Energy Saving (Daylight) Bill

Because those financial capitals are running their economies closely to natural times and time zones, whereas we are distorting further than we need to distort. It is very straightforward. I would rather we went in the direction proposed. I also want to take head on the argument about farmers. I am sure that if you represent farmers, Madam Deputy Speaker, you will appreciate that they do not pay any attention to clocks. They pay attention to the time that the sun rises and sets and to the needs of their stock. That, not what the clocks says, determines when a farmer gets up, and we need to bear that in mind. It is significant that the National Farmers Union has changed its view and now supports the Bill. We should bear in mind that very great change. On the Scottish question, I want to draw the attention of the House to the fact that I was working during the last trial between 1968 and 1971. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk was working too. I was working in Scotland—I was a teacher in Musselburgh. In the winter before the trial took place in Scotland, there were no games in the afternoon. We could not hold them; it was dark. When the trial was on, teachers across Scotland were able to organise sports, coach athletics and, above all, get children outside and exercised. I am proud of being a Scottish-registered teacher, but when I came to teach in England, I found that doing all that was so much easier. I look back with horror on the dark afternoons when there was no sport for hundreds of thousands of children in Scotland. The proposal would be of enormous benefit to them. Of course, Scotland could opt out, and my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk has introduced a sensible arrangement for that. I doubt that it will. It is important to remember that there will always be far fewer hours of daylight in Scotland in winter than in England. It does not matter whether we get our six hours of daylight from 8 am to 2 pm or at any other time, except for the statistical arguments in favour of things such as safety and energy consumption. Nothing can change the length of the day or the night, but the English look with envy at the considerable hours of daylight in Scotland in mid-summer. I have never heard one of my constituents being chippy about all the extra daylight that the Scots get in summer. I hope that that attitude will be reciprocated. Thank goodness—vive la différence. It is wonderful that we can have different hours of daylight. That is one reason that I would never like to live in the tropics where there are no seasons and 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness throughout the year. Thank goodness for a bit of difference. The Bill is sensible, practical and logical. We should allow it to go through to Standing Committee for closer scrutiny.