Five reasons to hate Sunday trading laws

1. They’re inconsistent and arbitrary. If you’re a waiter, factory worker, nurse, construction worker, taxi driver, bus driver, security guard, journalist or even a retail worker at a small shop you can and often do work at any time on Sundays. The places that have to close at 6pm are ‘big’ shops. Bizarrely, ‘big’ is defined as being 281 square metres or bigger. That doesn’t make much sense and any argument that retail workers are ‘protected’ by Sunday trading laws would also imply that all those other workers are being exploited.
2. Life isn’t nine-to-five, Monday-to-Friday, any more. Not that it ever was, really. Sunday trading laws inconvenience people who haven’t had time to buy their groceries during the rest of the week, and force them to rely on expensive local shops instead of cheaper supermarkets with more choice. For example, I like to do my shopping at my local Lidl. If I spend Sunday afternoon in the park with my friends instead of doing my shopping, and I need to buy something for that evening's dinner, I have to pay twice the price for a smaller range of inferior products at the Tesco Express down the road instead. That’s annoying. If I had a family to feed, it would be expensive.
3. The high street – and probably even small shops – will be better off. When Sunday trading laws were suspended during the Olympics, sales outside of London increased by 6.2%. They only increased by 2.8% inside London, probably because people were warned off the crowds. That’s good for smaller retailers too – no self-respecting retailer wants to exist just because her competitors are banned from trading, and more people out shopping means more customers to go round for everyone. They don't seem to have suffered during the Olympics suspension. If you’re worried about online retailers destroying the high street, this is one way to level the playing field.
4. Workers will have more hours available. It’s easy to talk about ‘protecting’ workers by stopping them from working on Sundays. But what about the ones that want to work then? Employers often end up having to pay workers more to work on Sundays – if you don’t think Sundays are sacred and want to earn a little more cash, the end of Sunday trading restrictions is good news for you. (Back when I was a teenage McDonald’s crew member, Sunday hours were a godsend.)
5. Lots of people actually like shopping. It’s very common to enjoy trips to the high street or the shopping centre with some friends. If you are interested in food, big grocery stores like Waitrose, Asda and Whole Foods can be interesting places to explore. Browsing clothes shops and buying new things can be really fun. I’ve seen lots of people sneer at this on Twitter, and no doubt it’s terribly gauche, but government shouldn’t be in the business of forcing snobs’ tastes on the rest of us. Some of us actually like consumerism.