Exemption for Small Traders

Part of New Clause 1 – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 12 June 1974.

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Photo of Mrs Sally Oppenheim Mrs Sally Oppenheim , Gloucester 12:00, 12 June 1974

The consumer, aided and abetted by the motor car, would have to be able to afford the increased petrol prices imposed as a result of Government policy.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) made the point extremely well when he said that the small shops have their own viability niche in society and that it would take a great deal in the way of consumer choice to undermine it but not much in the way of legislation of this sort to undermine it. He and the Minister referred to the article in the Daily Mail. I did not imply that the article was about this Bill. I merely said that it mentioned that there would be only 80,000 small shops by 1980. Obviously the writer of the article was largely misinformed on a number of items.

If the Under-Secretary had bothered to inform himself, he would have known how dangerous Clauses 2, 4 and 5 are for the small shopkeeper. The hon. Gentleman said that the powers in the new clause would irk small shopkeepers. It is not the irksomeness of the clauses but the cost to the shopkeeper of the Government's measures which worries us. It was the cost of unit pricing which led to the small shopkeepers in the United States being exempted. The hon. Gentleman rather mischievously implied all sorts of motives, such as the desire to withhold information, even between friends. There is no question of that.

First, the question is whether shopkeepers will be able to afford to provide the information and then whether they will be able to obtain it quickly enough in order to provide it in a way which is meaningful to the consumer. We do not believe that the information to be provided on the price range in shops is necessarily beneficial to consumers. We are not acting against the consumers' interests in wishing to exempt small shopkeepers from having to obey the legislation.

The Under-Secretary of State repeated the claim made over and again in Standing Committee that the flexibility in the Bill gave the Government the opportunity to exempt the people we wish to exempt by the new clause. He says that our clause does not define them. If it is impossible to define them, how will they be exempted, even with the widest possible powers—unless the hon. Gentleman is thinking of tabling a new clause in another place? We shall be interested to hear whether that is so.

The purpose of the amendment is to protect small traders. It is also to protect consumers, who benefit largely from the type of personal service that is given. As my hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire, South-West (Mr. Cormack) said, it is often almost akin to a social service. It is in the corner shop that it is often learnt that a pensioner who lives alone has not been seen for several days. Anyone who does not have the benefit of shopping in a corner shop in his own neighborhood may have observed from programmes such as "Coronation Street" that such shops are repositories of information, perhaps not about price ranges, but about practically everything else that goes on in the neighborhood.

If it is only to the drafting of the clause that the Government object—apparently our definitions are not sufficiently precise—I ask them to give a positive assurance that they will table a new clause or an amendment in another place. If they are unable to give that assurance, nothing they have said in the debate has convinced us that the clause is not necessary, and I shall have to ask my hon. Friends to press it to a Division.