Energy Saving (Daylight) Bill

I would answer my hon. Friend like this: the need to tackle climate change is urgent and if we are to deal with it we all need to make many changes in our daily lives, our businesses and our transportation. The Bill represents one such change—and it is a fairly easy and quick one. I also believe that it would be an effective one. That is my argument. I now want to move on from the issue of energy and climate change—I think that is the strongest argument for the Bill—to that of road safety, which also provides an important argument. Two years after the experiment in 1968, the Transport Research Laboratory published its initial findings. It reported in time for the debate in Parliament that there had been a net reduction of 2,700 in the number of people killed and seriously injured in the two winters since the experiment began. After the debate, a re-analysis of the figures gave an annual result of 230 fewer deaths, 1,120 fewer killed and seriously injured together and 2,340 fewer other injuries. They are significant figures and they are not assumptions; they are actuality. That is what happened at that time. The TRL has kept its research up to date and, most recently in 1998 re-analysed the figures and analysed single/double summer time against British standard time. Its research that year estimated adopting single double summer time would result in between 104 and 138 lives being saved on the roads every year. It would result in 450 fewer killed and seriously injured each year.