Central European Time

My Lords, first, I must tell the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery, that when the Minister described this issue as being a ““poisoned chalice””, it was in response to my description of it as a ““hardy perennial””. The question before us is whether to feed this hardy perennial or chop it right back. I have come rather later to this discussion than many other people, but I have heard the arguments and it simply seems to be a matter of usage and custom. We can do either. It is not beyond the wit of man either to stay as we are or to change. We can do either if we have the will, and the will is based on our convenience. The argument is that lighter mornings are more appealing. I lived a student life for four years and experienced early mornings in Scotland but, for much of the time, whether or not it was light in the mornings was not a big issue for me. However, people liked the idea of getting up and seeing some sunlight. On an overcast day in the north-east of Scotland, sunlight was a fleeting quality, but that was the idea. For most modern activities, light towards the end of the day is clearly more useful. The noble Lord, Lord St John, has just raised the issue of sport. Going back to my time in the north-east of Scotland, I can remember sports matches being cancelled because we were five minutes late kicking off and, if the rain came down, you could not see anything. That lack of light—generally the further north you are during the depths of winter, the worse it is—is a subject that you can dance around, but only so many hours of light are available, and it is the best usage that you can make of them that seems to be at the back of this. A friend of mine who at one point did quite a lot of business with the Continent described the difficulties of the time difference when he tried to chase people up. He said, ““You get to your office nice and early and phone someone else who arrives at their office nice and early only to be told, ‘You’ve just missed him’. You ask when he is going to be there and are told, ‘I’m not sure. He’s in and out’. You ask, ‘When’s the best time to get him?’ and are told, ‘Just before lunch’. Then you forget that his lunch doesn’t coincide with your lunch. You chase around making phone calls and eventually you might just catch up””. I am reliably informed that being that little bit out of sync is an incredible nuisance. Stronger language is probably required in relation to the level of nuisance but it does make life difficult. If Scotland were to keep its own time zone, we might have the same degree of difficulty in talking to people there. I am not sure what would cause more inconvenience, but it is one of the options that we have. There is no reason why we could not make the change, but the question is: is it simply impractical and, to put it bluntly, is it worth the hassle? We can chase around the question forever but we will always be addressing this one central point. What is most convenient for us? Would a change give us something better? When he replies, the Minister will probably have to take certain things into account. For example, statistics suggest that in certain areas more lives might be saved in regard to road accidents. That is one question that I do not want to see tested for the simple reason that I do not want to have X number of corpses on the street. When visiting hospitals, I do not want to hear people say, ““It didn’t work””. It is just one of those things that I find rather awkward to comprehend. Also, as the noble Viscount said, if people are more tired and accidents occur when they are driving, the roads will be lit anyway. So there is doubt in that regard. When dealing with a problem such as this, we have to decide what is manageable, how much time and energy we are prepared to invest in it and, it is hoped, reach a decision. I know that the noble Viscount will not let this matter go. Of course he is entitled to bring it back again and again, but I think that the rest of us should think about it and decide whether or not we are going to deal with it. If we are not prepared to put in the effort to deal with it, we should leave it for a while.