St George’s Day and St David’s Day Bill

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 1:58 pm on 13 May 2011.

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Photo of John Hayes John Hayes The Minister for Universities and Science, The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills 1:58, 13 May 2011

My hon. Friend is certainly right. Although we cost such proposals in a clear and empirical way—and notwithstanding my comments about utility—it is right that we should consider the matter in the round. We should assess the effects, both good and bad, on business, because clearly many businesses will benefit from an additional holiday. The tourist business, many of our resorts and parts of our leisure industry would benefit. However, there would be other costs to business, and it is right to listen to what business organisations say. Indeed, I will describe what they have said as we progress through this short but important debate.

The history of bank holidays will help us to draw some conclusions. Bank holidays are a relatively new phenomenon, of course. Before 1834, the Bank observed about 33 saints’ days and religious festivals as holidays, but in 1834 the number was reduced to just four: 1 May, 1 November or All Saints day, Good Friday and Christmas day. Frankly, in my view, that was rather a meagre ration. In 1871, the first legislation relating to bank holidays was passed when the banker and politician, Sir John Lubbock, introduced the Bank Holidays Act 1871, which specified the days as holidays.

I understand that Sir John Lubbock was an enthusiastic supporter of national and local cricket, and was firmly of the belief that bank employees should have the opportunity to participate in and attend matches when they were scheduled. Dates of bank holidays are therefore dates when cricket games were traditionally played between villages in the area where Sir John was raised. It is that rather partisan approach to bank holidays, built around Sir John’s personal tastes, which forms the basis, or at least the origins, of the matters we are speaking of today. Nevertheless, people were so glad to be given time off, whether it was to watch cricket or not, they called the first bank holidays St Lubbock’s days for a while. That did not perpetuate, but I hope that politicians of note might consider that, at least in popular if not official terms, special days could be named after them; one never knows, but if my hon. Friend’s Bill were to be successful, his name might, at least colloquially, be attached to the day’s holiday that people enjoyed. However, that rather self-interested motive of course has nothing to do with his bringing the Bill to our attention.

As is often the case, Scotland was treated separately because of its separate traditions, and so, for example, new year’s day was a holiday there whereas Boxing day was not. The 1871 Act did not specify Good Friday and Christmas day as bank holidays in England, Wales and Ireland because they were already recognised as common law holidays, and common observance had meant that they had become customary holidays since before records began.

Exactly a century after the 1871 Act, the Banking and Financial Dealings Act 1971, which currently regulates bank holidays in the UK, was passed. The majority of the current bank holidays were specified in the 1971 Act, but holidays for new year’s day in England, Wales and

Northern Ireland and for May day were introduced later. From 1965, the date of the August bank holiday was changed to the end of the month. Curiously, there were a few years—for example, 1968—when the holiday fell in September, but this no longer occurs, presumably reflecting a change in the way of defining the relevant date. The Whitsun bank holiday, Whit Monday, was replaced by the late spring bank holiday, which was fixed as the last Monday in May in 1971.

Under the 1971 Act, certain holidays are written into legislation. Those which are not are proclaimed each year by the legal device of a royal proclamation. A royal proclamation is also used to move bank holidays that would otherwise fall on a weekend, so adding an additional one-off holiday, as was the case this year. In that way, holidays are not lost in years when they coincide with weekends. These deferred bank holidays are termed bank holidays in lieu of the typical anniversary date and in the legislation are known as “substitute days”. Although we have fewer public or bank holidays than many other European Union member states, they do not always have substitute days and so, in some sense, the comparison is misleading. That point has been made by a variety of speakers today, including the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central.

To give those north of border a chance to have a longer celebration at new year, 2 January was made an additional bank holiday in Scotland by the 1971 Act—the rest of the country was given the chance to celebrate, less enthusiastically perhaps, by having new year’s day off instead. May day is the most recent of the eight bank holidays and is thought by some to be a controversial choice. It was introduced by the then Employment Secretary, Michael Foot, in 1978, just before he went on to lead the Labour party. At the time many opposed the move, saying that the May day holiday was essentially a communist idea because most countries behind the iron curtain enjoyed it, but it is now in the calendar and a fixture in bastions of communism such as the United States. I think we can assume that those charges did not bear as much weight as their advocates suggested.

The first bank holiday Act was a welcome innovation—