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I'd doubt anyone was still around when Sunday trading laws were first introduced. However, the sentiments expressed by Ian Middleton in relation to the 1996 Act certainly still hold true.

The latest gambit influenced by George Osborne is as regressive as the inappropriatelty named Growth and Infrastructure Act 2013 which gave us two further years on the business rate cycle without any attempt to nullify the negative aspects of the bits of the 1988 Local Government Finance Act that the 2013 Act failed to alter.

The 1996 caused the repeal of the Shops Act 1950 which until December 1996 was the primary legislation that covered Sunday trading. The 1950 Act, of course, covered far more than just Sunday trading, since it was a consolidation Act of all Shops Acts and all other retail related Acts from between 1912 and 1938. As a consequence it became one of my tasks in my parent's shop between 1961 and 1972 to ensure that the official notice about restrictions on sales on Sunday was displayed on that day.

The regressive element of this current proposal is that the 1950 Act allowed a fair degree of latitude on the part of local authorities to exempt, vary and otherwise regulate a number of issues ranging from business types exempted, hours of trading variations, and similar. All this led to confusions that I remember in this short anecdote. My mother had been serving a customer who was a recent immigrant to Britain - it was about 1964. He had built up a pile of groceries, greengroceries, and other items for his new home into which he had moved the previous day.
The local authority inspectors worked Sunday's in those days (no austerity measures in Town Halls in 1964!) and my mother spotted him entering the shop. Without blinking she announced to the bemused customer that she was happy to ensure that these goods would be put aside until the next day when it would , once again, be legal to buy them. He had selected mainly canned goods which was a complete no-no. There was an ambiguity in the frozen goods as in 1950 these were not an issue and were thereby not specified, however enforcing inspectors regarded frozen fruit and vegetable matter and meats as prohibited as they were not fresh (which were permitted).

Ironically, if my parent's had sold Bibles then that too would have been banned on the Sunday, although if you had bought one on a bookstall at a terminal or mainline rail or bus station or in an airport shop, then it was legal under schedule five of the Act.

The 1950 Act also referred to other predecssor Acts that were then still in force, including the Sunday Fairs Act, 1448, the Act of 3 C1 ch3 concerning sundry abuses of The Lord's Day, commonly called Sunday, and the Sunday Observance Act, 1677.

Of course none of this was relevant if the Sunday happened also to be either Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, as these were days where shops might open freely (within the time limits stipulated in Part 1 of the Act).

I suppose it is only time before seats for female members of staff are required once more - one seat for every three female members of staff in the 1950 Act!