Banning shops from opening on Boxing Day is a terrible idea

Britain was once a nation of shopkeepers. But one wonders for how much longer. As if the combination of Amazon, councils’ parking charges and above-inflation business rate rises wasn’t bad enough, we now have a petition. Of course, we do. The petitions wants all large shops to be shut on Boxing Day, as they are on Christmas Day. It argues that the people who work in shops toil very hard in the run up to Christmas. This is true. It then argues, ‘retail workers [should] be given some decent family time to relax and enjoy the festivities like everyone else’. Why? Why should the government legislate to ensure we can all relax? Because this is an ‘Up The Workers’ petition, it has attracted a large amount of support: 230,000 backers on Change.org and 140,000 on the Parliamentary petition website, which means it was debated in Westminster yesterday and backed by a number of MPs. Helen Jones, Labour MP for Warrington, said:

‘I think we are exercising our freedom to shop whenever we want on the backs of some very low-paid workers, who are being exploited and being denied the freedom to expect to have the time with their families.’