Sunday supermarket convenience?: Should the shops be open longer?

Should supermarkets be open longer on a Sunday?

Transcript

00:00Sunday is still regarded by many as a sort of a special day. This comes back

00:07to I suppose the sort of the Christian roots if you like of this country and

00:10largely we are still regarded as a sort of Christian country so it was the day

00:14of rest and it did I'm just about old enough to remember when shops did not

00:17open you went into sort of to your local sort of high street and everything was

00:22shut indeed you go to some parts of Europe where that indeed sort of happens.

00:25In the sort of the early 1990s as part of the then conservative government

00:30although Thatcher had gone at that time this is under major there was a sort of

00:33change this to sort of to create longer sort of hours on a Sunday and

00:38supermarkets could open so of course they tend to open at 10 o'clock close at

00:42four o'clock so things you know everything's done and dusty if you like by

00:4610 o'clock. Corner shops are sort of slightly different but nonetheless as I

00:50say it's difficult because of course you know that's the law as they

00:54they sort of see it so they think they comply with it. My concern about this one

00:59is that there's only a limited amount of stuff which is what we buy food clothes

01:04whatever else and people buy what they need in the hours available if you then

01:10extend it by a few hours because that's what we're talking about are people

01:13going to go out and buy more stuff I don't think so I don't think this is this of

01:17the answer to sort of the the problems that sort of high street retailers are

01:21having what they would like is a sort of reduction in costs which of course is

01:26business rates or indeed of course the sort of the national insurance on sort of

01:30the people that they employ and of course minimum wage has gone up all of which

01:35adds in if you like to sort of the fixed costs they've sort of got to cover

01:38before they get even to sort of get to the break-even point beyond which

01:42there is profit. The question now is whether economic pressures outweigh the

01:46social reasons for keeping Sundays limited. Ministers have yet to confirm any

01:51timetable but the consultation is likely to test both public appetite and

01:56political nerve. According to the British Retail Consortium overall shop prices in

02:01August were still nearly six percent higher than two years ago despite

02:06inflation easing leaving retailers seeking fresh ways to drive sales. The

02:11difficulty is that yeah this feels like tinkering and I suspect that it's not

02:15going to sort of to make an awful lot of difference and indeed do we get to a

02:19sort of a state where we have sort of 24-hour trading yes you can go to shops

02:22which let's face it some of the supermarkets do you know this is a drop in

02:25the ocean compared to sort of the problems that sort of retailers have at the

02:28moment