Enterprise Bill [Lords] — House of Commons, 2016-03-09
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Caroline Alice Spelman (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend makes a perfectly valid but separate point. I am addressing the question of whether keeping shops open longer will stop people shopping online; he wants people to have jobs servicing the online industry. As has been pointed out, a number of high street stores are successful in maintaining their high street position and at the same time giving an online offer I am prepared to concede that we need to remain competitive as a country, so I asked the British embassy in Paris to give me details of the recent change in French Sunday trading laws. Essentially, my amendment, which I have tabled with the help of the Clerks, seeks to mirror as closely as possible how the French Government have approached the very same question by designating localised tourist zones The Macron law—it is named after the Minister who introduced it—extended the number of Sundays for trading in France from five a year to 12 a year. Essentially, it is one Sunday a month. By happy coincidence, it created 12 zones. Six are in Paris, and it might be a welcome distraction to Members to run through where they are: Boulevard Haussmann, Champs-Élysées, Saint-Germain and Montmartre. That gives colleagues a sense of the size of the zones that the French Government identified. There are zones in six other regional cities, including Cannes, Deauville and Nice That allowed local government to designate smaller tourist zones, where shops under special licence could open for longer. The right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) indirectly asked how the French Government designated tourist zones. The answer to his question is that they collected data on the profile of shoppers who used those zones. Their definition was that the zone should show exceptional attendance by tourists residing abroad. Crucially, those tourist zones do not have wider application, which reduces the negative effects on smaller shops and convenience stores, which we have discussed The Olympic park experience is important because, in essence, it is the only practical pilot we have to go on when discussing the likely impact of extended opening. When the practical experience of 2012 was analysed by Oxford Economics, it was ascertained, as Members have pointed out, that small and medium-sized enterprises in up to a two-mile radius from large supermarkets in the area lost over 3% of their weekly sales income. If that is extrapolated to the national scale, it is estimated there would be an annual loss of £870 million in sales for all types of convenience stores and a net loss of 3,270 retail jobs in England and Wales, were longer Sunday trading hours to be made permanent, in line with the experiment during the Olympics I have been contacted by local Nisa and SPAR convenience store providers concerned about the implications of these changes on smaller stores. I also share the deeper concerns expressed by my hon. Friends, including my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes), the Keep Sunday Special campaign and the Church of England, about the erosion of a general day of leisure on which people can be available for shared activities with friends and family, especially those who build up community spirit and strengthen families I have talked to shop workers in large stores who often get their free time in half days on days other than Sunday, when family and friends might not be available. Until today, we have not had a detailed impact assessment, so I tend to agree with the Bishop of St Albans, the lead spokesman in the Church of England on Sunday trading. He said that: "an increase in opening hours will only lead to more people being pressured into spending Sunday apart from their children and families."