Heather Bellamy spoke with the Christian Institute about the Sunday Trading Bill

Simon Calvert

The Christian Institute has warned officials that families would be put under increased pressure by Government plans to liberalise Sunday trading and last month a survey of adults in England and Wales showed that three in five people agree that shop workers will be forced to work longer hours, if the law changes. Heather Bellamy discussed the proposed changes with Simon Calvert, the Deputy Director for Public Affairs at the Christian Institute.

Heather: So what exactly are the Government's plans?

Simon: The Government want to give elected mayors and local councils the power to extend Sunday trading hours for their area. We are concerned that that's not only unworkable in practice, but it would have some sort of domino effect, where one area adopts the new policy and then neighbouring areas feel that they have to do the same to compete.

The primary concern is the impact it's going to have on families; the increased pressure on more and more people to have to work on a Sunday, or work longer hours on a Sunday. And they don't seem to be willing to think in Government about what it's going to mean for people and for family life.

Heather: So why are they seeking to do this?

Simon: It's hard to say. David Cameron's explanation recently was slightly mystifying; he said he thought that it's difficult for families as they would go to shops on a Sunday and would have to walk around for a long time before they were able to buy anything because of the limited hours. That doesn't really seem like any great loss and it's hard to feel a great sympathy for the people in that situation, compared to the sympathy that we would feel for people, often in lower paid jobs and who are often put under increasing pressure to work longer and longer hours. And it's not just shop workers that would have to work longer hours, the whole supply chain will be put under further strain on a Sunday by extended opening hours. So people in security jobs, cleaning jobs and delivery jobs, they too will face increased pressure to work.

Let's also not forget the impact on Christians and others who take Sunday out as a serious day of rest for religious reasons. The legal protections that are meant to exist to protect people from being discriminated against for not working on Sunday do not always work in practise by any means and that problem's only going to get worse if the Government get their way.

Heather: Is it not a positive thing to devolve power? Because the local councils or local mayors would know better what their city needs than national Government.

Simon: It's not positive enough to justify the damage it's going to do. I think that people like a shared day of rest. As I say, Christians observe Sunday to different degrees, but everybody benefits when you have a shared day off, so that there is one day that's different from the others and one day where you are under less pressure to work; one day where you're perhaps under less pressure to go out to shop, or do all sorts of other things. That shared day of rest has been undermined over the decades, but this new proposal will make that situation even worse.

Heather: As somebody who does not work in retail, it can be hard to understand why families are put under more pressure, when the main thing you often here about is the lack of jobs and the lack of finance that's putting families under pressure. So why is this not a good thing for families that there's more opportunities to get more hours of work, or more opportunities for new jobs for people.

Simon: It's not a good thing for families because it puts pressure on people who don't want to work extra hours on a Sunday. It's not difficult to find examples of people who find that whilst they may want to work a certain number of hours on a Sunday, they would feel under pressure to work more. It is not difficult to find people who have indicated to their employers that they don't wish to work on a Sunday and they have kept their jobs, but missed out on promotions. It's not difficult to think of examples in our own circles of friends and family of people who don't get jobs at all because they have given the indication in the interview that they prefer not to work on Sundays. As I say, all of these problems are exacerbated if you continue to extend Sunday opening hours.

You know, the right to shop is not the most important right in life. There are other considerations. The concern is over whether the Government is willing to listen to those other considerations, or is it just going to put the idea that a seven day week, 24 hours a day consumerism, is really the sole value that dictates our policy on this issue?

Heather: That's a good question. Do you think the Government will listen to others? Because they are considering submissions at the moment to the public consultation, so do you anticipate plans changing as a result?

Simon: It was disappointing that the Prime Minister chose to go out front and advocate this change to the law at Prime Minister Questions, when actually we haven't even had the Government's formal response to the consultation yet. We haven't heard from them about the responses made by members of the public and how they answered those responses. So he does seem to have rather jumped the gun. The idea of a consultation is that they ask, we respond and then they pick up our responses and give us their response in turn. That process hasn't happened yet.

However I do want to be fair and say that there are officials who are working hard to seek to consult with a range of interested groups and not just Christian groups by any means. There are shop workers groups and unions and there are groups like Keep Sunday Special that are working very hard. They are being listened to by officials, but the question is whether Mr Osbourne and Mr Cameron will listen to those concerns.