Energy Saving (Daylight) Bill

It is a pleasure to follow the balanced and thoughtful speech of the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz). It was a significant contribution because the hon. Gentleman is from north of the border and he implied that the arguments are much more finely balanced there than the interventions from some of his colleagues suggested. He also said that he would like the Bill to progress to a Standing Committee. For that to happen, he will have to support the measure if there is a vote. I hope that his eloquence persuaded some of his colleagues who represent Scottish constituencies, and who have not, so far, been swayed by the oratory of those who support the Bill. I want to add a brief footnote to the excellent speech that my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) made in introducing the Bill, which I am happy to sponsor. The House is grappling with a basic chronometric question: do we value daylight more highly at the beginning or the end of the day? To put it in the religious terms that the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) used, how do we best realign the hours of daylight that the Almighty has given us with the human activities that we undertake now that we are no longer constrained by whether it is daylight? It is my modest observation that more human activity takes place at dusk than at dawn. It therefore follows that realigning daylight hours along the lines that my hon. Friend proposes would be beneficial. In the summer, when the days would be longer, we would have more daylight in the evening, when we tend to be awake rather than in the morning, when we tend to be asleep. Of course, that generality does not hold for some minorities. For example, we heard about agricultural workers and I shall deal with that point shortly. However, as my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Stafford said, in the past 40 years, the balance of the argument has shifted decisively. I was Secretary of State for Transport the last time the matter was seriously considered. I was strongly in favour of the measure then and I remain so. I would be amazed if the advice that I was given 10 years ago is different from the advice that Ministers receive today. Indeed, I almost recognised some of the passages from the brief that I had some 10 years ago in the extract from Hansard that my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk quoted. Any Secretary of State for Transport who takes road safety seriously would grab with both hands the opportunities that the Bill affords to reduce the tolls on our roads. In an uncharacteristic intervention, the Minister for Consumer Affairs and Competition Policy, the hon. Member for Poplar and Canning Town (Jim Fitzpatrick), implied that either we accepted the Bill or we found other ways of reducing the toll on the roads. It is not an either/or situation. We should do both. I hope that the Minister will put the matter straight later. An extract from the 1989 Transport and Road Research Laboratory report was quoted earlier. Let me read another extract:"““The groups which benefited most from the change were those aged 5-15, pedestrians and those living in Central England and Southern Scotland.””" Some Labour Members who intervened represent southern Scottish constituencies and I hope that they will be influenced by the TRRL’s comments. The position of the Secretary of State for Transport should be clear. However, there is an added complication in that the Secretary of State for Transport for England is also the Secretary of State for Scotland—a dramatic personification of the West Lothian question. Does he put first his responsibilities as Secretary of State for Transport for England and thus support the Bill, or his residual domestic responsibilities as Secretary of State for Scotland and thus, I fear, oppose it?