Central European Time

My Lords, I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery of Alamein, for initiating this debate. Although it may sound rather impudent of me as I arrived in your Lordships’ House only about five minutes before his return, I echo the welcome extended to him by other noble Lords. To deal with the main arguments as I understand them, I have divided them into about eight key areas. First, as the noble Viscount, Lord Montogomery, and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said, there are potential benefits for road safety, especially for school children, from a change to central European time. When the change was tried between 1968 and 1971, the number of fatalities and injuries dropped. The main beneficiaries were those aged from five to 15. The experiment was abandoned because of an accident in the early morning in Scotland involving schoolchildren, which is the very type of accident that can be used so powerfully to advocate lighter evenings. It was, however, an isolated example. We might ask whether countries such as Germany and Poland—using the logic of this argument at least, they would be on eastern European time—have considered a change from a road safety perspective. Presumably they remain on central European time because of the European Union, economic arguments and so on. Secondly, as has been mentioned in earlier debates on this subject, there could possibly be a reduction in crime, resulting from a change to central European time because it is argued that criminals prosper on dark evenings. Thirdly, possible energy savings could arise from lighter winter afternoons. That would be a saving not only of money but of the undesirable by-products of energy generation. We would, however, need rigorous scientific evidence that the benefits so gained would not be offset by the additional energy costs arising from darker and colder mornings when we get up and arrive at work. There is a physical electricity supply link between England and France, known as the Interconnector, through which electricity is sold in each direction at different times of the day, dependent on demand. Peak demand occurs in England at a different time from France, partly because our time systems are an hour apart. That clearly has the potential to contribute towards electricity costs both on revenue and capital accounts to the extent that it may actually reduce the need to maintain generating capacity.