I would ask the noble Lord to withdraw it.
Lord Ritchie of Dundee: I thank the noble Lord for his words on the subject. I feel I can say no more, if it is believed that this is sufficiently clear. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
7.45 p.m.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey Lord McIntosh of Haringey moved Amendment No. 2:
Page 1, line 17, at end insert—
(" (2) This section shall not have effect until national minimum standards on the level of supervisory staff have been established.").
The noble Lord said: With the leave of the Committee, it was intended that this amendment should be in my name and that the name of the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie, should be added to it. I make the preliminary comment about the difficulty of amendment of this Bill and I ask that that be "read into the record", if that phrase is possible this side of the Atlantic.
Let me make it clear that in moving this amendment it is not my intention to delay or wreck the Government's plans in bringing forward this Bill but rather to draw attention to the lack of consideration, the bad timing and the lack of consultation that have taken place in the way in which this Bill has been introduced.
I said at Second Reading that I was a strong supporter of school meals. Even as a child, I was a strong supporter of school meals—and that is saying something, considering the nutritional values and the standards of cooking which prevailed in the schools I went to! I am a strong supporter of school meals both from a nutritional point of view and from a social and educational point of view. I want to make it clear from the outset that any attempt which might be made from any quarter to suggest that school meals no longer have a part to play in the school day or that, for example, one should go over to a Continental day which started earlier, ended earlier and did not have a meal break, I should totally deplore. I believe that my party would feel the same about that.
I should also like to make it clear that our intention is not in any way to delay the implementation of the Bill. I understand that the Inner London Education Authority has already advertised for 1,700 supervisory staff and that the issue is still open to them as to whether applications should come from teachers or not and whether teachers should be encouraged or discouraged as to taking those posts. Clearly, ILEA and a number of other local education authorities, such as Durham, Lancashire, Nottinghamshire and so on, feel strongly that there is a need for urgent action on this matter, and nothing that I am saying now is intended to make it more difficult for them to pursue those objectives.
However, there are problems about the standards of supervision and in particular there are problems if a large number of the posts are filled by people who are not teachers. Perhaps on reflection, a national minimum standard is not the right way to do it and perhaps the Government could propose some less draconian way of doing it than the words I have suggested in the amendment. I am always open to suggestions about that. Certainly, if we look at the task which would face anybody not familiar with schools, coming in for perhaps one and a half hours a day—that may be seven and a half hours a week, which, at the rate of pay which the National Association of Head Teachers suggests might be available from the funds, would come to a total of £20 a week—there is not a
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great deal of financial incentive and it may well be that there will be a shortage of people who have an understanding of the way schools operate. They will not know the pupils in the school; they will not know the way in which the school operates or the way in which its own internal self-discipline operates. In some cases I fear they will be very much at risk from indiscipline, both in the dining areas and in the grounds or other parts of the school. I should have thought it not unreasonable to suggest that some help might be given by the Government, perhaps not in the form of national minimum standards but certainly in the form of some guidance on the quality of people required and the sort of help that they might need from the teachers and from the heads in order to do an effective job. It is in that context that I beg to move the amendment standing in my name and that of other noble Lords.
Lord Kilmarnock: I think the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, whose amendment I certainly support, is right not to specify absolutely that there should be national minimum standards laid down. That indeed may not perhaps be the way to go about it, but I should like to remind the noble Earl of his speech on Second Reading on 14th January at col. 967, when he said:
"The Government envisage that the additional resources will be used to employ supervisors charged with the responsibility for seeing that pupils are effectively supervised at mid-day."
"Effectively" is the operative word there and, for reasons which have been given by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, and, I think, by the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie, at Second Reading regarding the difficulties that could be experienced by outside staff unfamiliar with the working of the school or even with the names of the pupils, coming in and preserving effective control at mealtimes, I think it is reasonable to ask the noble Earl whether the Government are contemplating, as has been suggested, setting out some guidelines or making some suggestions to local authorities on how they should proceed in selecting staff of this sort. Possibly retired teachers might be prepared to come forward: one does not know. But it seems to me that some sort of guidance is required and I should be very interested to hear the noble Earl's answer.
The Earl of Swinton: I personally believe that there are a number of very responsible people around who can carry out midday supervision. They may well include teachers or of course there may be other people. There are many other situations where children are supervised by adults who are not teachers. It has been suggested that this reduces the midday supervision to mere child-minding, as if that function were not in itself important. I doubt whether many parents would agree. Their first concern must be to see that their children are safe and that their welfare is safeguarded. Many parents have found their lives disrupted because they have been asked, often at short notice, to take responsibility for their children at midday when they had already undertaken other commitments on the reasonable expectation that their children would be looked after by the school.
I think the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, spoke of "strangers"—or perhaps he did not go quite as far as that, but he suggested that perhaps strangers might be

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brought in off the streets and they would not know the buildings, the children or the school. Perhaps I am exaggerating here, but I should have thought that that was much more likely to be the result of an ad hoc arrangement made to maintain supervision when teachers withdraw at short notice. It is just that sort of situation that we are determined to avoid, and the purpose of our initiative is to encourage authorities to make arrangements which make clear who is responsible for supervision. If people other than teachers are used, there is no reason why they should not be employed on a long-term basis in the same school, so that they can get to know its ways.
I also know a little about school dinners. I know that very often the dinner ladies are some of the most popular people in a school and all the children in the school get to know them well and often look upon them as surrogate mums. I see the children rushing up to get second helpings and so on.
I do not think there is any national scheme by which such people are employed. The Government do not intend to lay down minimum staffing standards for supervisory staff. Generally, matters of this kind are left to the discretion of local education authorities, and rightly so. There are, for example, no minimum staffing levels laid down for teaching staff in schools. We see no reason why the staffing of new supervision arrangements should be treated differently. That does not mean that we are not concerned about the safety, welfare and discipline of pupils in our schools. Far from it. It is just such a concern which has motivated us to introduce this Bill. But we believe very strongly that local education authorities are best placed to decide what is best for their areas.
I hark back for a bit to the time when the Front Bench spokesman on education on the other side of the House was not the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh. Very often, the noble Baroness accused me of trying to tell local authorities what to do and how to do it, and here we are giving them their heads and letting them decide that they are the best people to do it. I thought that the noble Lord would welcome this, and I was rather surprised that he did not.
The circumstances of authorities vary widely, as do those of schools. It is evident from the proposals already submitted for education support grant approval for this new activity that authorities are approaching the issue in a variety of ways. Those differences no doubt reflect, in large part, differences in their circumstances; differences which it would be difficult to allow for in setting national standards. We do not believe that it would be appropriate to enshrine a requirement for national minimum staffing standards in legislation.
I do not know about the question of a circular, as the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, suggested. I think that this would be unusual, but I will certainly bring it to the attention of my right honourable friend and ask whether he would consider doing such a thing when this Bill gets the Royal Assent. However, I obviously could not give an undertaking. Having listened to what I have said, I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw this amendment.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I am far from totally convinced by the arguments used by the noble Earl. I am bound to say that I do not think it is appropriate for him to contrast the long-term plans, which I assume are the purpose of this legislation, with what we hope is the short-term position of uncertainty created by the industrial dispute between the teachers and the Government. I was going to say "local authorities", but in fact the dispute is with the Government. I do not want to say any more on that. We must all hope that the talks now taking place at ACAS—and I hope that they are continuing tomorrow, although I have not seen the late news on this—will succeed and that the uncertainty which does indeed plague parents at this time comes to a speedy end.
But the contrast is not with the situation during the present dispute, but between the situation that is now proposed and the generally prevailing situation in schools. I entirely agree with the noble Earl that uncertainty for parents is very damaging; indeed, it is very damaging for the pupils themselves not to know where they are, where they are going to be, whether they are going to be sent home, whether their lessons are going to continue uninterrupted. We must all be in agreement on that.
It is quite true, as the noble Earl said, that since 1969 there have not been nationally determined staffing levels for teachers themselves. But, in effect, the Government in introducing this legislation are not saying that there will be no staffing levels. They are just not coming clean about the way in which those staffing levels are going to be imposed. There is a sum of money to be made available for this purpose and that sum of money, as we have learned from debates in another place, is to be divided among local authorities in proportion to the number of pupils in the authority and in the schools, with due provision for schools in, for example, rural areas where the pupils find it more difficult to get home and are more likely to be staving at school.
So, in effect, the staffing levels are being imposed by the Government by financial means, and we have already expressed our distaste for the way in which the Government, on the excuse of the Education (Grants and Awards) Act, are imposing conditions reducing the level of freedom for local education authorities. It is not our proposal in this amendment which is reducing the level of freedom. It is the extension of the Education (Grants and Awards) Act beyond the condition to which it was originally intended to apply which is reducing the freedom of individual local education authorities. It is the Government who are reducing that scope, not those of us who are proposing these amendments. What we are saying in these amendments is that the Government ought to come clean and say that the restriction of financial provision and the availability of financial provision at a certain level is, in effect, a control on staffing levels.
I suppose that we must be grateful to the noble Earl for his response to the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock. If he is prepared to consider and discuss with his right honourable and honourable friends the possibility of a circular which would give guidance to local authorities, that may be the most that we can hope for

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at this time. With that prospect in mind, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey Lord McIntosh of Haringey moved Amendment No. 3:
Page 1, line 17, at end insert—
("(3) Remuneration shall only be paid after local Education Authorities have satisfied the Secretary of State that adequate training has been provided for supervisory staff other than teachers.").
The noble Lord said: With the leave of the Committee, this amendment should, strictly speaking, have been first in my name. Here, again, the matter was not so closely related as to require that it should be grouped with the previous amendment, but it is an attempt to get the Government to recognise their responsibilities in an area where they themselves are saying on what local education authorities should spend their money. I do not need to go over again the arguments which have been put by those who are more closely connected with education than I am, about the need for care in the selection and indeed in the training of supervisory staff.
The suggestion of older teachers coming out of retirement is an interesting one. It may well be that there are some communities where there will be no difficulty in finding people who need very little training. Certainly, I make it clear in the amendment that there is no suggestion that teachers should undergo additional training for something which most of them have been doing throughout their professional lives. But the recognition of training is something which is common to many parts of the public service. There seems no good reason why it should not apply equally to these supervisory staff other than teachers who have, as all noble Lords who have taken part in these debates have said, a very important role to play.
I hope very much that the noble Earl will feel able to say in terms rather similar to the answer he gave to the noble Lord, Lord Kilmarnock, that, at the very least, a circular could give guidance on the kind of training which would be appropriate for these supervisory staff other than teachers. I do not believe that this is a derogation of the responsibilities or rights of local education authorities. In essence, it is no different from the kind of advice that Her Majesty's inspectors give in the teaching area of schools. I think that this is a modest amendment, but I believe that it would be helpful if it had some response from the Government. I beg to move.
Lord Ritchie of Dundee: I should just like to add one word to what the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, has said. It is important not only that any supervisory staff coming from outside should be adequately trained, but—perhaps more important—that they should be of the right personality. The teacher or anyone in charge of children needs to be the right kind of person. Bearing that in mind, I hope that the noble Earl may be able to use his influence to bring it about that head teachers are closely consulted when the supervisory staff in their schools are being selected. Head teachers will have a much better idea than anybody else what kind of people they want in their schools.
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The other point which I should like to make has already been made. It has been said to me a number of times that the quality of the ancillary helpers doing this kind of work will largely depend on what they are paid.
The Earl of Swinton: The Government do not accept that additional training should be a statutory requirement—I underline those words—for supervisory staff other than teachers. As with other detailed aspects of new arrangements, we believe that it is right to leave this in the hands of local education authorities. I am sure that authorities will be guided by the principle that new supervisory staff must be capable of performing their tasks and of discharging the authority's duty of care to the pupils in their charge. No doubt some recruits will need short courses of training to fit them for their new role. Authorities have experience of providing training in such circumstances on which they will be able to build.
I can go further than I did on the last amendment in hoping to satisfy the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey. The Government have made it clear that, as with other activities funded through education support grant, authorities will be asked to monitor the success of their arrangements. My right honourable friends will wish to be sure that they are achieving their objective of securing adequate supervision before giving approval for ESG support for a further year. There will be a great incentive on authorities to see that their staff are the right kind of people, properly trained and doing the job properly. But in the final analysis it must be left to the good sense of authorities to decide how much training is necessary for staff involved in order to ensure that their schemes are successful. I therefore ask the noble Lord once more to withdraw the amendment.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: I am grateful to the noble Earl. It is a sensible suggestion for the Government to make that there should be monitoring and that continuation of the scheme should be dependent upon an evaluation which shows that it is working successfully. I agree with the noble Earl that so far as possible it ought to be local authorities who take the ultimate responsibility for the training. What was being suggested in the amendment was that the Government in their great wisdom might have something to contribute to that debate. The noble Earl seems to think not. Perhaps there is no hope of trying to persuade him on that matter. Perhaps the man in Whitehall—it used to be Whitehall—does not necessarily know best. On the basis of the noble Earl's reply, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 2 agreed to.
Remaining clause agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported without amendment.
The Earl of Swinton: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now adjourn during pleasure until half-past eight.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
[The Sitting was suspended from 8.4 until 8.30 p.m.]

Shops Bill [H.L.]
House again in Committee.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness White): In accordance with the decision of the Committee on 16th December last, the Question that I must now put is, That Clause 1 shall stand part of the Bill?
Lord Graham of Edmonton: I had given notice of my intention to oppose, at the appropriate time, that Clause 1 stand part of the Bill. However, much water has flowed under the bridge since then. Just as I have earlier this evening withdrawn my opposition to Clause 2 in order to allow for a period of reflection, I am equally satisfied that I should not move that Clause 1 shall not stand part of the Bill.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees: I must still put the Question, That Clause 1 shall stand part of the Bill?
Clause 1 agreed to.
Lord Stallard Lord Stallard moved Amendment No. 20:
After Clause 2, insert the following new clause:
("Amendment of s. 22 of Shops Act 1950.
.—(1) The Shops Act 1950 shall be amended as follows.
(2) In section 22(1)(a), after "more than four hours on any Sunday" there shall be inserted the words "who has, in the preceding six days, worked a total of thirty nine hours or more".
(3) Section 22(1)(a)(ii) shall be omitted.
(4) In section 22(1)(b), after "more than four hours on a Sunday in any month" there shall be inserted the words "but who has, in the preceding six days, worked a total of thirty nine hours or more".
(5) After section 22(1)(d) there shall be inserted the following new paragraph:
"(c) in the case of a person so employed on a Sunday that person shall receive pay for the time worked on that Sunday at double the rate that would be paid for that work if performed on a weekday, and for the purposes of this paragraph rate shall be determined by reference to the contract of employment or Wages Council order, whatever is higher; and the scope of the retail wages council orders will be deemed to apply to all workers in shops, without regard to the type of goods being sold, except for any distinction between food and non-food shops.".").
The noble Lord said: Noble Lords may remember that in our previous session just before the Christmas Recess my noble friend Lord Shinwell, in a very wise speech, advised your Lordships to read all the speeches and the Bill during the Recess and to return refreshed, and perhaps with something constructive to say.
Lord Glenarthur: I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord: I wish merely to raise a procedural point. Does the noble Lord intend to group Amendment No. 20 with Amendment No. 37? It would be very helpful to the Committee if the noble Lord will indicate if that is so, as I imagine it will be.
Lord Stallard: I am pleased to give the Minister that assurance. I shall happily group Amendments Nos. 20 and 37 together.
Amendment No. 37: Schedule 2, page 7, line 15, leave out paragraph 7.
Those were very wise words of my noble friend Lord Shinwell. I took his advice. I read through the reports
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and the Committee proceedings. I hoped that following the goodwill of the Christmas season and New Year resolutions the Minister would return with at least some new approaches. However, I am afraid that the responses and discussions involving the Minister so far today have dashed those hopes.
If I may share another secret with your Lordships, I resolved at Christmas that I would not be provoked by some Members on the Government Benches in the way that I have been provoked in the last few months. This afternoon I have found it very difficult but I have resisted enough temptation to last me for the next 12 months on that score. I shall try to keep to my resolution this year and not be unduly provoked into making long, rambling and boring speeches.
With this amendment, as with many others, we are seeking, in the words of the old engineer's initiation address, merely to retain—not to improve—the conditions already obtained. We may then seek to improve them. That is really what we are trying to do with Amendment No. 20. The argument so far in response to all the other amendments and discussions has been centred on strong resistance to any attempt to reduce or minimise in any objective sense the vote taken on Second Reading about deregulation—and that aspect has been mentioned again this afternoon.
None of the proposed amendments to Clause 2 so far discussed have interfered with the general objective of the Bill; that is, the objective of total deregulation. The noble and learned Lords, Lord Denning and Lord Simon of Glaisdale, have both made that point, as has the noble Earl, Lord Stockton. The amendments in Clause 2 sought to change the main purpose of the Bill, which is deregulation of Sunday trading. The amendments were all concerned with the working and employment conditions of the shopworkers themselves.
On Clause 1, I was more than happy to support the Bishops' Bench because I share their religious concerns and their concerns about the social problems that I could see flowing from this Bill if Clause 1 were retained. However, my other instinct as a lifelong trade unionist—as a negotiator, a shop steward, and an official for many years—means that I am bound to support amendments that seek to retain the protection for shopworkers that is contained in Clause 2.
Most noble Lords on this side of the Committee will recall the long-drawn-out struggle—mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Stockton, in an excellent speech—to achieve improvements in conditions. He made mention of the long battle to bring shopworkers out of the old Victorian sweatshop era and into modern conditions of employment, to enjoy modern improvements. I fear that Clause 2 will take us right back to the old position.
As the noble Earl, Lord Stockton, was speaking, I could not help but think how far the Government party have moved in just a few years. The gap between what was being said by the noble Earl and what the noble Lord the Minister was saying on behalf of the Government was so wide that it was incredible. It was astounding to think how much the Government have moved backwards in just a few short years. That is something that distressed many of us as we listened to the noble Lord.

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The proposals in Clause 2 remove the protection of sections of the Shops Act. They also remove many aspects of the wages councils' provisions. Clause 2 is bound to leave shopworkers wholly unprotected against further exploitation. There can be no doubt about that position in anybody's mind. Many full-time shopworkers already work six days a week. My noble friend Lady Turner drew attention to the fact that shopworkers are a special case. Of course, they are a special case because of the conditions under which they work at present. If the proposals for the wages councils are carried out the situation will be much worse.
I was pleased to hear the remarks of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale. I have crossed swords with him in previous debates and I was prepared to do so again today until the noble and learned Lord redeemed himself by distancing himself from those who were, on the one hand, supporting the Auld Committee report as the whole basis of this Bill and, on the other hand, taking away the protections for shopworkers, even though the Auld Committee itself had stated in very strong terms that those protections ought to remain. I am sure that I do not need to give the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon, the reference, but I will refer the Committee to paragraphs 278 and 288. I am sure that the noble and learned Lord will have seen all those references by now.
The Auld Committee felt it necessary to go beyond its terms of reference and state its concern about the possible effects of removing the protections of the Shops Act 1950. The committee recommended that the wages councils be retained for shopworkers. I should have thought that that would carry much more weight with the Minister and the Government, particularly since they have based their whole case on the Auld Committee. The Minister himself has said a number of times that the basis of this legislation is the Auld Committee report. If he had maintained that stance he could have done nothing else but accept the arguments put forward by the Auld Committee for the retention of these provisions to protect the shopworkers.
The other main point drawn out is that there is nothing in the original shop legislation to prevent Sunday employment in England and Wales. That is not prohibited by the 1950 Shops Act. The restrictions on shop opening stem from sections in the legislation concerning trading hours, not employment protection. Therefore, if the aim of the Bill, as we have been constantly told in previous debates, is simply to pave the way for freedom of trade on Sunday, the Bill could simly repeal those sections of the Shops Act and the remainder be left standing. If the main function is simply to deregulate hours the Bill could do that without touching the conditions of employment. Certainly there is nothing in the legislation about employment protection. Nothing in the 1950 Shops Act prevents the Government from repealing the first part and leaving the protection standing.
Instead, the present Bill proposes to repeal restrictions on trading hours and most of the employment safeguards contained in the 1950 Shops Act. These safeguards do not prohibit Sunday working. They only ensure, as the Auld Committee recognised, that workers who have to work on Sunday
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are adequately compensated for the loss of their normal rest day. That was accepted by everyone. All the conditions related to that. That is the purpose of my amendment because, in the main, I am dealing with Section 22 of the Shops Act. That gives shopworkers the right to equivalent time off in the following week and limits the number of successive Sundays that an employee has to work by restricting Sunday working to two Sundays a month.
I do not consider that to be unreasonable in the context of the discussions we have had. The proposals do not interfere with the main intention of the Bill, which is total deregulation. The proposals can be accepted without interfering with that. I should like to have the Minister's comments on that. The Bill removes all safeguards from everyone except 16 and 17 year-olds. Some employers will be tempted to force workers to work a much longer week. We are already beginning to hear of examples where that is more than a possibility. The removal of overtime and premium rates set out by the wages council will assist in that exploitation. We fear that that will spread beyond the shopworkers to other workers
My noble friend Lord Graham pointed to a headline in the Standard today stating that more trade union curbs are on the way. It seems that is perhaps part of the reason for this attack on the wages council and on shopworkers' conditions of employment. It is to set yet another scene and to attack many others in the circumstances. As we have heard again this afternoon, shopworkers are not particularly well organised, for a number of reasons which are well understood. There are other industries in similar circumstances where workers are not well organised because of the difficulties involved. It may be possible for the Government to pick them off and exploit them in the way that this Bill seeks to exploit the shopworkers.
8.45 p.m.
The effect of my amendment is that Section 22 of the 1950 Act will be retained but modernised. The noble Minister himself said that that section is out of date. My amendment brings it up to date and puts it into a more modern trade union context. Bearing in mind the Auld Committee recommendation, minimum premiums will be provided for Sunday work so that shopworkers will receive compensation for Sunday work which is comparable to that received by workers in other industries. It is feared that the proposals contained in the Shops Bill will be used to put on pressure for similar changes in other industries, as I have said.
Therefore, I share the Auld Committee's concern about the need for protection. I share the concern about the need to protect workers against excessively long working weeks. The hours to be worked are getting longer and the weeks are getting longer. If the Bill goes through there will be a seven-day week of heaven knows how many hours, because the early closing (or half-shut day, as we used to know it) will have gone, too. Therefore, I share the Auld Committee's concern about those aspects.
The amendment provides for time off in lieu; but unlike the 1950 Act we say in the amendment that it is only for those workers who have worked a full working week in the week preceding the Sunday. That

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is, as it were, a concession to circumstances because we are allowing employers to have flexibility to continue to use part-time workers. So I hope that the Minister, although he has rejected all the amendments to Clause 2, will see that this new clause is an attempt to bring up to date those parts of the 1950 Act that he himself said are out of date and which were not dealt with in previous amendments. I hope, therefore, taking what I have said together with the recommendations of the Auld Committee, he will accept this new clause. I beg to move.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: I am sure it is my fault because I have only one effective eye and I am inclined to keep that simultaneously on the amendment, the Bill and the Shops Act. However, I do not follow the noble Lord as to why he wants to omit Section 22(1)(a)(ii). I do not think he dealt with that.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: While the noble Lord, Lord Stallard, is considering that point, may I raise another query? I am bound to say that I do not understand the amendment, technically. It seeks to amend Section 22 of the Shops Act and to add various bits to it. However, the Committee has already agreed that Section 22 of the Shops Act shall not apply to anybody over the age of 18. That is now excluded. Is the noble Lord, Lord Stallard, arguing that he can go on amending those provisions and that they will have any effect on anybody over the age of 18?
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: I think I indicated earlier that what many of us want to hear is that there is to be sufficient protection for shopworkers in the future without necessarily clinging to the provisions of the Shops Act 1950. As the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, pointed out, Section 22 now applies only to 16 to 18 year-olds. I wish only to say that while I have sympathy with the approach of the noble Lord, Lord Stallard, we shall be making a great mistake if, by amendment, we complicate more an extremely complicated Act of Parliament. If we are to make progress in the direction that the noble Lord would wish, I hope that it will be by simplification rather than by complication.
Lord McCarthy: I find it difficult to follow the arguments of the last two speakers. The position is simple. The Minister told us before dinner that the trouble with this part of the 1950 Act is that it is out of date; we have not been told precisely how. We have been told that time has marched on and left it behind. We tried to say before dinner, "Hang about! That is not an argument because there are amendments on the Marshalled List which in a sense help to bring it up to date". That is what the amendments try to do. To some extent they try to meet the point that times have changed in ways that were not specified by the Government, and there are things which can be done to improve Part II of the Act.
If I understand the argument, what they are now saying is that we cannot do that. Although the Government say that the Act is out of date—it may be out of date and we can bring it up to date—we cannot do that because the provisions do not apply over the area which they would have applied had it not been for
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the Bill. Because we cannot improve and bring up to date the provisions for people over 18, it becomes impermissible to improve and bring up to date that which remains; namely, the provisions for people under 18.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: With great respect—
Lord McCarthy: May I finish what I am saying? It does not seem to me that that follows. What we are saying is that the scope of over two-thirds of the 1950 Act has been taken away, but that does not seem to us to be a reason why we should not improve the part which remains.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: The point that I was trying to make was not the point that the noble Lord has just summarised; namely, now that the impact of Section 22 of the Act is limited to 16 to 18 year-olds that is a reason not to try to improve that part which is left. My objection is that the amendment is not an improvement. It is simply an over-complication.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: May I also comment? The noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, appears to accept my proposition that the only effect of the amendment will be on the provisions in respect of those under 18, in which case I must say that the noble Lord, Lord Stallard, did not make that clear. On the contrary, his whole speech was directed to the general question of protection for workers in this industry. If the effect of the amendment is, as it seems to me—and I think that the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, accepts that—only on those aged 16 to 18, that is not to say that that is not important, but I think that the noble Lord, Lord Stallard, might have told the Committee that to begin with.
Lord Stallard: I am grateful to my noble friend Lord McCarthy for dealing with that point. On the point raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon, I maintain that the new clause will simply bring the Bill up to date. It would insert minimum premia for Sunday working. We have introduced the 39-hour concept. That is the reason for deleting subsection (1)(a), I think it is. But we have certainly introduced the provision for 39 hours or more. That brings the situation up to date. It simply modernises the legislation, as do the other parts of the new clause. They bring the existing legislation up to date by introducing minimum premia for Sunday working which would be entirely abolished by the Bill and which are already out of date in the 1950 Act.
I know that the Minister will accept the amendment. He has said that that part of the legislation is out of date. The way to deal with that is not to demolish or repeal the legislation but simply to bring it up to date by bringing the overtime premia, the days off in lieu and those other aspects of Sunday working more up to date with modern trade union rules and legislation. That is the purport of the new clause.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: Does the noble Lord accept—because he has not indicated one way or the other whether he does or does not—that the effect of the amendment, if accepted, would be to bring up to

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date only those provisions that relate to persons under 18 because of the Committee's decision on Clause 2?
Lord Stallard: Until such time as we further discuss Clause 2 at a later stage in the Bill, I have to accept that.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: The Bill is not complicated but our procedures are. Those who followed the debate closely will know that there was an amendment down to delete the mention of Section 22 of the Shops Act in Clause 2 which would have been a paving amendment to the general approach here. Because of the time-scale and tactics, in order to get the maximum time to debate general principles, that omission has weakened the general strength of the argument that would have been made. But the argument is still valid. Does the Minister want to help me?
Lord Glenarthur: If I were to help the Committee I should only reinforce precisely what my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter said. Amendment No. 18, which I think is what the noble Lord is referring to, was not moved. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Stallard, can now apply only to young shopworkers over compulsory school-leaving age but below the age of 18. My noble friend is correct, and that puts us in a dilemma when we are considering the practicability of the amendment.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: There is no dispute, but we have taken up 10 minutes on this matter and I am happy about that! The intention is at all times to be consistent. We need to bear in mind the difficulty of the Committee, as we have yet to see the colour of the wages council Bill. We know the intention of the Minister, which is also seen in the Bill, that there will be two rates of pay. One will be a statutory minimum and the other will be one overtime rate. Depending on circumstances and the number of hours, under the wages council provisions there are a range of overtime rates—time and a quarter, time and a third, time and a half, time and three-quarters, double time. We do not argue that if there are to be two rates the second should be double time, but people who statutorily will be forced to work on a Sunday, whether or not they are only 16 or 17, are entitled to be paid double because in our view they are being forced to give up the precious value and benefit of a Sunday.
One of the arguments of those who wish to see Sunday trading is that a decision has been laid down. A large retail company in Scotland paid time and a third. Before the court it argued that it did not wish to pay double time, and the court held that the employee was entitled only to time and a third because he was a part-time and not a full-time worker. We are experiencing a serious attempt to dilute the strength of the case and the commitment of Sunday workers. If it becomes cheaper and easier for employers to employ people on a Sunday—one means of achieving this will be to remove the present protections of the wages council order, which, in certain circumstances, provides for double-time and sometimes double-time and a day off in lieu—anything that we on this side of the Committee see as diminishing existing rights we shall have an argument about.
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We are not likely to win the argument in the circumstances prevailing at this moment, and it is not being pressed. But the reason for engaging the Minister in this debate and requiring him to put on the record his arguments, which are always fair, is to ensure that these arguments can be studied by people not least in another place and certainly in advance of our seeing the wages council Bill. We want from the Minister greater clarification of how he sees the wages element of working on a Sunday panning out. One argument for abolishing wages councils as they affect 16 and 17-year-olds is the belief that the cost of employing young people is deleterious to the running of a business. The evidence for that belief is not clear. Nor is it understood. We believe that people who have to work on a Sunday are entitled to double-time.
9 p.m.
Lord Glenarthur: Once again, as the noble Lord, Lord Graham, has invited me to say so, I have to say that the amendment tackles the Sunday working provisions of Section 22 of the 1950 Act. Having sought to keep the provisions giving time off in lieu of Sunday working—that is the theme of his argument, although, as he says himself, he did not move that amendment—the noble Lord now seeks to amend the detailed application of those provisions. It appears to be the intention to limit the time off provision to those shopworkers who have already worked at least 39 hours during the six days before the Sunday. The amendment also removes the limit on the number of days that can be worked each month.
I repeat what I said earlier in support of my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter, for whose comments I am extremely grateful. Because that amendment was not moved, restrictions, naturally, apply to the amendment now being moved. I understand that it can be argued that these are perfectly reasonable amendments in that they update Section 22 and limit its application to those shopworkers who have already worked a full week before they come to work on Sunday. But we must not be misled into forgetting the fundamental aims of the Bill, which are to remove shop trading hours restrictions and restrictions on the hours of adult shopworkers. We simply do not believe that adult shopworkers want or need inflexible statutory restrictions on their working conditions. We aim to remove those restrictions completely, not to put an albeit updated package in their place.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: The noble Lord says that he cannot believe that adult shopworkers would wish the restrictions on their shop hours to remain and that they would be in favour of their removal. Would the Minister care to say what consultations have taken place, and with whom they were undertaken by the Government, which have brought him to that conclusion?
Lord Glenarthur: I am just starting to develop the argument on which the noble Lord has intervened. Perhaps, by the time I have reached the end of it, he may be a little more convinced that what we propose is not out of keeping with the circumstances in which we find ourselves today.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: I hope so.
Lord Glenarthur: The method by which a shopworker is compensated for working on a Sunday is, I suggest, best left to that shopworker and his employer to sort out. I cannot believe that this is an unreasonable suggestion. It is precisely how millions of other people settle their affairs. Why should shopworkers—I have said this on several occasions today—be dealt with differently? Why should they and their employers be forced into a rigid framework that takes no account of individual circumstances? Surely, individual circumstances are just as important to the noble Lord and his supporters as the collective provisions that would apply if the restrictions contained in these parts of the 1950 Act were to be maintained. Everywhere around us shops stay open longer than they used to do. Shopkeepers have worked out, quite reasonably, with the agreement of their staff, how those longer hours are to be staffed. They use shifts and rotas modelled to the flow and the volume of the trade that shop employers wish to see. Why on earth should they not be similarly inventive when it comes to Sunday working? I am convinced that there is absolutely no advantage in the law being involved in this area.
The noble Lord, Lord Graham, went on to refer to matters in the forthcoming legislation on wages councils. Leading on from what the noble Lord, Lord Oram, said earlier, it may be best not to develop that theme further. But what the noble Lord seeks is to retain for adult shopworkers the provisions relating to time off in lieu of Sunday working. As I have said, we are not prepared to accept this. The sort of provision that it entails is outdated and unnecessary. We know that eight million people now work on Sundays either regularly or occasionally. Those not working in shops do not have this sort of statutory provision for time off in lieu which the noble Lord recommends should be retained for adult shopworkers. There is no logical reason whatever why shopworkers should be treated differently. They are surely just as capable as others of sorting out their conditions of employment. That is, I believe, the fundamental answer to the point raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale. Why should they be constrained by this sort of legal straitjacket? Some may welcome time off in lieu of Sunday employment, and others, quite understandably and reasonably, might prefer extra payment. Shopworkers should have the same freedom of choice granted to other employees who work on a Sunday to arrange these things for themselves.
The noble Lord, Lord Stallard, if I may say so, was perhaps a little over-emotional when he described what this measure seeks to do in three ways. The noble Lord used the word "attack"; he used the words "pick them off' in relation to the present shopworkers; he then used the word "exploit" them. That is far from the intention that lies behind this measure. As I have said—and as has been quoted by the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, just now—this measure is designed to bring matters up to date and to make the same arrangements for shopworkers as so many other people in different walks of life have.
Although I have already said this once—if not more—I believe it merits repetition. Do we really want to continue asking an army of officials to enforce the provisions of Section 22 for all shopworkers? Do we believe that shopworkers want or need this degree of
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control and enforcement over their working conditions? We do not. Neither do we want to impose on employers the enormous burden of recording all the time off in lieu taken by their employees.
The noble Lord, Lord Graham, raised the point about consultation. Perhaps I may say to him that the Auld Committee considered all the interests and the views and they consulted widely. The committee recommended the removal of all shopworkers. The Government are retaining the restriction for young people at least until a review can be carried out. I set out earlier my arguments in support of that.
My right honourable friend the Home Secretary invited the TUC, when he met them, to comment on the employment provisions in the Bill; and to date they have not commented.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: The noble Lord the Minister graciously gives way. Will the Minister understand that all the unions who have submitted evidence, and all the assessors who had a responsibility to the committee, have said, since the production of the report, that the findings and conclusions of the report are far removed from the evidence upon which they are alleged to have been based. In other words, the report sets out a body of opinion from which the conclusions that have been drawn are very far removed. The Minister therefore will get little comfort from pointing out that the Auld Report listened very carefully to a wide range of people. Those people to whom they listened, including the shops inspectorates, have said that the conclusions are divorced from the evidence which they gave.
Lord Glenarthur: The noble Lord asked me particularly what consultations had taken place. I have given him the answer to that. We have not had a reply from the TUC yet. If the noble Lord insists upon saying that the fact that we have spoken to them and asked for their views is not consultation, then I honestly do not know what is.
Despite the technical sides of the amendment which have been described earlier, there are great issues of principle here. We debated them earlier today, we have debated them again now. I hope that the noble Lord will see the force of those arguments and will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Baroness Nicol: I hope that the Minister will forgive me—I am trying to understand his point of view. The Minister refers to millions of workers who already work on Sunday. I should like to know who are these millions of workers to whom he refers. I know about the power workers, the local authority workers, and all these other workers, all of whom have strong unions who can represent their points of view. We are talking about shopworkers, who, for a variety of traditional and historic reasons do not have strong union representation. Will the Minister please tell me who these millions are? Will the noble Lord also tell me if he can understand the difficulty which shopworkers are in because they are so fragmented? I do not think that this point has been spelt out often enough. They work in small units. There is a difficulty in organising them. Who are these other millions who are comparable with the shopworkers?

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The noble Lord the Minister also said that shopworkers at the moment could negotiate rotas and shifts, and so on in order to overcome the difficulties of Sunday working. Yes, they can; but they are doing it against a background of existing legislation which is to be taken from them. What power will they then have to negotiate when this has gone? That is the point which is worrying us.
Lord Glenarthur: If I may answer the second point that the noble Baroness made, yes, I understand the whole point about fragmentation. I said in answer to an earlier amendment that it was perfectly understandable—because the unionisation of shopworkers was fragmented—that that led to the kinds of difficulties which have been described from the other side of the Committee this afternoon. However, the noble Baroness asked, who works on a Sunday? I quoted a figure of eight million, of which about half worked regularly, and the other half not so regularly. There are dozens of examples. The first and most obvious place to start is shopworkers who work illegally—which this Bill will put right. But then there are service industries, agriculture, health workers, transport, manufacturers, police, helicopter pilots—I have done it myself—and all kinds of others.
To take the noble Baroness's analogy further, I honestly cannot believe that it is right for her to suggest that although these particular roles are different, the comparability we are talking about here amounts to the sort of comparability that people have when they arrange their contracts of employment. I said earlier in answer to another amendment that it was not beyond the wit of man in any walk of life to arrange a contract of employment, because that is precisely what so many other people of similar capacity do in so many other walks of life.
9.15 p.m.
Lord Rochester: From the noble Lord's response to earlier amendments, and he has said so again on this occasion, I understood that he believes it is perfectly feasible for adult shopworkers to achieve what they wish to achieve by negotiation through their unions and that, to that end, they are not in need of legislation. However, the noble Lord has also said on a number of occasions that he will study most carefully what has been said, more particularly by the noble Earl, Lord Stockton, but also by others, to see whether it is possible, without necessarily reinstating those parts of the Shops Act which are now to be removed, to give more adequate protection to shopworkers than is proposed in this Bill. My question is simply: will the noble Lord confirm that that is still his position?
Lord Glenarthur: In answer to the earlier amendments when my noble friend Lord Stockton intervened with his very excellent speech, I said that I would consider, as I certainly shall, precisely what is said in favour of the various amendments that are being put forward as this Bill progresses. We are not just dealing with Part II of the Shops Act 1950; there are other amendments on the Marshalled List which go rather further. I did say—and I stressed it again before we broke for dinner—that that did not represent a copper-bottomed guarantee to come back with something different but that every case would be
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considered on its merits. That is what I emphasised to the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon—I see that he agrees with me—and I hope that that is now clear to the noble Lord, Lord Rochester.
For the benefit of the Committee and perhaps particularly for the benefit of the noble Baroness, Lady Nicol, perhaps I may develop further one point on the question of Sunday working. I should point out that where shops open on Sundays—and we are really talking about Sundays here because we are talking about time off in lieu—the experience has been that Sunday working has proved very popular among full-time shopworkers and among part-time workers. That is the experience in Scotland and it is also the experience in England and Wales. Clearly staff have a variety of reasons for wanting or being willing to work on Sundays. However, there is little doubt that the large stores have little or no trouble in getting sufficient volunteers.
For some, such as students, the incentive to do so is mainly financial. For others Sunday is regarded as a good day to be at work because the shops are not as crowded as they are on Saturdays, and for others, particularly housewives, week-end working provides an opportunity to get out of the house and get back to a conventional working environment at a time when their husbands are available to look after the children; and that does not seem to me to be a totally invalid point. However, for many and for most of those involved there is a combination of reasons for wanting to work on a Sunday.
I have to say to the noble Baroness that in some cases shop working is so popular on Sunday that it has to be rationed. Research has been carried out into this. The noble Baroness may dispute that and shake her head, but it is a fact that that is precisely the position. I point out to the noble Lord that I have proceeded in the way I have in order to stress that there is no good reason to suppose that people do not want the work which is offered on Sundays, or that the arrangements for coming to agreements with employers which I have suggested are in any way out of keeping with other areas of life.
Baroness Nicol: I have the best possible reason for saying that people do not want to work on Sundays. Up to last year I spent eight years on the board of a large co-operative society and for the last four years I was its president. We had the greatest difficulty in recruiting what I might call career staff—people who want to make a career in retailing. Let us face it, these are the people on whom we all rely if the quality of our retailing is to be what people expect it to be. We all say how much shopping is an experience to be enjoyed by the family. Believe me, it is not an experience to be enjoyed unless the quality of people running and working in the shops is up to standard.
We have had the greatest difficulty in recruiting the right people because they do not even want to work on Saturday never mind working on a Sunday. I do not know from where the noble Lord gets his experience, but I can assure him that we have had the greatest difficulty in filling vacancies, and the reason that has been given for that difficulty is that people do not want to work unsocial hours. There is practical experience on the other side. Please accept it.
Lord Glenarthur: I of course shall accept that the noble Baroness has a great deal of experience in her particular field. But I ask her to also accept from research in the other direction—and I gave the example of Scotland and those parts of England and Wales where shops are already open on Sunday—that shops do not seem to suffer from people not going to them because the staff are not career staff and are unable to make places work properly. I do not believe that that is the case at all.
Lord McCarthy: I have found difficulty in understanding what the Minister has said for the last five minutes has to do with the case against the amendment. He has been saying that many people want to work on Sunday. But surely these people who want to work on Sunday so much would not object to getting double time? They would not object to having a 39 hour week. That is all the amendment says.
Lord Glenarthur: Precisely, and that is why I say that it is for them to negotiate with their employers and not for this to be arranged through the statutory provisions that we are discussing.
Lord Stallard: I am grateful to the Minister for the courteous way in which he has dealt with this difficult amendment. I concede that it was made more difficult because we did not move the previous amendments. That perhaps made it more difficult to understand this amendment, let alone move it. I concede that that was one of the difficulties.
The noble Lord mentioned the aims of the Bill. I said in my opening remarks that this amendment, and these amendments we have in the main been discussing on Clause 2, do not interfere with the main aim of the Bill, which is to deregulate Sunday trading. It is not necessarily about hours and employment. I do not think that my amendment interferes with the main aim of the Bill.
The Minister then went on to ask why would the workers need statutory protection. I said in my remarks that the Auld Committee—and I share their concern—said at paragraph 288:
"we strongly urge the retention for retail workers of the machinery of the Wages Councils for the fixing of satisfactory wages and premium rates".
That is what this amendment is about: the fixing of premium rates and satisfactory conditions.
They also said in paragraph 278:
"for all those who do work on Sundays or late at night, there should be adequate recompense".
They recognised too the difficulties for these workers because of the lack of organisation in many outlets. They recognised that because of those difficulties they needed this statutory protection, and they wanted it retained. I and my noble friend share these aspects of the Auld Report.
The point about why it is so popular has been dealt with by my noble friend Lord McCarthy. Of course it is popular and necessary for many workers because they are on such low pay. I could give statistics; and my noble friend Lord Graham gave statistics of women working full-time who took home round about £57 a week after working a six day week. Because they are so lowly paid of course it is popular if they can
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work on a Sunday or at the weekend at double time, and a day off in lieu, and so on. That is bound to be popular.
However, it needs this statutory back-up in this Bill. I respect the Minister and his credibility when he said that it is not the intention of either him or the Government to exploit. He chided me about my use of the word "exploitation". But from my experience of negotiating and sitting for hours and hours, month in and month out, opposite employers, there are some employers who will take advantage of any piece of legislation which will give them the chance to exploit still further the conditions of their workers. That is a sad fact of industrial life and it exists in the retail trade as well. While I accept that it is not the Minister's intention, that will be the outcome of this legislation if we remove the statutory protection from the shopworkers. I am disappointed that although the Minister was kind in some of his remarks, he has not found it apposite to accept this new clause. I therefore withdraw my amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Lord McCarthy Lord McCarthy moved Amendment No. 21:
After Clause 2, insert the following new clause:
("Amendment of s. 71 of Shops Act 1950.
.—(1) The Shops Act 1950 shall be amended as follows.
(2) In section 71(1) for the words "every local authority" there shall be substituted the words "Wages Inspectorate", and the words "within their district" shall be omitted.
(3) In section 71(2) for the words "every local authority" there shall be substituted the words "Wages Inspectorate", and the words "by the local authority" shall be omitted.
(4) Section 71(4) shall cease to have effect from the date of the passing of this Act.").
The noble Lord said: The object of this amendment is to amend Section 71 of Part V of the Shops Act 1950 which the Government propose shall remain. This part of the 1950 Act deals with enforcement. In other words, in this respect it deals with the enforcement of those parts of Part II of the Act which the Government are allowing us to keep: the regulation of holiday rights, meal times, hours of employment and so on for young persons. We are proposing that the method of enforcement for those people still covered by that part of the Act shall be changed.
At the moment the enforcement mechanism for the Shops Act 1950 is the local authorities' trading standards department. The effect of the amendment is to transfer those responsibilities to the Wages Inspectorate. I hope that the noble Lord will find that this is one of those amendments where he will not merely study and listen to everything which we say, as he said he would, not only consider the amendment with the greatest possible care, as he said he would, but perhaps go a little further, somewhere in the direction of what the noble Lord, Lord Harmar-Nicholls, said before dinner—I am sorry he is not at the moment in his place—when he suggested that something might be forthcoming. Perhaps the something that might be forthcoming is in this amendment.
We can put forward several arguments for this amendment. The main job of the trading standard departments of local authorities under the old Shops Act 1950 was the prevention of Sunday trading. That is no longer their function. That is being done away with. Indeed, a considerable part of their functions,

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even under Part II of the Act, is now being done away with. We are saying that in one respect there is no sense in giving them a small part of what is left of the enforcement provisions of the Shops Act if what is left is an employment Act. It is an employment Act which is a form of employment protection. The best people to carry out that form of employment protection are the people who perform that function in the wages field, namely the Wages Inspectorate of the wages councils. Our first argument is that it is logical and sensible to do it that way.
Secondly, and we make no apology for this, we say that it will be easier for the young persons who are covered by the legislation. It will facilitate effective enforcement from their point of view. We do not agree with the Minister who has said in the past that all kinds of problems of enforcement and anomalies have arisen. Nevertheless, there has been a shortage of enforcement officials and we believe that there would be an additional complication for those workers who were left covered by this part of the Act if they had to go to one authority for under-payment (that is to say the Wages Inspectorate) and another authority to enforce, for example, the rights on meal breaks, lunch breaks or matters of that kind. We are saying it would be better if the same authority were responsible for these two aspects.
9.30 p.m.
Thirdly, and I should say this while I am on this point, this idea once again was an idea of the Auld Committee. They looked at the position of shopworkers; they looked at the position of young shopworkers and they thought that, if we were to remove some of the protections in the 1950 Act, a good place to put them—and we have made this point already tonight—would be with the Wages Inspectorate. Therefore, we would say that our amendment is not only more effective and better from the point of view of the workers but also in line with the proposals of the Auld Committee.
Finally—an argument which I should have thought might commend itself to this Government in particular—we consider that this would save money. We consider that this saving of duplication might be a cost saving as well because the chances are that the Wages Inspectorate will be losing quite a large volume of their work in view of what will happen, we believe, as a result of wages council legislation. It might be possible for them to take up this additional work for young workers under the 1950 Act rather more efficiently and with rather more cost-effectiveness than would be the case if we had two different systems of enforcing two different aspects of what is really just employment protection. I beg to move.
Lord Glenarthur: I think I can be short with this amendment. We have here a proposal radically to alter the way in which the remaining provisions of the Shops Act are enforced and there lies with the amendment an implied criticism of the way in which local authorities have carried out their long-standing functions in this area. The noble Lord spoke about logicality, about enforcement and the question of the Auld proposals and then spoke about cost. But the reasons for keeping the status quo on enforcement are,
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first of all, that the local authorities have expertise and experience on the implementation of the Shops Act, whereas the Wages Inspectorate enforce, and are equally experienced in, completely different provisions which of course are those of the wages council. I believe it is sensible and logical to leave things as they stand. Secondly, it is premature to make any changes to the enforcement of the Shops Act provisions for young peole until the review on young people is carried out.
The noble Lord suggested that the idea of securing economies might be an argument which would find favour with me, but I have to say that that is not the case. The task of policing the employment provisions of the Shops Act really does lie better with the inspectorate, I suggest, in the way that the noble Lord understands and I cannot really see how any saving would materialise nor can I accept that the wages inspectors would do the job any better. I am afraid that this is not the thing which my noble friend Lord Harmar-Nicholls thought might come. I hope the noble Lord will see the force of the arguments and withdraw his amendment.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: The Minister lays great faith and confidence in the ability of local authorities the better to fulfil their obligations under law and statutes in the future than they have in the past; because there is no shadow of doubt that the prime culprit for the law being brought into disrepute has been the unwillingness of council after council to enforce the law.
Lord Glenarthur: Surely, the point there—and the noble Lord is absolutely right—is that they have not enforced the law because there is no logic whatever in the law.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: If it is to be left to each council or to anyone in the land to come to their own conclusion as to what is logical or not, and therefore to enforce or not, when they are enforcement authorities then the Minister has opened up an enormous problem. The inspectorate who have had the responsibility of enforcing the shops legislation up till now have said to the House, and have said to the Auld Committee and to everyone else, "Wherever a council has provided the resources and the support we have found no difficulty whatsoever in enforcing the law". That has been a fact. Now we are going to find in the future that all sorts of laws are needing to be enforced, but at the same time we have a Government which in their finance policy towards local authorities are making it increasingly difficult for councils who wish to enforce the law and to carry out their obligations to do so because of the restrictions which are placed upon their ability either to engage properly-qualified people or to do so in the required number.
The Minister may believe that, with a change in this law, it will be different. If this Bill finally gets to the statute book the question of shopping hours will be a thing of the past from the point of view of policing or inspectorates. It is the intention of Clause 1 to abolish all the restrictions on shopping hours, and what one will be left with is an employment Bill, not a Sundayhours-regulating Bill.

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The logic of what my noble friend Lord McCarthy has said is perfectly obvious. There may well need to be a beefing-up or a strengthening of the Wages Inspectorate in order to carry out these additional functions, but one of the myths that has been perpetuated in some quarters in local government is that in some way or another, with the passage of Clause 1 of this Bill, their responsibilities will diminish. I have news for them: if in fact shops are to be open on seven days instead of six, although they may not have to police the hours of opening on the seventh day they will have to make sure on the seventh day that all the other protections which Parliament has given are carried out.
Whereas at the moment they can say, "We do not need to go there on a Sunday because the shops are supposed to be closed", come next year the shops will be open and they will have to investigate and enforce all sorts of regulations. Or are we to have it that the shopkeeper can say, "We need not worry on a Sunday because although we can be policed on six days they are not really going to make sure that we comply with the law on the seventh day"? There is going to be a greater need for more people to enforce the law. The existing laws in respect of consumer protection, in respect of the Offices and Shops Act, in respect of health and hygiene and in respect of safety will all need to be supervised on a Sunday: otherwise, some laws will be known as "six-day laws" and some as "seven-day laws".
The case that I make—and of course I let the Minister intervene—is that this amendment seeks to strengthen provisions and to ensure that the workers, bereft of so many other things, have the possibility of a visitation while they are working on Sunday to ensure that their rights are being complied with.
Lord Glenarthur: I am most grateful to the noble Lord for giving way, but can he explain to me why it will be so necessary particularly to inspect these shops on Sundays if shopping on all days of the week is totally deregulated? Can the noble Lord tell me what is going to be so particularly special, in this narrow sense which involves the Health and Safety Executive, as to mean that shops will have to be regularly inspected on Sundays in the way he suggests?
Lord Graham of Edmonton: The Minister is naive if he does not believe that there is a category of shopkeeper or establishment keeper who, if it is possible for his premises to be inspected for a range of things on six days more rigorously than on the seventh, will not relax the provisions of the law on the seventh. It is a fact of life. I am not talking about the large, reputable storekeepers, the chains or the big businesses: I am talking, in a nation of shopkeepers—the Minister and his noble friend sitting beside him are shaking their heads. Whether they do not believe it is possible for shopkeepers to be other than absolutely law-abiding, I do not know.
For instance, we are talking in terms of wages and the present responsibility of the wages inspectorate to make sure that minimum wages are paid. There will be people on a Sunday who are one-day workers, there will be people who are casuals or part-timers and
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there will be regulations to be policed. So we are simply saying that once Clause 1 of this Bill is enacted a great deal will be removed, but the nature of the Bill will be changed. It will cease to become a Bill concerned primarily with hours and it will become a Bill concerned primarily with conditions of work.
Lord Glenarthur: I am afraid that I find the noble Lord's arguments most unpersuasive. This discussion started from the whole question of the load that will be placed upon wages inspectors and centralisation of costs and administration, as propounded by the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy. On that I have to say that it is extremely unlikely that any savings would result, because wages inspectors would have to be trained in the new provisions and that would have a cost.
But, without pursuing the noble Lord down the avenue of inspectors from the Health and Safety Executive and others inspecting shops onSunday—and I do not believe that it will be quite the difficulty which the noble Lord, Lord Graham, suggests—they can be inspected at other times of the week and, no doubt, occasionally on Sundays as well, without adding enormously to the costs.
I have to say that to increase the functions of the Wages Inspectorate surely runs counter to the widely accepted philosophy that regulation in so many fields should be removed and deregulation should be the order of the day. It also runs counter to the policy on wages councils which it is agreed is a matter to which we shall return at a later date.
Lord McCarthy: The noble Lord tells us that this is not the something to come. He has not yet shown his copper bottom. We only hope that it comes before the night is out. He does not deal with two of my arguments and he puts forward three of his own. I think that one of them is an own goal, and I will come to that.
First, if I may say so—and I say this with sincerity and regret—it seems to me a criticism of a fine body of men to say that the Wages Inspectorate could not do this little job. It is a very simple job. The Wages Inspectorate works partly on complaints. People complain that they are not getting the rate and, in this respect, they would complain that they were not getting the breaks. To say that the Wages Inspectorate could not go in and find out whether or not people had breaks, and that they would have to be specially trained to do so, is an insult to a fine body of men. I think that the noble Lord just thought it up. I do not think he got it from the Box. I do not think it stands up, and he knows it.
I come to the second of the noble Lord's arguments. He said that maybe there is a case, but we cannot discuss it and do it, because the Government are reviewing the position in relation to young people. This has been said many times today and it is getting very worrying. I should like to ask—and perhaps the noble Lord will intervene and tell me—what is the relationship between this review of conditions of young people and the Government's proposals for wages councils? Will the Government's proposals for wages councils, which will change the position of young people and other people as well, have to await the result of this review? Does the noble Lord want to tell me?
Lord Glenarthur: I cannot at this very moment give a precise date as to when the review will be complete. I said earlier that the review is under way at the moment. I will certainly try to find out and perhaps at a convenient moment later in the proceedings, or in a minute or two, will let the noble Lord know. But I cannot say precisely whether or not the review will be completed at the time when the wages council legislation comes forward.
Lord McCarthy: I thank the noble Lord for telling me that but I hope he sees the implications of what he is saying. If it be the case—and I should be very surprised if it were the case—that the Government are not going to introduce a Bill dealing with wages councils into this place or the other place before they get the review of young people through, published and considered by the Equal Opportunities Commission and whoever else does it, and if they are going to wait, that is fine and the noble Lord has an argument. But if they are not going to wait, if they are going to introduce a Bill in another place before this review comes in, the noble Lord cannot use as an argument to me that nothing can be done until the review comes in. It does not affect the wages councils, so why should it affect the 1950 Shops Act?
Lord Glenarthur: The review is concerned with hours of work and not with wages as such. The wages council legislation and the matter of hours of work for young people have some points in common in a general sense. That review is being conducted at the moment but it deals with hours, not specifically with the items to which the noble Lord is referring.
Lord McCarthy: That does not convince me. What I am saying is that the Government are quite happy to go on making changes in the conditions of protection of young people. They do not use that as an argument except when we put down amendments. Then they use it as an argument and say changes cannot be made because they are undertaking a review.
Finally, the noble Lord says that there is something wrong with the way the matter is dealt with at the moment. The noble Lord is the one who says this—we do not say it. The noble Lord claims that the poor old local authorities cannot enforce this part of the Act because, he says, it is all nonsense. If the noble Lord is going to retain this part of the Act, surely he ought to let someone else have a go at trying to enforce it. If the noble Lord says it is being so badly enforced, why not let the Wages Inspectorate have a go? But I shall not push this to a vote. I am still hoping that there is something to come and so I withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
9.45 p.m.
Lord McCarthy Lord McCarthy moved Amendment No. 22:
After Clause 2, insert the following new clause:
("Schedule 3 to Shops Act 1950.
. For the Third Schedule to the Shops Act 1950 there shall be substituted the following:
"THIRD SCHEDULE

INTERVALS FOR MEALS
No person shall be employed for more than 2 hours and less than 4 hours without a break of at least 10 minutes.
No person shall be employed for 4 hours or more, but less than 6 hours, without a break of at least 20 minutes.
No person shall be employed for 6 hours or more, but less than 7 hours, without a break of at least 45 minutes.
No person shall be employed for 7 hours or more without 3 breaks, one of not less than 45 minutes and two of not less than 10 minutes each, spaced at reasonable intervals throughout the shift.".").
The noble Lord said: The object of this amendment is to amend Schedule 3 to the 1950 Act, which also remains, and it deals with the intervals for meals. The Committee will remember that the Minister has said that there ought to be more flexibility. He has said in several ways that this part of the Act is out of date. What we are suggesting is that the situation should be changed so that it is more flexible and in a way more modern.
The present position is that workers covered by this part of the 1950 Act are entitled to a 20-minute break after six hours, to a three-quarters of an hour dinner break if they are employed over the period 11.30 a.m. to 2.30 p.m. and to a half-hour tea break if they are employed from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. It is reasonable to suggest, if this is what the Government are telling us, that this was a system of rights introduced for workers who were overwhelmingly full-time—shopworkers who overwhelmingly were expected to work, the great majority of them, through the period from 11.30 a.m. to 2.30 p.m. unless they had a specified meal break. It was to deal with a pattern of work which was very largely full-time in the 1950s and beyond that these provisions were enacted in the first place.
It is the case now—and in this sense we admit it—that there are aspects of the 1950 Act which require bringing up to date. It is the case now that far more people than shop assistants are working part-time. Women are working quite fragmented work patterns and shift work. Therefore what our amendment seeks to do is to provide a system of breaks which is not related to the hour of the day but which is related to the length of time which people work. What it provides is a 10-minute break between two and four hours, a 20-minute break between four and six hours, a 45-minute break between six and seven hours, and a 45-minute break plus two 10-minute breaks for a period of over seven hours. We accept openly that this is an attempt to improve the provisions made for those workers who are now covered by the Act but we think there is widespread evidence that this is necessary.
One of the central arguments that has been between us in this Committee all day has been that the Government assert that circumstances have changed for the better. We argue that in many respects they
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have changed for the worse. We argue that the kind of workers who are coming into shopwork now are much more difficult to organise. They find it more difficult to act for themselves and therefore they need statutory protection that much more. We argue that although there may be many good employers who would make all such provisions whether or not they were statutory, there are also many employers who would not. There are many cases where we have evidence that employers are not observing the rights that exist now.
We therefore accept that circumstances have changed; but in the respect with which this amendment is concerned, we say that they have changed for the worse. That is the argument for our amendment.
Lord Glenarthur: As the noble Lord has described, this amendment attempts to update the existing provisions of the Shops Act by replacing the third schedule to the Act, which sets out the intervals for meals for shopworkers, with a detailed schedule of the breaks that employees must be given depending on the number of hours worked. I believe that I am right in saying that as a result of the noble Lord, Lord Graham, not moving his earlier amendment, we are now in rather the same position as before in respect of that amendment, in that Amendment No. 20 can now apply only to young shopworkers. I see that the noble Lord nods in assent.
Our aim in this Bill is to deregulate the restrictions on the working hours of adults, and I cannot believe that the Committee would wish to see those restrictions replaced with more detailed provisions that would place an additional burden on employers and make hours or work less flexible for employees. Moreover, the Government's proposals to retain the existing provisions for young people are more generous than the provisions suggested in the noble Lord's amendment. Where the hours of work of young people are between 11.30 a.m. to 2.30 p.m. or from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., a dinner break of at least 45 minutes and a tea-break of 30 minutes will continue to be given under the 1950 Act. Under the noble Lord's proposal, a young person employed for up to four hours at whatever time would get a break of only 10 minutes. That does not seem to be particularly helpful to young shopworkers and I hope that the noble Lord will not press his amendment.
Lord Brougham and Vaux: I have never worked in a shop but I have worked in the City. I was employed under an agreement that set out my wages, my time off for holidays, my hours of work and my lunch breaks. Surely a shop would do the same, whether it was a large shop or a small shop. In the case of shops owned by Pakistanis or Indians, they are usually small shops that are run by a family. A family shop would not need such a provision because the brother would go off for one break, and then the sister would go for another, and so on.
In the case of a larger shop employing four or five people, they would stagger their meal breaks and coffee breaks. In a larger shop still, it would be up to the managers of the departments—whether it was

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the cosmetic department or the department selling socks—to decide when each of their staff will take their coffee breaks and meal breaks. One cannot legislate as to when people must take such breaks, because that would cause the whole shop to close down.
Whether an employee works for a shop, a bank or a stockbroker, he will sign a piece of paper stating that he is being employed at a certain salary and that his holidays and meal breaks are such and such, depending upon the number of employees working in that company or, as we are discussing, store. The staff will take their breaks in rotation. One day a person may break at 11 a.m. and on another day at 11.30 a.m. One cannot put such provisions in legislation. The noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, must surely realise that.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: The world referred to by the noble Lord who has just spoken would be nice if everyone who worked in shops was covered by circumstances of the sort he has outlined. Of course, the overwhelming majority of those whom we seek to protect already have good protection, either under the law or under collective agreements—collective agreements which are industry-wide, and in which the employers are well organised enough and sensible enough to combine and the trade unions with members in those industries do likewise, so that agreements are made.
Even when agreements are not made, in that kind of enterprise there are a range of others where sensible, commonsense, fair arrangements are made between the owner or manager and the 20, 10, 6 or 60 people who are working in the enterprise. That is absolutely right. But at a time of high and rising unemployment, and at a time when there is, we maintain, an attack upon the protections which workers enjoy, it is not unreasonable to think in terms of those who will be looking towards Parliament for their protection and not to the beneficence of employers.
Lord Brougham and Vaux: With great respect to the noble Lord, if we do that we are setting a precedent for every Tom, Dick or Harry, who will rely on Parliament to say what they are to do. They will all lobby their MPs and we shall have masses of legislation determining what meal breaks we have, whether we can sleep, die, eat, drink, go to a disco or to the pub, or whatever.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: The noble Lord raises the spectre that if we are to envisage every aspect of life—
Lord Brougham and Vaux: The noble Lord is saying that.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: With great respect, I am not. I am saying that the people covered by this Bill, who are affected by this particular provision, deserve consideration.
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Clause 2, which now stands part of the Bill, saw fit to strike Sections 17 to 22, inclusive, from the existing Shops Act 1950. There was a purpose and a reason. I hear the Minister, and I can follow the argument about them being out of date and the intention to replace them. But that does not stop me, from my experience—which is not greater than that of anyone else here, but comes simply from keeping my eyes and ears open—and with some current experience in retailing (with interests which I have declared), fearing the possibility that if, by not being a member of a trade union, people are denied the opportunity of collective agreement, then they must look to Parliament. That does not mean to say that every aspect of our life is to be the subject of parliamentary control and oversight.
I genuinely believe that this attempt is designed to try to get the Government to see that we are concerned and worried about the situation. Noble Lords on this side of the Committee are not speaking, as it were, out of the blue. We have been advised by our friends outside in the trade union movement that they want to see these protections retained. We believe that a good case has been made.
Lord McCarthy: The noble Lord the Minister makes two arguments. One of them is much more effective than the other. He says that it cannot be done because the object of the Bill is to deregulate. Every time an amendment is tabled which arrests the inevitable and inexorable process of deregulation he believes that the Government can stop us by just saying, "We cannot have that because it arrests the process of deregulation". We say that deregulation irrespective of the consequences for workers' rights and the protection of workers is something that we do not support. That goes back to the speech much earlier today of the noble Earl, Lord Stockton. He said that in this Bill the Government are giving us another example of deregulation and nothing but deregulation irrespective of the consequences and in particular irrespective of the consequences for workers' rights.
10 p.m.
The Conservative Party has always in the past believed that the employer has a natural power in the labour market and that it is stronger, more powerful and more effective in general than the power that the individual worker has. That is the argument which justifies the legalisation of trade unions—that workers have a dependent relationship and need combination to match employer power. It follows from that that if for some reason they cannot match employer power, the state steps in in certain limited respects and protects them by law.
What is involved in this legislation, and what has been said, I am afraid, by the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, tonight, is that the matching power argument, which has justified legislation to allow trade unions and to regulate matters on behalf of workers who are not thought to be able to organise trade unions, no longer applies if the object of the exercise is the inexorable process of deregulation. If that is the case I do not know what it is that the noble Lord is going to find for us and what is to come.
I accept his second argument but I do not think that it is an argument against us. It was put forward in reply

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to the noble Lord, Lord Brougham and Vaux. He says that there are some respects—and I accept this—in which my amendment gives workers fewer rights than they have now. That is true in a narrow area, but it exchanges them for more rights in a wider area, which shows what a modest, moderate amendment it is. We do not want to regulate everything. We are trying to bring matters up to date. We think that in broad terms the proposal is preferable, but it is not a revolution. It is not regulating people so that employers cannot run jobs. It is a modest example of the matching power argument, but this Government do not believe that argument. In the argument for deregulation everything must go. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Baroness Turner of Camden Baroness Turner of Camden moved Amendment No. 23:
After Clause 2, insert the following new clause:
("Holiday entitlement for shopworkers.
.—(1) Any shopworker who has worked for an employer for a period of one year or more shall be entitled to receive from that employer a minimum period of paid annual holiday for four weeks.
(2) For the purposes of subsection (1) above "paid annual holiday" means time off paid at the level of remuneration that the employee would normally receive if they had been working.
(3) Shopworkers with less than one year's service shall be entitled to minimum holiday allowance calculated on a pro rata basis according to the proportion of the year that they have worked.)
The noble Baroness said: I rise to move Amendment No. 23, and perhaps this time the Minister will smile upon an amendment and we can achieve something at the end of this debate.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: My noble friend will be lucky!
Baroness Turner of Camden: Indeed, I hope to be lucky. The reason for the amendment is that we wish to put into the Bill provision for shopworkers to have a statutory entitlement to holidays. Again, I refer to the Auld Report and to the same paragraph to which I referred earlier, paragraph 287, which states:
"We set great store by the preservation of the role of Wages Councils in fixing statutory minimum weekly rates, holidays and holiday pay for the retail trades".
Paragraph 288 states:
"We understand that the Government has been considering the abolition of the Wages Councils without replacing them with any similar machinery. If this were to happen, we believe that there would be a strong likelihood of exploitation of some shopworkers".
That was referring to exploitation in relation to holiday entitlement.
Already the holiday entitlement of shopworkers as provided for in wages council regulations at a maximum of four weeks falls behind typical rates in more organised sectors of the economy. Five weeks is quite a standard entitlement in many well organised areas of industry and commerce.
Earlier one noble Lord asked whether we had legislation on everything. We do not have very much legislation in that area in this country, but in virtually all European countries, unlike Britain, there are across the board legal minimum entitlements to holidays for all workers. In Denmark, France, Luxembourg, Spain
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and Sweden the basic entitlement is five weeks. In Belgium, Greece and Norway it is four weeks. In West Germany and the Netherlands there are legally enforceable minima as well. But in Britain, if the Government proceed with their intention to prevent wages councils from setting legal minimum holiday rates, and if there is no protection at all for holidays in this Bill, it is our view that many workers will find themselves deprived of paid holidays altogether. For example, I understand that a recent survey of instant print shops in London—a new development and a new type of shop in a highly competitive area not covered by wages councils—found that three out of 10 firms gave no paid holidays of any kind to their workers.
Lord Brougham and Vaux: The noble Baroness has mentioned European countries. Can she give a wages and holidays comparison of what happens on the Continent and in the United Kingdom? We would then be able to understand the argument.
Baroness Turner of Camden: In relation to shops and shopworkers, I do not think that that is terribly relevant. It has already been pointed out that shopworkers are among the lowest paid in this country. Indeed, wage rates for women working full time in the industry were quoted at less than £75 a week. These are very low wage rates indeed. If you compared them with wage rates for similar grades of people working on the Continent you would find, I believe, that they compared very badly. I do not think, with respect, that what the noble Lord says is relevant to my argument so far as holiday entitlement is concerned.
The aim of the amendment is to make some basic provision for shopworkers. Without that, it is our fear that they will not have, in some instances, any holiday entitlement at all from some of the more unscrupulous traders and employers.
The Minister has referred earlier to the way in which he believes that the terms and conditions should be regulated so that the individual should be free to bargain terms and conditions of employment with his employer. That argument, it seems to me, proceeds from the assumption that the individual applicant, looking for a job in a labour market that is already over-stocked, with large numbers of people after each job, is on all fours with the employer with whom he is negotiating the terms and conditions of employment. That is patently not the situation. My noble friend Lord McCarthy made the position clear when he spoke on his amendment.
This is not a situation of equality. The individual now seeking employment in a shop—this involves mostly women—has very often to take what is on offer because that is the only job available. In that situation, unless there is statutory protection from Parliament, the individual is going to suffer. As already indicated, shopworkers are not easily capable of being organised into units for various reasons. I shall not go over the reasons again; they have been thoroughly explored in previous debates. I commend the amendment to your Lordships.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My noble friend the Minister will no doubt deal with the basic question as to whether it is right to insert in the Bill a statutory provision in respect of paid holidays for shopworkers. I have some doubts as to that general issue, but it is, I believe, a matter for my noble friend to deal with. I wish to raise only two specific points on the amendment that the noble Baroness has moved.
The first subsection referring to "any shopworker" would seem to include part-time as well as full-time shopworkers. I do not know whether the noble Baroness is really arguing that a part-time shopworker, perhaps working only a limited number of hours on a limited number of days in a week, should really be entitled to four weeks' paid holiday from her employer. That would seem to me a very serious imposition on the employer, and quite unjustified. If the noble Baroness would be kind enough to give me her attention—I am sure that she is getting terribly good advice from the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, but I happen to be in possession of the Committee at the moment—I also have considerable doubts about subsection (3). It means, as I understand it, that if somebody has been employed for only three months he will then be entitled to a week's paid holiday. I think that that will make it extremely difficult for those small shopkeepers who take on a shopworker for a limited time. I should have thought that that was a very oppressive provision to insert.
However, on the basic issue I express a doubt as to whether this should be made statutory. I think that that is for the Minister to deal with.
Lord Glenarthur: The noble Baroness has set out her amendment very reasonably indeed. While I should be delighted if I were in a position to say that this was appropriate, I am afraid I have to disappoint her again and say that I cannot say it is appropriate to the Bill. It seems that what the noble Baroness is trying to achieve here is to incorporate into the Shops Bill provisions broadly comparable with provisions currently in wages orders issued by wages councils. The objective seems to me to circumvent the Government's proposals to reform wages councils which we have talked about earlier.
Perhaps I should say that under the wages councils legislation we are retaining only the most important elements of pay—the minimum rate and the overtime rate—in the interest of deregulation and removing burdens from employers. All other matters, including holiday provision, will be left for negotiation between employer and worker, always remembering that the terms and conditions of existing contracts cannot be varied unilaterally.
I must make clear to the noble Baroness that your Lordships will have ample opportunity in due course to consider that legislation as it passes through your Lordships' House. I do not believe, since it relates so closely to that Bill, that this is necessarily the right place to discuss this, although I fully understand the reasons for the noble Baroness bringing this forward. That is perfectly acceptable.
I have to say also that the Shops Act does not currently make provision for the annual leave entitlement of shopworkers. I cannot see any reason why this Bill should be extended to do so. I very much
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share the view of my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter that this is a matter which is best left to the collective or individual arrangements between employers and employees. It is not a subject which requires the full force of the law to be brought to bear, with all that that implies in terms of inflexibility, enforcement burdens and bureaucracy. I hope that the noble Baroness will see the force of that argument as well.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: I wonder whether the Minister would care to say what kind of opportunity or avenue of redress there would exist for those workers in such establishments who are not able to secure sound sensible, amicable arrangements with their employers, not merely for holiday entitlement but for other matters. The Minister is perfectly entitled to say that the majority of workers—whether they are in shops or in other establishments—with good employers, as most of them are, see the sense of coming to terms on a range of matters, one of which is holiday entitlement. But my noble friend gave an illustration of a survey taken—not in 1950 but in 1985—of certain workers in certain circumstances whose employers are not as enlightened as many others. I wonder whether the Minister would care to tell us, in the absence of some statutory provision, what kind of redress would be available to an employee who is not receiving his fair entitlement in such an organisation, shop, or establishment, and who is fearful of raising the matter in such a way in the present climate of unemployment. What avenue of redress has such a worker who is not getting his fair entitlement?
Lord Glenarthur: The answer to the point made by the noble Lord lies in the fact that there are many other workers—the majority, it appears from the figures which have been bandied about, certainly of those who are not retail workers—who come to arrangements with employers to meet the very concerns which the noble Lord expresses. We have had examples quoted very often during today's proceedings about employees who work in other areas on whatever day of the week it may be. Although ultimately, of course, there is recourse to law in the fact that a contract will have been entered into if employees are to be employed in shops, I honestly cannot see that sensible and totally practical arrangements for the benefit of both employer and employee cannot be reached in a rather more civilised fashion than through the court, although at the end of the day the court obviously exists.
10.15 p.m.
I sincerely believe that we are delving into the realms of fantasy here. I take the noble Lord's point that not every shopkeeper will necessarily be as good as his word. Sadly it is a fact of life that that will perhaps be the case. On the other hand, there are a great many shopkeepers—and I am thinking particularly of small shopkeepers—who at some time will have been workers in shops themselves, will have become attracted to the profession, and will know precisely what difficulties lie in store for their workers if they start to impose conditions—and unacceptable conditions at that—which they would not like to have applied to them.
Baroness Turner of Camden: I am sorry that the Minister thinks that this is not an issue upon which he can come to terms with us on this side, although I accept the force of some of the arguments he has made. On the other hand, it seems to me that the only real reason for pressing this amendment was our fear that if the wages councils disappear there will simply be nothing left there at all. That is why we wanted to table an amendment that protected the position of these shopworkers. As I said earlier when I made a statement in support of the amendment on which the Committee divided, deregulation of shop hours is one thing and protection of workers is quite another. It was in that context that we put down on the Marshalled List this set of amendments.
As regards the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Boyd-Carpenter, if I may take subsection (3) of the amendment first, it is not unusual to have situations outside shop working where people have a holiday entitlement pro rata during their first year of employment. It is very common. We find that in many agreements that are negotiated in various parts of industry.
As to the point about people who are employed part-time, Clause 2 states that paid annual holiday means time off paid at the level of remuneration that the employee would normally receive if he had been working. If he had been working part-time, it would be part-time remuneration. However, in view of what has been said and in view of the late hour, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment having made those points in its favour.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 3 [Rights of established shop workers concerning Sunday working]:
Lord Renton Lord Renton moved Amendment No. 24:
Page 2, line 3, leave out ("at the commencement of this Act.")
The noble Lord said: I beg to move Amendment No. 24, which is to leave out the words:
"at the commencement of this Act",
at the end of Clause 3. Its effect would be to give to shopworkers employed after Royal Assent the rights given by this clause and the first schedule to those employed at the time of Royal Assent. If this amendment is made, some consequential and rather technical amendments would have to be made to the first schedule which would shorten it and simplify it. Indeed, that would be an advantage because, to put it mildly, the first schedule is a bit of a jumble as it is at present drafted.
I have not drafted those consequential amendments, partly because the amendment that I am moving is enough to enable the principle to be decided, and partly because the consequential amendments to the first schedule would be better done by parliamentary draftsmen and it would give them a chance to reconsider the drafting of the schedule as a whole.
I should like to invite noble Lords' attention to the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum on the first page of the Bill where it refers to Clause 3 and Schedule 1. It says that they are to:
"establish two new statutory rights for shop workers who are in employment before the commencement date. These are a right not
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to be dismissed for refusing to do shop work on Sunday; and a right not to have other action, short of dismissal, taken against them by their employer because they have refused to do shop work on Sunday".
I should point out that these new rights are not confined to those shopworkers who already work legitimately on Sunday or who work in shops which are already open on Sundays, whether legally or illegally.
As this is my first speech on this Bill, may I say that I support the need for it and the broad logic of it, but I am genuinely worried by the anomaly created by Clause 3, which is good in itself so far as it goes, but the consequences have to be considered. I am glad to say that my noble friend Lord Wolfson, with his unrivalled experience of the retail trade in Scotland as well as in England and Wales, is also worried about it, as he will tell your Lordships.
I understand that my noble friend Lady Trumpington was originally going to reply to this amendment, but alas she has had to retire to her bed as she is not feeling well, and so I look forward to what my noble friend Lord Glenarthur—who has played such a splendid lone hand, and perhaps a more lonely hand than he is accustomed to playing—has to say.
These new rights under Clause 3 are given to all shopworkers on the day that the Bill receives Royal Assent. Of course one is glad that the Government have proposed this against the advice of my learned friend—if I may so describe him; he often used to appear before me when I was Recorder of Guildford, and in fact more than anyone—Mr. Auld and the two ladies who sat with him.
Let us just think this Clause 3 through for a moment. Consider, for example, a man working in a shop which does not yet open on Sundays, and assume that after the Bill is passed the shop opens on Sundays and the man concerned refuses to work on Sunday mornings or evenings because he sings in this church choir. Thankfully he will not have to do so because Clause 3 protects him and preserves his rights.
But suppose his 18 year-old son also sings in the choir and is now at school, but after Royal Assent leaves school and joins the retail firm in which his father is employed, and wants to do so and considers that he has good prospects there. If that firm then decides to open its shop on Sundays and the boy, like his father, wants to go on singing in the choir and refuses work, he will not have the benefit of Clause 3. I suggest that that is a ridiculous situation, and one which the Government should no longer tolerate.
In fairness to the Government, I assume that they did not foresee this anomaly. If they had done so, it would not have been said at Second Reading on 2nd December last, as my noble friend Lady Trumpington said at col. 1169:
"I do not believe it would be right, nor could we defend a decision, to give special privileges to new recruits after commencement date".
I hope it may console her and my noble friend Lord Glenarthur to be reminded of the words of the famous Sir Winston Churchill when he said:
"During a long life I have had to eat my own words many times, and I have found it a very nourishing diet".
I therefore hope that we shall not hear that said again, because the example that I gave is not an isolated one.

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It could be multiplied and varied many times when religious and family reasons are remembered.
The purpose of this amendment is to get the Government off the hook of an anomaly which, possibly accidentally and with the best intention, they have created. It accepts the principle of the Bill; it does not interfere with Sunday opening or Sunday trading; it does not restrict the hours when it may take place. However, I suggest that this amendment would make the law more workable because nothing could be more awkward in a retail business than having some workers in a shop entitled to refuse work on Sundays and others in the same shop compelled to work against their will, thus creating a sheep and goats situation. It is almost unbelievable.
Some noble Lords have said at earlier stages of this Bill that lots of people have to work on Sundays so why should shopworkers be exempt. My answer to that is that there are quite enough people who, even with the flexibility which employers try to achieve, have to work on Sundays, are compelled to do so, not always willingly, and the fewer the people who have to be compelled as a result of the law the better. We pride ourselves on being citizens of a free country and we should try to preserve the freedom of all our people to work or not to work on Sundays so far as that can be achieved.
I understand that the Government might say that it is up to an employee, any recruit (if I may borrow the phrase again) joining a retail firm after Royal Assent to get a clause written into his contract, with or without the help of his trade union, exempting him from Sunday working. But why should employees, who may feel strongly about this, have to risk refusal of such a clause and the disadvantage which refusal could bring? Surely it is wrong to place them in that position. It would be better to protect them by statute than by forcing them to find their own protection in negotiation from what may be a position of weakness. I hope that I have said enough to convince my noble friend.
Lord Mishcon: Your Lordships will have noticed the anxiety that I have in supporting everything that the noble Lord, Lord Renton, has said and to do so officially from these Benches. He has advanced so many reasons so well that I do not intend to make a repetitive speech. It is far better to leave it with what the noble Lord said. I am sure that when we listen to the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson (whom I am so glad to hear is supporting this amendment), we shall find possibly that the hours from seven o'clock this evening until half past ten tonight will be known in your Lordships' House as "In Search of the Thing". At last we have found it!
10.30 p.m.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: I trust that your Lordships will not accept this amendment and that the Government will consider it with considerable reserve. Far from correcting an anomaly, it creates a whole number of new ones. What it seeks to do is to ensure that persons entering shopworking employment after the commencement of the Act should have the right not to work on Sunday without being punished for
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their refusal. In other words, to give them the exceptional right that is given to pre-commencement employees.
There are three reasons why that is unacceptable. The first is the compelling one that no one is compelled to enter employment. It is quite true that one does not have complete freedom in this world; but, on the other hand, you cannot isolate shopkeeping and shopworking from all other activities. They are all part of a total employment situation. That is enough in itself to negative the amendment. No one is compelled to work on Sunday who enters employment after the Act comes into force. It is purely a matter of agreement between him and his potential employer. Let us look at it from the point of view of the potential employer. Why should he be compelled to accept someone for weekday working only when he wants an employee who will work on Sundays? It may be for a few weekdays only in the week: it may be only for half days; but if he wants someone to work Sunday, albeit that man wants to sing in the choir, why should he be compelled to take that man?
But the second reason, quite apart from the fact that no one is compelled to work on a Sunday without being penalised—it is purely a matter of his choice—is that this amendment, like so many others we had earlier in the Bill, exemplifies the tunnel vision. It looks only at the retail trade. It closes its eyes to all the other economic activities. Why should a potential shopworker in the retail trade be treated any differently, for example, from a potential attendant at a cinema? Yet nobody suggests that a potential worker in a cinema should be given the right to demand that he or she should be employed only on weekdays because he or she wants to sing in the choir on Sundays.
The noble Lord, Lord Renton, still lives in Gray's Inn, I think, when he lives in London. He shakes his head. But he did so recently. All round him, all round Lincoln's Inn (where my noble and learned friend used to live and may still do so) and around the Temple, where we live, every Sunday there is the banging and rattling of printing presses. On the Embankment and in Holborn the streets are lined with the cars of the workers in the newspaper offices. The narrow streets between the Embankment and the Strand are blocked by enormous juggernauts loading and unloading enormous bales of paper. To all that hubbub, all that concourse and all that activity, the ears of the proponents of this amendment are absolutely deaf. Their eyes are blind, their nostrils are closed at the stench. Why? It is because all their senses are concentrated in horror at the shops in Gray's Inn Road, in Holborn and in the Strand that might open on Sunday in order to serve the people who are working in the newspaper offices. They are working in the newspaper offices to produce Monday newspapers which, for all I know, are delivered to the premises of right reverend Prelates and certainly to your Lordships' Library, where they may even be glanced at by the proponents of this amendment.
That is the occupational tunnel vision; but there is also the geographical tunnel vision. So far as I know—though the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wilson, may be going to tell us to the contrary—there

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has been no call for this sort of amendment to the Scottish law, where retail trade is unregulated. So you get an occupational tunnel vision and a geographical tunnel vision.
The third reason is that, to all intents and purposes, this amendment is unnecessary because the law substantially (and I do say "substantially") does what this amendment does. For that it is necessary to go to the schedule. It is very complicated, as the noble Lord, Lord Renton, says, particularly because it is couched in the negative. But if one turns it round and looks at it positively, I can give the argument but I come to this summary: a shopworker is bound to do Sunday shop work and I think his employer is bound to employ him and pay him to do so, if either of two matters arises. One of them is if, previous to the Act, he was doing shop work on Sunday under a contract of employment, whether written or unwritten. That of course does not apply to the persons covered by the amendment, because they were, ex hypothesi, not in employment and not doing shop work before the commencement of the Act. But he is also bound to do Sunday shop work if he agreed in writing on or after the Act to do the shop work. That is the only situation to which this amendment can apply; but under the opening sections of the employment protection Act of 1978, which the noble Lord, Lord McCarthy, to our commiseration, knows off by heart, every contract of employment has to be reduced to writing. So the only difference is that the contract is in writing under the schedule or has to be reduced to writing under the employment protection Act. So for those three reasons I hope the Government will resist this amendment.
Lord Denning: I take a different view. I hope this amendment will be carried by your Lordships' Committee. My noble friend Lord Renton has given you a good illustration, if you please, of a man who goes regularly to church on Sunday morning and Sunday evening. If he is employed before the commencement of the Act and is afterwards required to do Sunday work and he says, "I can't: I want to go to the choir", he has a remedy for unfair dismissal, if he is dismissed on that account. But then, as my noble friend says, take his son, 18 years old. Three weeks after the Act is passed he does just the same: he is employed by that employer and when he wants to go off to the choir the employer says, "Oh no; you've got to do your Sunday work." That young man has no remedy at all according to this clause.
That was the employee's side. Now I want to take the case of the employer, the shop, which up to the commencement of the Act has not opened on Sundays and has employed no people on Sundays. In those circumstances, there is no trouble. Then, three weeks or so after the Act is passed the shop owner says, "We are going to take advantage of this new Act; we are going to open on Sundays". Then someone says, "I don't want to work on Sundays; I want to go to church or to choir on Sundays". The employer replies, "Oh, no!—we can't have you going off there. You must work on Sundays when we want you to, and if you won't work on Sundays you are sacked". Ought not that man to have his compensation for unfair dismissal? Surely he should. That is my first point. That is the practical situation, which has been illustrated so well by my noble friend Lord Renton, of
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what happens when the employee changes, and I have spoken of what happens when the employer changes, to Sunday working.
But the crucial criticism of this clause is that it brings in this terrible Schedule 1. I have never seen a more appalling piece of drafting, with references and cross-references. In order to understand it, you have to find out what an "established shop worker" is. If any of your Lordships or any lawyer tried to find out, it would be an awful job. He has to be employed on the day before the commencement of the Act and have been
"continuously employed as such during the period beginning on that day and ending with the relevant time".
You then have to turn over the page and see what "the relevant time" means. Then you have to go to some section of a 1978 Act and you have "in relation" to one paragraph and "in relation" to another paragraph. Good gracious! it is a most impossible piece of drafting which the Government have tried to introduce in order to support this clause.
I hope sincerely that this amendment will be accepted and, if it is, that that schedule can be made very simple, in a sentence or two. So I hope that your Lordships will accept this amendment.
Lord Wolfson: After the very stimulating remarks of the noble and learned Lords, Lord Simon and Lord Denning, I feel that I am entering a minefield, but I do so with my eyes and ears open. I think one should get the matter into perspective; namely, that the Sunday shopping Bill is about retail trading and is not about cinema ushers, nor is it about choir singers. I hope that the Government will give favourable consideration to the reasoned amendment expressed so sincerely and ably by my noble friend Lord Renton and supported by the noble Lord, Lord Mishcon, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, concerning the provision of uniform employee protection. This does not derogate in any way from the main purposes of the Bill. Indeed, I believe that they would be enhanced by removing an obstacle to its harmonious implementation.
Like many of your Lordships, I feel distinctly unhappy about the proposed differential between existing and new staff. For those holding religious beliefs, or wanting to spend Sundays with their families, it would be quite invidious to differentiate between people at present in retail employment and those seeking entry. In practice, I doubt whether it would be effective. As one engaged in the retail trade, I believe that the clause as it stands could lead to an anomalous situation in the future, such as the Bill is seeking to eliminate from the past. An employee now enjoying protection would lose it on joining another firm, and would apparently not be covered in the event of rejoining the original employer. This could well lead to resentment and would not be helpful to good human relations in the trade. This is one of the most important facets of business. It could also have the effect, which is not intended, of inhibiting occupational change.
The overall objectives of the Bill are sensibly seeking to bring legislation into line with modern conditions. Scotland has had Sunday trading for many years and in my experience it has worked successfully without

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two-tier staff arrangements. I believe that the objectives of the Bill would be fully met by the same treatment in England and Wales. As the noble Earl, Lord Stockton, said in his inimitable manner, these objectives are to allow shopping on Sunday and not to penalise anyone in the process. I hope that the Government will look upon this reasoned amendment with sympathetic understanding.
10.45 p.m.
Lord Shaughnessy: I should like to support the amendment under discussion. I was under the impression that we were here to deal with the Shops Bill but I understand that we are back to the tunnel again, according to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale.
Simply stated, my reason for supporting this amendment is that I think Clause 3 is clearly discriminatory. A set of rules apply to somebody on day one, and on day two when this Bill becomes law another set of rules apply. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, suggested, Schedule 1 is totally incomprehensible. It is to me as a tyro. It also has a mistake, I think. Page 4, line 24 reads:
"or, if more than one, the principal reason"—
which I think should read "reasons". Surely that should be straightened out. Whether that is or is not an error, I want to support the amendment because it is clearly an attempt to eradicate what is an instance of discrimination in this Bill.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: Whatever view your Lordships may take on my noble friend's amendment, I am sure they will wholly agree that Schedule 1 is a miracle of bad drafting. I hope that my noble friend will speak somewhat firmly to his department and to the parliamentary draftsman and ask them not in future to serve up to Parliament such a professionally incompetent piece of work. But that does not conclude the issue.
I differ from my noble friend Lord Renton, as he knows, always with regret, as I do with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning. My noble friend Lord Renton posed the issue in a quite emotional way of the regular shopworker bringing his 18-year old son in for the first time and the son wanting to sing in the choir. I am bound to say that at 18 I should have thought his voice would have broken anyhow, but that is by the way.
The real difficulty about my noble friend's amendment can be summed up in a couple of sentences. The Government, I think rightly, are seeking to secure the position of existing shopworkers because they joined this trade on the basis of the law being that shops did not open on Sunday even though, as your Lordships know, they have in fact been doing so for years. But they joined on that basis. Then when Parliament in its wisdom decides to change the law they should be protected from adverse consequences of the change of law. I think that is a reasonable provision such as has quite often been included in Acts of Parliament. But it is quite a different thing to say that people who become shopworkers after the
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commencement of the Act, coming into a trade which they know can and does involve opening on Sundays, should be given similar protection.
It seems to me difficult to justify such protection for this reason. Every day people are joining other professions or taking jobs in other occupations that involve Sunday work. Indeed, we heard earlier a most dramatic account of the noise created by those who work in Fleet Street.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: May I interrupt the noble Lord?
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: I will just finish the sentence and then I shall give way to the noble Lord with the greatest pleasure. I was only going to say that a great deal of noise emerges from Fleet Street of one sort or another.
Lord Graham of Edmonton: The noble Lord poses possibilities and makes presumptions on the part of employees entering the retail trade. I pose this situation to the noble Lord. Take the case of an establishment that, when this Bill becomes law, states that it has no intention of opening on Sundays because it does not believe in Sunday trading. Say that a person becomes an employee of that company in such circumstances—because it is that shop's policy not to open on a Sunday. What if subsequently the firm is compelled to open on Sundays owing to competition? What kind of redress does the noble Lord envisage such an employee would have?
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: I believe that such an employee should certainly be able to obtain redress under his contract of employment. If his employer seeks arbitrarily to alter the terms of his employment after he has joined the firm, I have not the slightest doubt that he would have a remedy there. He would have also a very genuine cause for complaint.
The noble Lord distracted me—I am sure inadvertently—from what I believe to be the core of this matter. It is this. Every day people are joining trades that involve Sunday work. Every day, after this Bill becomes law, people will be becoming shopworkers knowing that it is a trade that involves Sunday opening too. What justification is there for discriminating between those two classes of people by providing for those who go into shop work protection that would be given—rightly, I think—to those already at work there? Anybody else going to work in transport, on the railways, or in Fleet Street—any of the 8 million people we are told will be involved—will not be given such protection. This seems to be the most indefensible discrimination between one man and another.
If your Lordships will reflect on the fact that it involves discrimination in respect of people going into new jobs, then many of your Lordships will see how unfair it would be to the great mass of workers to give a special privilege to those entering shop work simply because shop working on Sundays was illegal in the past although it is going to be legal now.
Lord McNair: It is very late and I shall be very brief, but I should not like the noble Lord, Lord Renton, to feel that he has no support from this corner of the

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Committee. He moved his amendment most eloquently and I certainly hope that I shall have an opportunity to support him, if not tonight them on some other occasion—if necessary, in the Lobbies.
When this Bill was first introduced I found myself in a great quandary. I was not sure what I thought of it, and I am certain that I was not unique in that. I therefore went out of my way to ask all sorts of people their views of the Sunday opening of shops. One of course receives many different answers, but the most common response—and I am sure that it is the one that would command the majority of the whole country—is, "Yes, let shops open on Sunday if they want, provided that nobody is compelled to work on Sunday if they do not wish to do so". That seems to me to be the purpose of the noble Lord's amendment and it has my full support.
Lord Sanderson of Bowden: I have listened and if I have tunnel vision then I plead guilty to having tunnel vision; but I am not convinced by those who do not support my noble friend Lord Renton and his amendment tonight. I feel very strongly, as the noble Lord who has just spoken said, that the crucial part of the whole business of repealing the Shops Act is that there should not be coercion to work on Sunday.
Coming from Scotland, as I do, I have seen the working of Sunday shop opening for some considerable time and I firmly believe that those who work in those shops on Sundays feel quite happy about so doing. However, I see a case arising where, under this two-tier arrangement—if I may call it so—which this plan of the Government seems to envisage, considerable trouble could be caused particularly for those who have strong consciences about working on Sunday. Therefore, it worries me considerably that a Government who believe in the freedom of the individual are pressing this sort of arrangement at this time in this Bill.
I say only this to the Minister. I believe this is a case where it would be helpful if he could look again at the intended arrangements, because there is one certainty that has come from the discussions; that is, that the laws passed in 1950 are not working. We are clearly dealing with a situation where the law is being flouted and if we are to deal with the situation properly we must ensure that any laws we pass do work in the future.
Lord McCarthy: The centre of the argument against the amendment seems to be that nobody need work on Sunday and that nobody need work in a shop. With great respect, that seems to be a tunnel vision 1950s argument. Perhaps it was true in 1950, when unemployment was 2 per cent. or less, that nobody need work in a shop or on a Sunday because there were plenty of jobs available for everyone.
But now unemployment is much, much higher and for large numbers of people, particularly married women, employment in a shop is the best available opportunity of employment. If they refuse employment in a shop, and if they do so three times, and give as a reason that they would have to work on Sundays, they might not get any unemployment benefit, because it would be disallowed. Large numbers of people might have to work in shops and
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might have to work on Sundays or get no work at all. That is why they ought to have some rights of the kind suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Renton.
Viscount Brentford: I briefly make a couple of points in support of the amendment of my noble friend Lord Renton. Anomalies are being flung around in both directions, so far as I can see. It seems to me that the biggest anomaly in this part of the Bill is that arising from whether one person is employed a week or two earlier than another. What is a week or two in a situation which may arise five or 10 years hence? I believe that that anomaly should be ruled out. The amendment will help to prepare the way for other amendments which are to come which will tidy up the first schedule. I therefore support this amendment.
I have the deepest sympathy for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, in what he suffers on Sundays. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will look favourably on any subsequent amendment that the noble and learned Lord may introduce in order to give him more rest in his area on Sundays.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: I am grateful to the noble Viscount but I fear I do not deserve his sympathy because I no longer live in the area concerned.
Viscount Brentford: I thank the noble and learned Lord. This amendment does not affect the principle of the Bill. It bears saying again that this amendment is purely to remove an anomaly from the Bill. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will look sympathetically at it.
11 p.m.
Lord Glenarthur: After the various examples that have been given perhaps I ought to declare an interest and say that I sing in the choir and so does my son! Be that as it may, my noble friend Lord Renton has made it clear that the intention of his amendment is to extend the protection offered by the Bill to new recruits, if I may use the word that he used, and not to confine it, as the Bill now does, to shopworkers employed on the day before commencement of the Act. As he said, the amendment would not have quite the effect that he intends because it does not amend Schedule 1, in which the proposed new rights are set out in substance.
My noble friend went on to say—and I was delighted to hear it, coming from my noble friend, who usually has helpful suggestions to make about either the draftsman or the drafting—that in this case he was sure the parliamentary draftsman would be able to put the matter right. I note the points made about drafting.
If I may correct a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Shaughnessy, that in paragraph 4 "reason" should perhaps have an "s" at the end, I can assure him that if he reads the passage with great care he will find that the word should be in the singular because it refers to the principal reason.
Lord Shaughnessy: I acknowledge my error and apologise to your Lordships' Committee.
Lord Glenarthur: Not all all. But I go further and say that, although I honestly cannot claim that it is possible instantly to redraft, I understand the point that it is a complex schedule. I do not know whether there is scope for improvements in the drafting, and I take the point that my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter made. I shall see what can be done, but it is very much in the hands of the parliamentary draftsman. The provision has been worded with great care. I should not like my noble friend to feel that I am holding out too much of an olive branch, but I shall see what can be done.
The reason why the Bill distinguishes between existing and future shopworkers is clear and straight-forward. It will radically alter the position of existing shopworkers, many of whom may have been attracted to shopwork in the first instance because they would not have to work on a Sunday. I can well understand the concern of existing workers, and our proposals recognise their special position. But I do not believe that a similar consideration applies to new recruits, despite the sincere way in which my noble friend Lord Renton proposed his amendment.
In what ways are shopworkers different from other employees in industry, or whatever, where Sunday working is expected? I am bound to say that I do not find a very great difference. They will join in the full knowledge that Sunday working is expected, and if they do not wish to work on a Sunday they can either come to some arrangement with their prospective employer or they can look elsewhere for an employer who will perhaps meet the needs that they have.
The Bill offers protection to those shopworkers in employment on the day before commencement but not to those joining the industry after that date. With respect, I suggest to my noble friend Lord Renton that that is entirely logical. It is important to provide protection as soon as possible once the Bill has become law and Sunday trading is legalised; but I feel that it would be wrong to make the protection retrospective.
Today people in many walks of life have to work, at least occasionally, on a Sunday. It is not only people in public service—such as the police, hospitals, transport and so on—but also those in manufacturing, agriculture and of course in the leisure industries. A recent study suggests that as many as 4 million people have to work regularly on a Sunday and almost another 5 million work occasionally on a Sunday. I have not seen any great outcry that people are working on Sundays at swimming pools, restaurants or at estate agents. We must recognise that the pattern of working life for many people includes an element of Sunday working.
Extending those rights to new employees would also place a great burden on employers, especially the small shopkeeper. If new full-time employees are able to refuse to work on Sundays, small shopkeepers with less labour flexibility than large stores may have to employ additional staff for Sunday working. This could increase their costs and reduce their competitiveness.
I must also point out that extending the rights in Schedule 1 to new recruits would, in any event, prove of very limited value. The proposed rights apply only to those in employment. This is covered in paragraphs 4 and 6 of the schedule. They cannot apply to, or protect, potential employees. Thus, an employer can
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always refuse to take on an applicant if he does not agree to work on a Sunday. There would be no safeguards for those unable to get jobs because they were not prepared to enter into a contractual obligation to work on a Sunday.
We have heard many powerful speeches both in support of and against this amendment. They were compelling speeches that will need to be studied with great care. I noted particularly that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Denning, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon, could not agree. It is always, I find, rather difficult to disentangle the various legal arguments when the noble and learned Lords on the Cross-Benches discuss matters in that way.
I wish, however, to say this to the Committee. I have the utmost respect for the manner in which my noble friend Lord Renton put forward the amendment. It would be dishonest of me to say anything other than that I do not hold out too much hope. The noble and learned Lords, Lord Denning and Lord Simon of Glaisdale, are in disagreement about it. Many statements drawing on experience have been made on each side. They have been made with great force. It is only right that I should read with great care all that has been said. I shall gladly do so. I do not know whether this is the elusive "it" to which we referred earlier. I hope that with the assurance that, many important points having been made for and against the amendment on all sides of the Committee, I shall study with great care all that has been said, my noble friend will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Renton: Of course, one must be thankful for small mercies. I am grateful to my noble friend for the clearest indication yet that the Government are prepared to think further about an amendment moved on this Bill. I shall say a little more about that in a moment. Meanwhile, I would like to thank the 10 noble Lords other than my noble friend on the Front Bench and myself who have spoken on the amendment. Eight of those noble Lords supported it; two of them did not do so. The arguments of my noble friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter and of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, must be carried to their logical conclusion. That is that everyone should have to work on Sundays if compelled to do so and that no-one should be given the kind of protection envisaged for existing shopworkers under Clause 3. Frankly, I do not find that—
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: Will my noble friend allow me to intervene? What he says is the exact converse of what I said. I went out of my way to make clear that I accepted the view that those who had joined the shop working trade on the basis of Sunday work being illegal should be protected but that there was no reason whatever for applying this to new entrants. That is quite the opposite of what my noble friend is trying to attribute to me.
Lord Renton: With deep respect to my noble friend, he has, I think, rather quickly misunderstood me. I was saying this. If you carry it to its logical conclusion, the argument of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Simon of Glaisdale, and the argument of my noble

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friend Lord Boyd-Carpenter is that because some people inevitably have to work on Sundays no one should be given any protection at all except those already covered by Clause 3. I do not think, quite frankly, that that is a tenable position.
Perhaps I may say this also in the light of what was said by my noble friend Lord Wolfson, with his tremendous experience of the retail trade in this country. It is possible that few people carry a greater responsibility in the retail trade than he does. He came out quite clearly contrary to the view expressed by my noble friend, Lord Glenarthur. The noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, said that this amendment would create a greater burden on employers. My noble friend Lord Wolfson said that if the Bill was not amended as proposed it would create an invidious position among the workforce in retail businesses. Therefore when my noble friend considers this matter afresh—and I am very glad that he is going to do so—I hope that he will bear in mind what my noble friend Lord Wolfson has said.
At this late hour it would be impracticable and not welcome for me to suggest that we should divide on this amendment. We shall trust that by the Report stage the Government will have had fresh, and I hope better, thoughts on the matter. In that hope, which I am sure is not a vain one, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Viscount Davidson: I beg to move that the House do now resume.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
House resumed.

British Railways Bill
The Queen's Consent signified and Bill reported from the Unopposed Bill Committee with amendments.
House adjourned at twelve minutes past eleven o'clock.