Ahead of this Wednesday's budget the Chancellor George Osborne announced last weekend that he was set to propose emergency legislation so large shops in England and Wales can trade for more than six hours.

Mr Osborne told the BBC that it would be a "great shame" if Britain had a "closed for business sign" on it during the games.

Yet with the giant new Westfield complex greeting spectators at Stratford, and no doubt the Olympic venues themselves being packed full of merchandising shops and stalls, is this really a legitimate concern?

There was a strong reaction to this proposal from both the Keep Sunday Special campaign group who called it "profoundly worrying: and the shopworkers' union Usdaw who warned that its members are "vehemently opposed" to it.

There are obviously some advantages to the proposals, increased revenue for the treasury and a way curb record unemployment foremost in the government's mind. But is the Chancellor right, would the thousands of tourist descending on London this summer find it strange if the shops were closed on a Sunday?

The vast majority of the visitors coming to Britain this summer will be from Europe.

Any Brit who has spent any amount of time across the channel will know that our continental shop keeping neighbours' keep somewhat erratic hours with varying lunchtime closure and half days on Mondays.

Within the European Union there are 15 countries that currently allows shops to open every Sunday including Ireland, Sweden and Poland.

But countries with equivalent economies to our own like France, Italy and Spain, still have strict laws on Sunday trading.

In South America due to the large influence of Catholicism most countries have still banned Sunday Trading but around the rest of the world the majority of countries do allow for Sunday trading.

It was only in 1994 that Sunday trading began in the UK and back then remarkably only three major chains, Marks and Spencer, House of Fraser and Waitrose, initially opened their branches.

The Sunday Trading Act allowed stores to trade in any goods that they wanted but set limits on the opening hours. Small shops - those under 280 square meters - an open all day whereas bigger shops were restricted to six hours between 1000 and 1800. North of the border shops Sunday trading laws were devolved to the Scottish Parliament and since 2003 larger stores having been able to open for longer hours.

Prior to 1994 there had been 26 previous attempts to relax Sunday Trading laws. The 1994 law was a compromise which fell shorts of an attempt by Margaret Thatcher's government in 1986 to do away with all restrictions. Thatcher was defeated in parliament by her own Conservative MPs who saw the move as a threat to family life and church attendance whilst Labour MPs were concerned about workers' rights.

It's ironic now that the same party that still champions the central role of the family in public life is the one proposing this change but in the desperate hunt for any greens shoots of growth in the economy it would seem that wallet rules over ideology.

In Jersey where I grew up there are still strict restrictions on Sunday trading with only small shops being allowed to open and even then there are restrictions on what can be sold. When I moved over to "the mainland" for university I would often forget that the shops were open on Sundays and be surprised when walking through town I would find them all open.

Despite this convenience and the perceived economic benefits I still don't like having this option and don't see the necessity in rushing through this legislation. There are less evident economic and societal benefits to having restricted opening hours on a Sunday. Firstly for those working in the retail sector there is the opportunity for a rest and to spend time with family after six days on the shop floor.

For the public, having a day where the shops are closed does prompts us to simply relax, spend time with family and also get active. Typical Sunday activities like going for a walk and playing sports boost our health, fitness and in turn our happiness and productivity when we have to go back to work on a Monday.

There are six full shopping days a week and in the summer many cities and towns already operate extended opening hours on those days for the tourist trade already. Shorter hours on Sundays isn't going to make the world perceive British workers are slackers and we should insist that this proposed temporary legislation doesn't lead to a permanent one after the Olympic flame is extinguished.

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