PRESENTED in a single document, Commerce and Employment’s business plan for 2011 gives a good indication of just how many difficult subjects are on the department’s books.

The Dairy, Sunday trading, a fishing agreement, the new slaughterhouse and the implementation of recommendations contained in the airport firefighters review are sandwiched between rather more mundane plans for managing airport costs, a Careers and Employment Show and sundry ongoing reviews and projects.

Leaving aside the reorganisation of the dairy industry, the headlines will undoubtedly go to any plans to do away with the island’s arcane Sunday trading laws and the potential establishment of a joint 3- to 12-mile fishing limit for Guernsey, Sark and Alderney.

The Sunday trading review was mooted by the department’s minister in July and was given added impetus by the wrangling over Le Friquet’s Garden Centre’s right to trade and the bloody nose one St Martin’s trader gave the whole sorry mess in a tribunal.

It is regrettable that it has taken external events to force the department’s hands on Sunday trading. The legislation, which we dubbed the dog’s breakfast law, has never been fit for purpose and any review must surely conclude that it should be, at the very least, substantially watered down.

But why prolong the inevitable? Let businesses move out of the 19th century and open when they want. Too many people already work on a Sunday to justify the claim that the Sabbath must be sacrosanct. Islanders should be free to make of it what they will.

As everyone from waiters to stockbrokers and from nurses to truck drivers knows, shift work is part and parcel of modern life. Keeping daft laws that prohibit the sale of books such as the Bible while porn magazines are legal does not enhance family life. And if some employees’ home lives are sacred, why are not all?

Equally arcane has been the saga of protecting local fishing rights. It is heartening therefore to see Commerce talk with confidence of a fisheries management agreement being negotiated.

If both of those thorny issues are grasped the department will have had a good year.