Central European Time

My Lords, the arguments for and against maintaining British Summer Time throughout the year are well rehearsed. Frankly, there is not much more that one can say than is already mentioned in the House of Commons Library Standard Note of November last year. I have no doubt that the Minister, when winding up this debate, will draw reference to the previous experiment with lighter evenings between 1968 and 1971 and tell us that this proved unpopular and was abandoned following a vote in Parliament. We are all well versed in the objections from the construction industry and many of those who live in the north of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. My simple message is that a lot has changed since 1971—in trade; in financial services; with our European partners; in schools; in law and order, tourism and communications—which gives more momentum to the argument for more serious consideration to be given to the call for us to keep British Summer Time throughout the year. I was not surprised that the lighter evenings Bill of 2004, moved by the honourable Nigel Beard in another place, failed. It was impractical to expect the Bill to succeed when it applied only to England and Wales. However, it raised a number of powerful arguments and quantifiable benefits for the United Kingdom’s competitiveness and business efficiency. Nigel Beard argued that airline, ferry and Eurostar schedules would be simpler. He referred to the 25 million inbound visitors in 2003, 14 million of whom came from countries that would have been in the same time zone under his Bill. My noble friend Lord Montgomery made reference to the reduction in the number of fatalities and serious injuries on the roads. I wholeheartedly support this case. As a father of four young children, all aged under 11, I have particularly strong feelings about my children’s inability to play sport on the onset of dusk in the winter. A switch to CET would give an average daily gain of 55 minutes of accessible daylight hours in the evenings—as is well known, half of the 10 most popular sports are daylight-dependent. At a time when energy efficiency is getting more and more attention, it is noteworthy that the winter months generally see the consumption of electricity increasing by about 50 per cent and the consumption of gas increasing by 400 per cent. While the 1989 Green Paper Summer Time: A Consultation Document concluded that a move to CET would result in marginal energy savings, I feel that the issue needs to be looked at again. It has been claimed that changes to British summer time could be used to help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Does the Minister have any further information on this point? The late Lord Jenkins of Hillhead had strong feelings in favour of our remaining on British summer time throughout the year. In the debate on the issue in your Lordships’ House way back in January 1995, he argued:"““Sensible decisions on time zones are essentially a matter of longitude and not of latitude. The division should go east-west with longitude and not north-south with latitude””." He concluded his speech by saying that,"““we should do better from the point of view of safety, amenity, convenience and efficiency with the day slung later both in summer and winter””.—[Official Report, 11/01/95; col. 250.]"