Exclusive: Poll reveals the British public back ending the Sunday Trading nightmare

It's time for change and that time is 6pm on a Sunday evening.

Photo by Jack Lee on Unsplash

I didn’t realise quite how powerful I am.

You might remember that last week, I published a rant about Britain’s Sunday trading laws, arguing that we should do away with the absurd restrictions on when shops can open.

Now this was just my opinion. What motivated it more than anything wasn’t high-minded concerns about economic growth or economic dynamism, it was frustration at not being able to buy a loaf of bread on a Sunday evening.

It’s time to end the Sunday Trading farce

However, it turns out that I was actually speaking for the silent majority of the British public – as they agree with me.

And I know this because, amusingly, after seeing my post the Labour Together think tank carried out a proper poll to find out what people actually think about the issue – and they’ve kindly allowed me to share the results here.

So let’s dig into the results – and see why this is the populist issue the government should take up.

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Sunday best

The question Labour Together asked was not straight approval or disapproval of doing away with Sunday trading rules. Instead, the proposal put to the public was whether the power to decide Sunday opening hours should be devolved to local authorities.

This isn’t the first time such a move has been proposed. In fact, David Cameron tried to do it in 2016 – but the plan was defeated by just 31 votes, as 27 Tories rebelled against the plan.¹

So this approach would probably be the best way to reheat the issue: The composition of Parliament is now very different, we’ve had another decade of social change that has made the restrictions appear more ridiculous – and public opinion is now very much on the side of change.

Here’s the results:

As you can see, the top-line figures are very striking: 22% of people ‘strongly support’ changing the law, and a further 25% ‘somewhat support’ the idea – compared to just 12% who strongly oppose, and 14% who ‘somewhat oppose’.

In other words, that works out as a stonking 46% in support of devolving Sunday trading rules versus just 26% who oppose change.²

(I’m sort of astonished that I’m on the side of popular opinion too, but here we are. Maybe there’s hope for the Postcode Address File yet?)

And when you dig into the numbers, support for changing the law is almost consistent across the board, no matter how you slice it.

For example, men are slightly more in favour of change than women (a split of 48/25 vs 44/27). And younger people tend to be more in favour – with the split among 18-34s being 49/24, with 47/22 for 35-54s, and 43/31 for 55+.³

Then we get to party breakdown.

Here, once again, support for devolving Sunday trading is clear across the board, with voters for all of the major parties in favour.

Well, almost all of them.

There is one exception – that’s the Green Party, which isn’t included on the graphic above. It was the only party where a plurality opposes change – with 41% supportive of change, and 43% against, which I suppose tracks with their whole anti-progress vibe.⁴

In any case, I think the rest of the party breakdown is interesting too – and it’s particularly notable just how supportive 2024 Labour voters are – not just compared to Conservatives, but also compared to what you might expect, given that trade union opposition to liberalisation has been one of the historic arguments against change.

So this poll suggests that voters feel differently – and would presumably like to be able to go to the supermarket before 10am and after 6pm on a Sunday.

Time to change the law

So that’s the poll. I think it rather helpfully reinforces the point I made last week: It’s time to get with the 21st century, and reform our outdated Sunday trading laws.

And now we know not only would this be good news for me, it would also be popular with the general public too.

From a political perspective, devolving the power wouldn’t cost any public money, it would be in line with the government’s devolution agenda, it would be a visible sign of the government’s support for business – and it would make life a little easier for millions of people who don’t want their schedules dictated by weird religious rules and a conception of a monoculture that no longer exists.

So let’s do end the Sunday trading farce once and for all! Let’s show that Britain is open for business – at 6pm on Sundays!

Huge thanks once again to Labour Together for sharing this polling data! They didn’t ask me to plug it, but I recommend checking out their reports and insights, as there’s tonnes of interesting ideas and data packed within. You might also like my recent piece about their “BritCard” proposal.

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1. It was exactly the ones who’d you expect, and in retrospect was an early preview of the Brexit wars to come.

2. I think this doesn’t add up the same way as the more granular figures because of how the numbers were rounded.

3. I did not enjoy the moment I realised that I’m in the middle age group with the 54 year olds now, and have been for several years.

4. The full Green numbers are 19% strongly support, 22% somewhat support, 11% neither, 37% somewhat oppose, 6% strongly oppose, and 5% don’t know.