Climate Change Bill [HL]

What is it about an issue like this that makes normally eminently sensible people lose all reason? I always thought that the purpose of growing old was to learn from one’s mistakes. Members of the Committee will remember that this has been tried before, in 1968, and the experiment was abandoned before it was concluded because it was so widely unpopular. There are two ways of adjusting to the winter period. You have to decide whether you want to have dark mornings or light evenings and people have to adjust their working hours. Coming down to London nowadays, I am amazed at the lifestyle that most people seem to adopt. They have no idea that it is dark in the mornings because they seem to get up so late and the shops open at quite ridiculously late hours. Nothing much happens before ten o’clock and you cannot get hold of anybody. I come from a part of the world where people have to get up early because the goods they produce are demanded in the marketplace early in the day. Such an amendment is not about making evenings lighter but mornings darker. If you get up early in the morning, it is dark long enough before the day starts. I make a serious point about people who live in the countryside: the coldest time of the day is in the early morning. The period of travelling to work coincides with the frostiest of roads. Most rural roads are not gritted; certainly people who come to work at my place must travel on ungritted roads. This is a serious problem if you are starting your work in order to meet markets and get goods in the marketplace at the right time of day. So this measure does not have my personal support, or that of the Opposition.