Energy Saving (Daylight) Bill

I strongly support my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr. Yeo) in introducing the Bill. I hope that it will receive a Second Reading so that it can go into Committee for the detailed scrutiny that Members on both sides of the House say it deserves. So far, my hon. Friend has won all the arguments. The debate has been a pale shadow of the one 11 years ago when my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, West (Sir John Butterfill) sought to bring in a similar Bill. A three-year experiment of single/double summer time would be sensible. It would involve moving the clocks forward one hour throughout the year: Greenwich mean time plus one in winter and GMT plus two in summer. I have no pretensions to represent Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland. In my constituency, we take the long view, so speaking as the Member of Parliament for Stonehenge, I point out that we have particular views about the length of day. There has been much misapprehension—all those happy campers who want to celebrate the summer solstice at Stonehenge on 21 June must be deeply disappointed to learn that our forebears well understood that the winter solstice was the important one. The significant date was 21 December, and the placing of the Heel stone was based on that date. What really mattered was where the midwinter sun rose, because that marked the dawn of the new year, the change of the seasons and the prospect of more food so that people could survive. Taking the long view, I remind the House that in terms of mother nature, goddess earth, druid beliefs or anything else, the immutable fact of life is that what we do and say today has no bearing whatever on what geography dictates. That misapprehension has surfaced in speech after speech today from our colleagues from Scotland. It would of course be better if we could do as our forebears did. I am sure that we should all be happier, more sensible, more balanced and have better judgment if we rose with the sun and went to bed at sundown. That, however, is not an option in the 21st century.