I am not going to say to-night what the date will be, but I shall say to-morrow. That is the position in regard to the Early Closing Order which we made last October under the Defence Regulations. It was really because of the statement I have just made that I felt it was right that I should intervene so early in the Debate. I thought subsequent speakers ought to have in their minds what was the intention of the Government. I made up my mind when the hon. Member sat down that I would do my best, great though the difficulties under which I naturally labour are, to be brief, and I am going to adhere to that intention.

Towards the end of his speech the hon. Member asked me two questions. The first was, How is the Act of 1934 being enforced? That is the Act which limited for the first time the hours of work of young persons in shops to 48 hours a week. I take it that he also wants to know how the subsequent Acts of 1936 and 1938—one dealing with Sunday employment and the other dealing with the hours of young persons under 16, fixing the hours at 44 without any overtime—are being worked. I should like to say straight away that I recognise the force of much that the hon. Member said in regard to the method of the administration of those Acts. I am not going to claim that administration by the Home Office or any other Department is as perfect as he seems to think—he is influenced by his association with the Home Office—but there are advantages in administration by a central authority from the point of view of efficiency and uniformity. On the other hand, in a democracy there are also great advantages, which we must not ignore, in administration by a body of popularly-elected representatives of the people. Although I confess that the administration of the Shops Acts is open to criticism in certain areas—I support what the hon. Member said when he maintained that in other areas the administration is excellent—in my view, where administration by a local authority is not satisfactory, the remedy is not to take the power from that local authority, but to sec to it that the local authority mends its ways, and the power to do that rests with the electors.

The position of the Home Office is that it is the central Department responsible for the administration of these Acts, and in all the reports which have been made, and there have been many, on the subject of the Shops Acts in recent years, I think I am right in saying there has been no departure from the principle that primary administration of those Acts should rest with the local authorities, and that the general supervision should be vested in the Home Office or, in the case of Scotland, in the Scottish Office. The position is that we do watch the administration of those Acts very carefully, and where we get complaints we take special steps to find out how far they are justified and make suitably strong representations to the local authority.

Over and above all that, we do our best to see that local authorities are made aware of the provisions of the Acts which they have to administer, and their responsibilities, and I would take this opportunity to commend to the attention of hon. Members who are interested in this subject what I regard as a most admirable pamphlet, issued by the Home Office as recently as December last, on the Shops Act, 1934, as amended by the Young Persons (Employment) Act, 1938. That memorandum contains a very clear account of the provisions of those Acts, and much useful advice. That is how we are proceeding in this matter.

Finally, the hon. Gentleman asked me how we were getting on with the joint committee, which has been engaged, not with the question of the hours of closing of shops, but with the regulation and limitation of the hours of employment of shop assistants. I think the House knows that that is a matter with which my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour is very closely concerned. I have been in consultation with him on the subject, and what I am going to say represents his view as well as my own. The position is that very good progress has been made in dealing with this matter by way of consultation between representatives of employers and representatives of workers. From the point of some hon. Members opposite the progress may have been disappointingly slow, but we should make a great mistake if we were to under-estimate the inherent difficulties of this problem. Conditions vary enormously from one part of the country to another and they vary enormously also between one trade and another. This is so even in the distributive trade, between the business which is concerned with perishable goods and that which is concerned with non-perishable goods, between what I may call the West End shop and the suburban shop and between the main-street shop and the back-street shop.

Then there is the question of the interaction of hours of employment and of wages. There is the very difficult question of what we call the spread-over. You may limit the hours of employment of shop assistants, but the hours during which they are employed may be so spaced in the day that an assistant really has not the hours of leisure which he ought to have. It is a matter which it is difficult to regulate by hard-and-fast rules. It is much more easy to do it by way of agreement. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour authorises me to say that in his opinion very real progress has been made with these agreements. He says it is a great step forward that for the first time organisations of employers and workers in this great service of retail distribution, which employs over 2,000,000 workers, should have come together and discussed frankly and freely and in a spirit of friendly co-operation the methods of regulating the conditions of employment in those trades. He suggests that it is perhaps not too much to claim that voluntary agreements which have recently been made in certain sections of the trade—the National Agreement between the Multiple Shop Federation and the National Amalgamated Union of Shop Assistants, Warehousemen and Clerks, in connection with the retail boot and shoe trade, is an outstanding example—owe something to the atmosphere created by the meetings of the joint committee. The friendly relations which have been established between the two sides augur well for the future and give rise to the hope that, with patience, the difficulties will be overcome and machinery acceptable to all parties ultimately will be established. It is through this channel of discussion between the two sides of the industry rather than through direct Government regulation that we believe the progress which we all desire to see must be looked for.