I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman has left us, because I wanted to echo what has been said by previous speakers and to say that we were grateful when the Order for the 6 o'clock closing was made. It has been long over-due. But we were not so grateful when there was placed into the hands of local authorities the power to extend any hours of service. If there is one thing, however, on which I can congratulate the right hon. Gentleman, it is his complacency and especially the way in which he tells us that during the last war hours were not limited. This is forgetting entirely that there was no blackout during the last war. Then he tells us that the Select Committee which reported in 1931 did not make a very strong recommendation in favour of local authorities having power to limit hours beyond what the law itself limited them. But nine years have passed, and the British public, shopkeepers, and assistants have been educated far beyond the position in which they were in 1931. This step, with its possibility of a 7 o'clock closing, is a backward step, because we have established overwhelmingly throughout the country a general closing hour of 6 o'clock, with one late night per week, and here it is being put within the power of local authorities, whose members are mainly of the shopkeeping classes, to lay down that 7 o'clock is to be the hour.

The happiest feature about it is that, having educated the British public, shopkeepers, and assistants to the possibility and advantage of earlier closing, they are not going back because even the London County Council has extended the hour to 7. I must confess that any desire that I have had to feel grateful to the Home Secretary disappeared entirely when he informed us that even this Order is to come to an end at Easter or thereabouts. I never remember a Debate on an Adjournment, arranged with the idea of trying to persuade a Minister to improve a position, in which the position was definitely made worse than anybody anticipated it was going to be. The Minister is quite sure that though local inspection is not as good as Home Office inspection, it is fairly satisfactory. The hon. Member for Westhoughton (Mr. Rhys Davies) has said that he knows some towns and cities where inspection is fairly well carried out. He has knowledge that I have not, but I have experience that he has not, and I do not know a single place in the whole of Great Britain where any real attempt is made to carry out the provisions of the Shops Acts. There is not a single municipality which has a staff that could do the necessary inspection. It is high time that legislation was introduced which would remove from local authorities, dominated as they are by the shopkeeping class, the power of inspection under the various Shops Acts.

We come to the last Act—the 44-hours Act. The right hon. Gentleman very complacently says that he thinks it is going on all right. Let me put it straight to him: Has there been a single prosecution for an infringement since the Act was passed? If it needs the staff that it does to keep industrial employers observing Acts of Parliament, surely, if there was decent inspection under the Shops Acts, there would have been at least one solitary prosecution under the new Act before now. If there has been one, I have never heard of it, and the Press has been discreetly silent about it. Whenever new legislation can be entered upon I hope that what is, after all, the biggest blot on shops legislation, namely, that there is no enforcement, will be removed and that enforcement will be placed in the hands of the central authority. I am quite unable to see the logic of the argument that when an Act of Parliament is passed, or when an Order under an Act of Parliament is issued, the responsibility should be put on other bodies, as has been done in the case of this Order under the Defence of the Realm Act for the earlier closing during the black-out hours. It is an entirely unfair responsibility to put upon local authorities. They are given no instruction as to how they are to get the opinions of the people concerned, the shopkeepers, the shop assistants, or the consumers. They never do get the opinion of the consumers, in many cases they never get the opinion of the shopkeepers, and in even more cases they never get the opinion of the shop assistants. That Order should have been a universal Order applicable throughout the country.

If it is said that there are places where there is a necessity, I would cite Woolwich with its arsenal works as a likely place: yet the Woolwich Arsenal Co-operative Society finds no difficulty whatever in catering for the enormous working-class population there with the 6 o'clock. It has already been pointed out that there is no limitation of the hours which adult shop assistants may work. Shops in the provinces open generally at 8 o'clock, and a little later in London. Even with the 6 o'clock you have a 10-hour clay four days a week, including meal time, a five-hour day on the half-holiday and an 11-hour day on the sixth day. Add together these hours, and deduct from five of the days the hour and a half for meals, and you get some idea of what are the normal working hours of shop assistants. Add to that the enormous amount of unpaid overtime which, in the nature of the shop assistant's occupation, must be worked by him, and you get some, idea of why we are always insisting that there should be some limitation of the number of hours that shop assistants work.

We have had from the last Speaker a very pitiful and, I think, exaggerated picture of the plight of the retail shopkeeper, but I wish somebody would give a little thought to the position in which the shop assistant is being placed during the time through which we are now passing. The whole scheme of rationing, the carrying-out of which is placed upon the shop assistants, has been carried through without the shop assistants being consulted. To the shop assistant it represents additional work. Rationing alone will add hours and hours to the unpaid overtime of practically every shop assistant in this country who is not powerfully enough organised in his trade union to be able to get payment for overtime.

There is also the difficulty to which the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Leslie) referred of the speed at which the young men in the distributive trade are being called into the army, and the way in which they are being replaced by females of exceedingly tender years. One gets from that some idea of the additional responsibility that is placed on the shoulders of the older shop assistants who remain. There is the further difficulty of these females of tender years having to go long distances when shops are closed during the black-out period. I do not agree with the interpretation which the right hon. Gentleman put upon his powers with regard to the continuing of this Act. I am not a lawyer, but I have seen nothing in the Defence of the Realm Act which empowers a Minister to do something for four months in the year and says that he cannot do it for the other eight months. I hope that before the right hon. Gentleman comes finally to the conclusion that he has no power to continue this Order, unsatisfactory as it is, throughout the whole year, he will at least take advantage of the legal advice of the Law Officers of the Crown.