Energy Saving (Daylight) Bill

Some Members I exempt from any such charge. Some colleagues will recall the debate that surrounded the introduction of a law making the wearing of seat belts compulsory. It is hard to believe now that less than 25 years ago that was regarded as a highly controversial proposal. The experimental procedure was used then, and it was successful, because people quickly became accustomed to wearing seat belts—and, more importantly, they soon recognised the benefits of wearing seat belts in terms of lives saved and injuries avoided. I am confident that my Bill will achieve similar benefits, but I accept that not everyone is yet convinced. For that reason, clause 4 provides for the appointment of a review panel, which after the first two years of the experiment will examine the effects of the Bill and report publicly on them. To ensure the independence of that panel—not that I am suggesting that the Government would ever try to exert influence in respect of appointments of that kind—the Bill explicitly provides for one of the panel’s members to be nominated by the Royal Society, one by the Government’s chief scientific adviser, one by the chief medical officer and one by the Office for National Statistics—and, of course, some by the Secretary of State as well. The Bill requires the panel to report specifically on changes in the number of road traffic accidents, the level of energy consumption and the level of ill health, and on any other areas that the panel believes have been directly affected by the alteration in the clocks. The importance of that panel is that it will give the public unbiased information on which to form a view about the advantages and disadvantages of the change. It will then be for Parliament to decide whether to continue the three-year experiment, and whether to make the change permanent. When the last experiment took place almost 40 years ago, it was abandoned after over-hasty examination of inadequate, and possibly misleading, evidence on the impact of the change. The decision to abandon that experiment was a seriously wrong judgment. In any event, we must now judge the issue on the basis of what it does in today’s conditions. One other aspect of the Bill requires to be explained. Clauses 5, 6 and 7 provide for the changes proposed in the Bill to be treated as a devolved issue, so that the Welsh Assembly, the Scottish Parliament and the Northern Ireland Assembly can decide for themselves whether those parts of the United Kingdom should conduct the same experiment as England.