MPs to be offered choices on Sunday trading: A unique draft bill will aim to end anomalies in the shops act
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Your support makes all the difference.THE HOME OFFICE is planning to deliver a unique draft Bill, containing three options on Sunday trading, to the House of Commons within the next three months.
Firm proposals for legislation are normally issued in the form of a White Paper, but the forthcoming Sunday trading Bill is so complex that Kenneth Clarke, the Home Secretary, has decided to give MPs the maximum possible time in which to consider the options.
The draft Bill will be published, therefore, well before Parliament rises for its summer recess, and it is then expected to be given a prime slot in the programme for the next session - with a Second Reading debate, and all-party free vote, possibly sometime in November.
An attempt by the Thatcher government to go for total Sunday trading deregulation was humiliatingly defeated on Second Reading by a 14- vote majority in the Commons in 1986 - in spite of the Conservatives' 100- plus majority. With a current Government majority of only 20, Mr Clarke is treating the issue with extreme caution.
But he told the House of Commons last November that when it came, the legislation would contain three choices: total deregulation, putting the law in England and Wales on the same basis as that in Scotland; partial deregulation, under which small shops would be free to open for any trade, while larger shops were limited to six-hour trading; and the Keep Sunday Special option of restricting trade to limited classes of shop, like those dealing with recreation, emergencies and travel. The only similar legislative procedure - under which MPs were offered votes on a range of options - was the one offered on abortion time-limits by Mr Clarke, when he was Secretary of State for Health, during the committee stage on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill in April 1990.
In a series of free votes, MPs firstly rejected a proposal to reduce the 28- week limit on abortions to 18 weeks - the most extreme alternative - before rejecting the 28-week status quo, 20 weeks and 26 weeks, finally voting for the 24-week limit that had been favoured by Mr Clarke.
Since the current Shops Act was passed in 1950, 22 Private Members' Bills have been introduced in an attempt to tidy up anomalies under which people can legally buy waterproofs for fishing, but not raincoats; electrical fuses for cars, but not for household plugs; and plants, but not the potting compost to put them in.
The latest piece of backbench legislation, the Shops (Amendment) Bill, promoted by Ray Powell, Labour MP for Ogmore, who is sponsored by the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, proposes various measures to keep Sunday special.
It is currently being considered by a Commons committee, but as its proposals will be included in Mr Clarke's draft, it stands little chance of pre- emptive enactment.
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