The New Sunday: Reregulating Sunday Trading
| Date | 01 January 1995 |
| Published date | 01 January 1995 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1995.tb01995.x |
| Author | Imelda Maker |
LEGISLATION
The
New
Sunday: Reregulating Sunday Trading
Imeldu
Maher'
One of the more contentious issues which Parliament has sought to resolve in
recent years is the question of Sunday trading. Should shops
be
allowed to open on
Sundays and, if
so,
what sort of shops and for how long or should Sunday trading
be regulated at all? These questions encapsulate a range of interests, some of which
conflict. Thus, any Bill would be obliged to acknowledge the multi-faceted nature
of the debate and successfully balance the interests of consumers, shop workers,
retailers (large and small), residents close to shopping areas and those that believe
Sunday has a special quality which should be preserved through restricted opening
hours on Sundays. In short, there is a combination of economic, social and moral
issues that form a backdrop to the ideological debate that often surrounds questions
of regulation. A government attempt to roll back the frontiers of the state in
relation to Sunday trading failed in the mid-1980s.' This defeat, coupled with a
long litigation campaign, resulted in the Sunday Trading Act 1994.2
In this paper,
I
focus on the content and scope of the new statute after taking a
brief look at the history surrounding it, notably the interplay of social changes and
litigation strategies that led to reform. The paper will examine the way the statute
has balanced the different interests of those affected by Sunday trading and
concludes with an analysis of how reform is achieved on contentious issues. More
broadly, I will examine why
this
issue proved
so
contentious and what this tells us
about the way multi-faceted agendas can be disguised behind relatively
commonplace questions such as the opening hours of shops on Sundays.
Social change and failed reform
Retail trade and shopping practice have changed dramatically since the 1950~.~
There has been a shift from small stores to large, often out-of-town, self-service
superstores. Shopping is done less frequently as people can transport and store
more goods due to increased car ownership and home refrigeration. A significant
social change which has affected the retail sector is the increasing number of
women working outside the home. The White Paper and the reports prepared on
employment and Sunday trading in Britain all point to the increasing number of
women working in the retail ~ector.~ This means that they are unable to shop at
~ ~~
*Lecturer
in Law, University of Warwick.
Thanks
to Colin
Scott
for comments on
an
earlier draft.
1
The Bill had been sent to the House of Lords first where it had been passed:
see
HL Deb vol47,
col
942
(25
February 1986). The Government was defeated in the Commons by
14
votes:
see
HC Deb vol
95, col693 (14 April 1986).
2
See
Rawlings, 'The Euro-law Game: Some Deductions from a Saga' (1993)
20
JLS
309.
3
See
Reforming the
Law
on
Sunday
Trading:
A
Guide to the Options for Reform
(HMSO, 1993) Cm
2300, and Marwick,
British Sociefy Since
I945
(London: Penguin, 2nd ed, 1990) esp ch
7.
4
Cm 2300,
ibid
at 2; Deakin and Wilkinson,
Employment Protection
and
the Reform of
Sunday
Trading,
Report to the Relationship Foundation, at 30; Freathy and
Sparks,
Sunday
Working in the Retail Trade
(Project
Summary,
1993), Report for the SHRC, at
4.
0
The Modern
Law
Review Limited
1995
(MLR
58:
I,
January).
Published by Blackwell Publishers,
108
Cowley Road,
Oxford
OX4
IJP
and
238
Main
Street,
Cambridge,
MA
02142,
USA.
72
To continue reading
Request your trial