I was very pleased to add my name to the amendment proposed by the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes). I did so because although I recognise that none of us wants excessive regulation for
our communities and that people should have the freedom to shop at convenient times for them, I think that the settlement reached by this House in 1994 was the right one, and I do not see the demand across this country to change that arrangement.
My primary concerns are twofold. First, there is the protection of family life. Some 75% of parents in this country feel that work impinges on their family life. Many of us have been abroad—in Spain, Portugal or France, for example—and we found real restrictions when it came to finding things open on a Sunday. We have been out at lunch time and found that the shops are on siesta. Why is it that in this country, this Government think we should put the free market above everything else? It is conservative to protect the family, and the family is worth protecting.
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We debate issues such as knife crime here, and lament the fact that families do not have time to sit around the table with their children; we want to see parents supporting their kids to learn to read and to help them with their homework, but when do we think those activities are being done? They are done on a Sunday.
Secondly, what is the face of the people we will be asking to go out and shop? We should think of the security guards now being made to work on a Sunday. We should think of the cleaners and of those stacking the shelves. They are the faces of my constituents. The balance we have in this country is right. To change it through the back door to allow a domino effect—one local authority has to make changes because the neighbouring local authority made them—is wrong. Let me add that to undermine independent shopkeepers who are universally against this change is also wrong. We should support them.
Family is reason enough. We have debated the family here on numerous occasions, and the Prime Minister himself has said that he wants to run a family-centred Government. For this reason alone, we should oppose the change and support the amendment.