This is essentially a devolved proposal. It would be for local authorities to express an interest in being a designated tourist zone. My amendment limits temporally and geographically the potentially deleterious impact on SMEs. It has the capacity to deal with extended opening hours during the British holiday season, as well as during the Christmas season, when many places—Blackpool, for example—experience an increase in tourist trade.
Research has shown that the majority of shop workers do not welcome the opportunity to work longer hours on a Sunday. I commend Ministers for including improved legal protections in the current provisions, but the practical reality in the workplace is that if someone is worried about losing their job, they will not want to ask for a special concession not to have to work on a Sunday. Similarly, if someone wants a promotion, they will not want to ask for that concession, because their competitors in the promotion stakes might not ask for a comparable one.
I welcome the Government amendment, which did make it on to the Amendment Paper, to give local authorities the power to restrict Sunday trading to zones, but I am concerned that the zoning is potentially too broad in its impact. For example, it would not be strong enough to avoid a combined local authority-wide mega zone occurring, which, in my view, would have an excessively negative impact. A trial would also make it difficult to discern the selected impacts on different businesses within such a wide zone.
It is obviously not the Minister’s fault that the manuscript amendment was not selected. He indicated that it gave us a feeling for what he would like to do—it was a valiant effort—but the difficulty for parliamentarians is that it is not actually on the Amendment Paper. As somebody said, we need an amendment that we can feel and touch. I believe that a compromise that benefits families and UK competition lies in the tourist-zone model. I strongly encourage Members to support this compromise.