I listened with great interest to the very protracted proceedings which took place before the Motion for the Adjournmen was moved. I will guarantee that there will not be as much heat engendered in the Debate which is now to take place. I want to come at once to matters that are of considerable importance to the 2,500,000 shop assistants of the country, and I make no apology for raising the important question of shop hours, for although the issue may not be of great consequence to some people, I assure hon. Members that it is of the utmost importance to the large number of young men and especially young women employed in the distributive trades.

When we are at war, one of the first industries to be upset is the distributive trade. It employs more people, and certainly more young people, than any other three industries in the land, and employing as it does more young men than any other industry, those young men are naturally conscripted for His Majesty's Forces. Napoleon was not very far wrong when he said that we were a nation of shopkeepers, and I think Hitler could say now that our Army is more or less made up of shop assistants. There is no reserved occupation for them; they have all to join up. If they were powerfully organised and made their presence felt through trade union organisations, the Government would take much more notice of them than is being done at present. In any case, we will attempt this evening to speak on their behalf. The Majority of the young persons employed in the distributive trade are young women and girls, and they are naturally more easily exploited than in almost any other occupation. Anything that we may say to-night is intended, of course, to have a salutary effect, not only upon the Government and the Home Office in particular, but upon employers in the distributive trade throughout the country, if they care to read what we say.

When war is declared by our country, one of the first things that happens in shop life, when male assistants are called up for the Forces from behind the counter, is that women are put to fill the vacancies. This is one of the very few industries in the land where that can happen with impunity, and I want to inform the House of what actually happens. When a young assistant employed behind the counter for a wage of, say, £2 10s. a week is conscripted for the army, a woman takes his place at a wage of 30s. a week. It is not uncommon for some unscrupulous shopkeepers actually to make a profit out of the fact that their male assistants are conscripted for His Majesty's Forces.

I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary has come into the Chamber to hear what we have to say on this subject. We are pressing the point about the employment of women in shops where ordinarily men were employed. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will remember one important fact: it is proved beyond doubt that the health of these young women is considerably affected by their having to stand for long hours behind the counter.

We raise this issue because last October the Home Secretary, in his wisdom, issued a circular to local authorities and asked them to bring it to the notice of shopkeepers in their localities proposing a limitation of the hours during which shops should be open. He said that the closing hour should, normally, be 6 o'clock on weekdays and 7.30 o'clock on the late night. That represented a great step forward in so far as the closing of the shop doors affects the hours of labour of the shop assistant. I wish at this stage to put this point—in brackets, as it were. There is a common error in the minds of the public, though I hope not in the minds of Members of Parliament, that merely because the shop door is closed, the hours of labour of the assistant are thereby regulated. That is not so. It is a growing practice to employ assistants before the shop opens and for some time after the shop doors are closed.

In the main, however, we have to admit that the mere closing of shop doors does favourably affect the shop assistants to some extent in relation to the hours during which they have to work. Therefore, in that connection we are glad that the right hon. Gentleman issued that circular. But when he sent out that circular asking shopkeepers to close at 6 because of the black-out, the possibility of air raids, the number of accidents in the streets, and the like, he did something else which we very much regret. In effect, he said to the local authorities, "I suggest that shops should close at 6 o'clock on each ordinary night, and at 7.30 on the late night, but I give you power to extend the hours beyond these limits." The result, as the right hon. Gentleman probably knows, has not been very favourable. I think he had in mind those districts where there are munition works and where workers are employed late and want to do their shopping after they finish work. That is understandable, but what the right hon. Gentleman has done has been to play into the hands of reactionary local authorities in districts where there are no munition works. They are taking the cue, and the shops are remaining open until 7 o'clock in their areas, whereas in other districts, perhaps close by, the shops are closed at 6 o'clock. This applies particularly in Lancashire. Lancashire, to all intents and purposes, is one great town, without any real line of demarcation between one area and another, and I imagine that if inquiries were made, you would find cases of shops in one district closing at 6 o'clock and those in an adjoining district closing at 7 o'clock. It would even he possible to find shops on one side of the street closed, while shops on the other side are open. I do not know whether such a case has occurred, but it is possible under the scheme propounded by the right hon. Gentleman.

Let me state the background of this problem. Before the last war there was hardly any regulation of shop hours. People could open shops during almost any hours they liked, day or night. Some hon. Members on this side have been shop assistants themselves and have worked as long as 65 or 70 hours a week in shops. I have been in jobs of all kinds, and I have had the doubtful privilege of working 65 hours a week in a shop. I hope I do not look any the worse for it, but some of my hon. Friends here who can speak with more experience than I have of shop life will be able to tell the House what this means. When the Great War started in 1914 the Defence of the Realm Act was passed, and we had, almost for the first time in this country, a general reduction in the hours of opening of shops and, I am pleased to say, a general reduction as a result in the number of hours worked by shop assistants. I may remark to those who believe in long hours for shopping that ever since the close of the Great War, throughout all the years, the reduced hours of opening have been maintained, and there has never been any clamour for an extension to the 1914 level. Indeed, I think shopkeepers in general have welcomed the reduction in the number of hours of opening and that is all to the good.

The problem of the closing of shops has been before the House from time to time. The present First Lord of the Admiralty, when he was Home Secretary, did a great deal to help in the improvement of the conditions of employment in shops, but there is a substantial difficulty which arises, even in connection with the present proposal of the right hon. Gentleman for 6 o'clock closing. It is astonishing in a democracy like ours how a small, reactionary, and selfish minority among shopkeepers can condemn the vast majority to remain open until late at night. This happens very often in connection with closing orders. The right hon. Gentleman possesses enormous powers. Incidentally, it may interest the House to know that he and I worked side by side for some time in the same shop—namely, the Home Office. Then he assumed the humble rôle of assistant, though I was very conscious all the time that he was my master. While, as I say, an improvement in regard to the closing of shops has been going on for some time, to the benefit of shopkeeper and shop assistant alike, I want to ask the right hon. Gentleman whether it is not possible for him, with the great power which he now possesses, to make the rule of closing at 6 o'clock on ordinary evenings and 7.3o on one night each week of compulsory and universal application, instead of allowing local authorities what is called elasticity in the law.

I know that the right hon. Gentleman is in a difficulty in meeting this point. We have raised this issue on several occasions in the House and in Committee when Bills have been under discussion. There is an anomaly in connection with hours and conditions of employment in shops in general. Take, for instance, the Laws passed providing that no boy or girl under 16 should be employed for more than 44 hours a week and that for those between 16 and 18 there is, generally speaking, a 48-hour maximum. Those provisions relate to young persons. I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman's Department could tell us—we should be very interested to know—whether those laws are really being implemented. I will tell the House why I ask that question. It is astonishing what a difference exists between shops inspection on the one hand and mines inspection, factory inspection, or schools inspection on the other. When a factory inspector is known to be visiting a village, all the employers feel that the authority of the State is behind him, but the shops inspector is employed by the local authority and probably holds two or three other jobs, such as sanitary inspector, house inspector, weights and measures inspector, and when he comes round, few people take the slightest notice of him. That is especially so if the majority of the local authorities are shopkeepers themselves. The right hon. Gentleman looked at me as if I was exaggerating, but he knows that I am not accustomed to that sort of thing.

Let me ask him, however, whether he can give us any information to-night that the law in respect of these young people has actually been enforced. It is no use asking to-night that the law should be changed, but I leave this point with the right hon. Gentleman. I have reason to tell him that shops inspection will not avail very much in enforcing the law in some localities. There are some districts where shops inspection is conducted efficiently and well—indeed, as efficiently as if it were done by the Home Office direct. But in some small local authority areas you will find that shop inspection is not unlike sanitary inspection where the chairman of the public health committee is the owner of the property which ought to be condemned.

The claim is made by some people that you should not close shops too early because customers cannot do their shopping if you close at 5 or 6 o'clock. An associa- tion has been conducting a little census for me, and these are the results. At a clothier's, employing 21 assistants, only one customer was served between 4.45 and 6 o'clock; a boot shop with seven assistants had one customer after 5.30; a tailor with six assistants had no customers at all between 6 and 7; a West London grocer took 7½d. between 6 and 7 o'clock; and another with eight assistants took only 2s. 4d. between 5 and 6 o'clock. A census taken by the Bristol Co-operative Society on a Saturday showed that there were between 2 and 3 o'clock 1,123 customers; between 3 and 4, 1,472; between 4 and 5, 1,358; between 5 and 6, 838; between 6 and 7, 454; and between 7 and 8, 220. That shows that the public of this country is, consciously or unconsciously, shopping earlier as the years go by. That, of course, is all to the good. When I speak of the regulation of hours of labour in shops in relation to young persons, I ought to make it abundantly clear that there is no regulation whatsoever of the hours of labour of an adult man or woman in shop life. Strangely, legislation in this country has always safeguarded women and young persons in factories, but has never safeguarded women employés in shops.

I want now to call the attention of the right hon. Gentleman to what is happening abroad. I felt once, although I am not quite so sure now, that this country was as far advanced in industrial and kindred legislation as any other country in the world. I now find, however, that in New South Wales, Tasmania, Victoria, Manitoba, British Columbia, Quebec, New Zealand and Finland. 6 o'clock is the general closing hour. I suppose that, if the Russians had their way, all shops in Finland would he closed at 6 o'clock in the morning.