My Lords, before we leave this group of amendments, I echo something that the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, said a moment or two ago about the importance of protecting workers’ rights. I was involved in the original legislation when it was enacted and spoke in another place about protecting workers who wanted to opt out of having to work on Sundays, and I moved amendments that excluded Christmas Day and Easter Day—two of the very few amendments that were successful at that time.
To some extent, these amendments merely tinker with the protections provided previously. A lot of evidence has been gathered in the years since the enactment of the original legislation which indicates that those protections need strengthening further. I simply refer the Minister to what one of her predecessors —the noble Lord, Lord Sassoon—promised Parliament back in 2012, on 24 April, when he spoke at the Second Reading of the Sunday Trading (London Olympic and Paralympic Games) Bill. He said that Parliament would have the opportunity fully to debate the issue of Sunday trading restrictions if the issue were revisited. I simply ask the Minister why it therefore required the intervention of notable Members of Parliament such as Mr David Burrowes and the redoubtable Fiona Bruce, who worked across the divide to defeat the Government’s proposals, to prevent something being stampeded through without proper parliamentary scrutiny. Why was the promise given to the House in 2012 not honoured? Why did we not have a debate about this when it was in your Lordships’ House in the first instance, before it went to another place? Perhaps the Minister will shed light on that.
The Minister will know that there were some 7,000 responses to the consultation process the Government initiated. It would be a great breach of trust in the future—at a time when trust is not held in very high esteem by many people when looking at Parliament and politics—if we were both to ignore the responses to the consultation process and circumvent the promises Ministers have previously given. If any further changes are intended, will there be the opportunity for full parliamentary scrutiny? Can we please not use such methods, which, in the end, it took members of the Minister’s own party in the House of Commons to prevent the Government from proceeding with in a very high-handed way?